Was Alonzo Church Taoist? | Hacker News Reader

Was Alonzo Church Taoist?

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15 pointsmartyalain23 comments

I don't see any connection between this article and Taoism at all, apart from a quote at the top and a sentence at the bottom, both of which seem unconnected to the rest of the article. What am I missing?

I think they’re just talking about the I Ching specifically, not really Taoism. Even then, though, if you want to make I Ching analogies, you probably want to talk about binary search trees, or allocation of identifiers by subdivision of a key space (like with IP addresses.)

Don't you see some similarity between Yin/Yang and abstraction/application? Female vs male, delay vs force ...

Okay, I suppose. I must admit I'm not very familiar with Taoism (I'm actually more of a presbyterian...).

Others have pointed out the shallow connection to Taoism. But even the discussion of the lambda calculus does not seem to be insightful. For example, recursion in lambda calculus does not need names.

" For example, recursion in lambda calculus does not need names. "

You are right. Just a zest of Y-combinator and you can forget names as it is shown in section 4). And so you come back to pure lambda calculus. If you want more details have a look at http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdaspeech/?view=kiss and http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdaspeech/?view=factory_201902_p...

So, I'm disapointed that nobody could understand that my question about Tao was somewhat provocative. A bit of humour.

A more serious point, IMHO, is the similarity between Yin/Yang and Abstraction/Application. Your opinion?

So, I'm disapointed that nobody could understand that my question about Tao was somewhat provocative. A bit of humour, difficult to share... It's not an article on Tao!

A more serious point, IMHO, is the link between Yin/Yang and Abstraction/Application. Your opinion?

I don't see the connection. An example of yin-yang for me in this field is centralization vs. decentralization. We've been through a few cycles already.

1. mainframes (centralization)

2. PC (decentralization)

3. internet and cloud (centralization)

4. now with mobile, crypto/blockchain (decentralization)

Why not? For me yin/yang is connected to abstraction/application, abstraction delaying the evaluation of an expression and application forcing the evaluation. {lambda {x y} {+ x y}} delay the evaluation of {+ x y} and {{lambda {x y} {+ x y}} 3 4} forces the evaluation of {+ 3 4} to 7. The article tries to gently introduce, in a few lines without grey areas, concepts in programming languages which are not so easy to understand, a few data structures, pairs and lists, and recursion without any strange Y-combinator ... implicitely used in the long convoluted expression full of lambdas and explained in long in the two links given at the bottom of the page. This short article is a gentle call to read longer introductions on the making of a functional language for the web. Not a philosophical reflexion on Taoism.

I’m disappointed; this is as shallow an understanding of Taoism as you’re likely to get. Sure, there is a core religious concept called “Taoism” that can sort of be described as “everything is a zero-sum duality of a producer and a consumer, which returns to nothing in equilibrium”—but in practice, people who are Taoist have a whole bunch of other, much more interesting beliefs.

There’s an instant-classic article waiting to be written, about the usefulness of Taoism (and intertwined concepts like qigong and neidan) as a thought-paradigm for pursuing mastery in modern intellectual crafts like computer programming. (It’s a shame that Robert C. Martin isn’t versed with Taoism; he keeps rubbing up against these ideas tangentially but never colliding with them.)

There’s also a less classic, but highly entertaining article waiting to be written, comparing-and-contrasting computer programming to Taoist martial arts as practiced in Xianxia novels. Abelson and Sussman’s “programmer as wizard” analogy was close, but there’s an even better one.

This is not an article about Taoism but a short reflexion about how two conjugate rules, abstraction & application, which have some similarities with the Tao's Yin/Yang, can be used to gently introduce a functional programming language in a few lines trying to avoid grey areas. More (serious) explanations can be seen in the links given at the end. I'm sorry if the title, a little provocative, has misled you.

I haven't read the article, but I'm already convinced that I'd much rather read YOUR article on the subject. If I'm not going to get that, can I at least get a few links to point towards more of what you're talking about?

" I haven't read the article, but I'm already convinced that ... "

Reading an article is not required to get an opinion about its quality ... it's well known!

The article is not about Tao but more on some similitude between Tao's Yin/Yang and Lambda calculus' Abstraction/Appplication. Is it so difficult to understand?

Sounds to me like you should write those articles.

This is merely clickbait. It's a lambda-calculus circle jerk disguised as a philosophical question.

Just a little bit of humour on a subject, the lambda calculus, too often introduced so darkly. And if you read until the end you have links to more details. And your opinion will be welcome, always.

Presbyterian, I think.

very emphatically.

"A deeply religious person, Church was a lifelong member of the Presbyterian church.[7] He died in 1995 and was buried in Princeton Cemetery" wikipedia.

[7] "Introduction Alonzo Church: Life and Work" (PDF). p. 4. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 September 2012. Retrieved 6 June 2012. "A deeply religious person, he was a lifelong member of the Presbyterian church."

Is there anybody out there?

just nod if you can hear me

You would be nice to stay polite.

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