Turing's Cathedral

by George Dyson

  Nils Barricelli died in Oslo in 1993, no longer engaged in viral genetics, but still working to perfect the new mathematical language, “B-mathematics,” which, like the calculus ratiocinator of Leibniz, would establish truth and reveal untruth. Spoken only by a few of his graduate students and running on a DEC System 10 computer, B-mathematics soon went extinct. His numerical evolution experiments also evaporated with barely a trace, leaving many of his ideas to be rediscovered by researchers who had no idea of his earlier work.

  Barricelli’s universe, however, is our universe now. His primitive, one-dimensional digital organisms—replicating, competing, cross-breeding, and associating symbiotically within a 5-kilobyte matrix—were the ancestors of the multimegabyte (but still one-dimensional) strings of code that are replicating and cross-breeding in the unbounded digital universe of today. What we term “apps” Barricelli would term numerical symbioorganisms, and as he predicted, it is by crossing, symbiotic cooperation and wholesale appropriation of code bases, not by random mutation, that their evolution is moving ahead. Behaving as “collector societies” of social insects, they gather money (and intelligence) to bring back to the collective nest.

  Julian Bigelow died in Princeton on February 17, 2003. Six weeks later, the School of Natural Sciences hosted a reception in his honor in their own new building, Bloomberg Hall, preceded by a Quaker memorial service in the Friends meetinghouse at Stony Brook. The meetinghouse, furnished with plain wooden benches and little changed from 1726, was full. At a Friends meeting, silence is a form of communication, an exception to Bigelow’s rule that absence of a signal should never be used as a signal.

  A nurse who had been in attendance during Bigelow’s hospitalization broke the silence first. “Even though he was so tired, he opened his eyes, his wide blue eyes, and many nurses said, ‘Look at his eyes, even when he is so sick, look at the expression they have,’ ” she said.61 “Julian was never recognized at his true worth; he was pushed into a corner,” said Freeman Dyson. “But I never heard a word of complaint. Now it is late, but still not too late to apologize.” There were stories about all the things that Bigelow had been able to fix, all the things he had been unable to finish, and all the things, especially used tires, he had been unable to throw away. “There was no problem that couldn’t be solved,” Ted Merkelson, Julian’s stepson, speaking last, explained. “It was just a question of figuring it out and taking the time to do it. And I think he could still solve any problem. He just ran out of time.”62

  The service over, Julian Bigelow’s family and friends stepped out into the bright March sunshine and followed the old Princeton-Trenton trolley line between the woods and the Battlefield back to the Institute, retracing the route taken by Sullivan’s column of Washington’s army in 1777, passing the Clarke House where General Mercer was left, mortally wounded, after the British retreat. In Bloomberg Hall—now home to the Institute’s physicists, astronomers, a 96-node IBM computer cluster (replaced with a 512-core cluster in 2009), and, finally, a handful of theoretical biologists—was a small crowd of people who had gathered to pay their last respects to a man who had been born only forty-two miles from Stony Brook.

  Engineers were banished from the Institute, but computers returned. More than nine hundred of them (and two hundred terabytes of storage) are in use across the IAS today, and the former ECP building, now jointly occupied by the Crossroads Nursery School, the Institute Business Office, and a fitness center, displays a plaque commemorating von Neumann, installed by the Hungarian government in 2003. Even the School of Social Science is increasingly devoted to studying the effects that von Neumann’s experiment is having on the world.

  The basement storeroom in Fuld Hall, where the first workbenches were installed in 1946, was the Institute’s main server room until recently, connected to the outside world by some 504 optical fibers, routed through a 45-megabit-per-second switch. In a reversal of Nils Barricelli’s attempts to incubate self-propagating numerical organisms, a dedicated network monitoring system now watches over all traffic, trying to keep out the endless stream of self-propagating numerical organisms that are now attempting to get in. “The viruses are getting so intelligent that it’s really an arms race,” Rush Taggart, the system administrator in 2005, explained. “It’s watching the traffic as it goes by. The machines watch out for the machines.”63

  The arms race being fought in the basement of Fuld (and now Bloomberg) Hall will never be decided in favor of the completely deterministic over the probabilistic and incomplete. The wilderness, even if only a digital wilderness, will always win. There are codes, and machines, that can do almost anything that can be given an exact description, but it will never be possible to determine, simply by looking at a code, what that code will do. No firewall that admits even simple arithmetic can ever be made complete. The digital universe will always leave room for more mysteries than even Robert Frost could dream of. The twilight zone remains.

  The 32-by-32-by-40-bit matrix constructed at the end of Olden Lane was initialized with coded instructions, and then given a 10-bit number with orders to go to that location and perform the next instruction—which could have been an instruction to modify the existing instructions—found at that address. Even from so finite a beginning, there was no way to predict the end result.

  In November 2000 a cardboard box turned up in the basement of the West Building at the Institute for Advanced Study, where its presence had been overlooked. The smell of burning V-belts still permeated the layer of black, greasy dust that had settled over a collection of World War II teleprinter service manuals that for some reason had not been thrown out when the MANIAC’s input/output was switched to punched cards from paper tape. Underneath them was a carton of IBM data processing cards, accompanied by a note written in pencil on half a sheet of lined paper, disintegrated into several fragments, identifying the cards as “Barricelli’s Drum Code,” with instructions for how it should be loaded and run (on the 2,048-word high-speed magnetic drum that had been added to the computer in 1953). Along with the stack of cards were three sheets of ledger paper, filled with dense handwritten hexadecimal code specifying the laws of nature governing the fossilized universe that was preserved, in a state of suspended animation, on the cards. Here were the Dead Sea scrolls.

  The note accompanying the cards (addressed to “Mr. Barricelli” and signed “TWL”) concludes with the following statement:

  “There must be something about this code that you haven’t explained yet.”

  KEY TO ARCHIVAL SOURCES

  AMT Alan Turing papers, King’s College Archives, Cambridge, UK

  CBI Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Mn.

  FJD Freeman Dyson papers, courtesy of Freeman Dyson

  GBD Author’s collections

  IAS Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J.

  IAS-BS Beatrice Stern files, Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J.

  JHB Julian Bigelow papers, courtesy of the Bigelow family

  KVN Klári von Neumann papers, courtesy of Marina von Neumann Whitman

  LA Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, N.M.

  NARA U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.

  OVLC Oswald Veblen papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  PM Priscilla McMillan document archive [http://h-bombbook.com/research/primarysource.html]

  RCA David Sarnoff Library and Archives, RCA, courtesy of Alex Magoun

  RF Rockefeller Foundation Archives, New York, N.Y.

  SFU Stanislaw and Françoise Ulam papers, courtesy of the Ulam family

  SUAPS Stanislaw Ulam Papers, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia

  VNLC John von Neumann papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  NOTES

  PREFACE

  1. Willis H. Ware, interview with Nancy Stern, January 19, 1981, CBI, cal
l no. OH 37.

  2. John von Neumann, “The Point Source Solution,” in Blast Wave, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, LA-2000 (a compilation of declassified portions of LA-1020 and LA-1021, edited by Hans Bethe, Klaus Fuchs, Joseph Hirschfelder, John Magee, Rudolph Peierls, and John von Neumann. Report written in August 1947, distributed March 27, 1958), p. 28.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  1. Hans Bethe, “Energy Production in Stars,” Physics Today, September 1968, p. 44.

  2. Abraham Flexner, Minutes of the Trustees, April 13, 1936, IAS; Carl Kaysen, Notes on John von Neumann for File, July 12, 1968, IAS.

  3. Nicholas Metropolis, in Nicholas Metropolis, J. Howlett, and Gian-Carlo Rota, eds., A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1980), p. xvii.

  ONE: 1953

  1. “Institute for Advanced Study Electronic Computer Project Monthly Progress Report,” March 1953, p. 3, IAS.

  2. Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature (New York: Bantam, 1979), p. 228.

  3. Francis Bacon, De augmentis scientiarum, 1623, translated by Gilbert Wats as Of the advancement and proficience of Learning, or The Partitions of Sciences… (London, 1640), pp. 265-66.

  4. Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Philosophy: The First Section, Concerning Body, Chapter 1, Computation, or Logique (London: Andrew Crooke, 1656), pp. 2-3.

  5. U.S. Office of Naval Research, A Survey of Automatic Digital Computers—1953 (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Navy, compiled February 1953).

  6. Alan Turing, “Lecture to the London Mathematical Society on 20 February 1947,” p. 1, AMT.

  7. Memorandum for the Electronic Computer Project, November 9, 1949, IAS.

  8. Lewis L. Strauss to J. Robert Oppenheimer, April 10, 1953, IAS.

  9. J. Robert Oppenheimer to Lewis Strauss, April 22, 1953, IAS.

  10. Jack Rosenberg, interview with author, February 12, 2005, GBD.

  11. John von Neumann, “Defense in Atomic War,” paper delivered at a symposium in honor of Dr. R. H. Kent, December 7, 1955, in “The Scientific Bases of Weapons,” Journal of the American Ordnance Association (1955): 23; reprinted in Collected Works, vol. 6: Theory of Games, Astrophysics, Hydrodynamics and Meteorology (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1963), p. 525.

  12. Discussion at the 258th Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, September 8–15, 1955, Eisenhower Papers, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas (transcript in NASA Sputnik History Collection).

  13. Robert Oppenheimer to James Conant, October 21, 1949, in In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1954), p. 243; minutes, Institute for Advanced Study Electronic Computer Project Steering Committee, March 20, 1953, IAS.

  14. James D. Watson and Francis H. C. Crick, “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” Nature 171 (April 25, 1953): 737.

  15. Nils Aall Barricelli, “Symbiogenetic Evolution Processes Realized by Artificial Methods,” Methodos 8, no. 32 (1956): 308.

  16. Semiconductor Industry Association World Semiconductor Trade Statistics data for 2010, as presented by Paul Otellini, Intel Investor Meeting, May 17, 2011.

  17. Willis Ware, interview with author, January 23, 2004, GBD; Harris Mayer, interview with author, May 13 and 25, 2011, GBD.

  TWO: OLDEN FARM

  1. A Letter from William Penn, Proprietary and Governour of Pennsylvania in America, to the Committee of the Free Society of Traders of that Province, residing in London, 16 August 1683 (London, 1683), p. 3.

  2. Chief Tenoughan (Schuylkill River) as noted by William Penn, winter of 1683–1684, in John Oldmixon, The British Empire in America: Containing the History of the Discovery, Settlement, Progress and present State of all the British Colonies on the Continent and Islands of America, vol. 1 (London, 1708), p. 162.

  3. Samuel Smith, The History of the Colony of Nova-Caesaria, or New Jersey: containing, an account of its first settlement, progressive improvements, the original and present constitution, and other events, to the year 1721. (Burlington: James Parker, 1765; second edition, Trenton: William Sharp, 1877), p. 79

  4. The Trial of William Penn and William Mead, at the Sessions held at the Old Baily in London, the 1st, 3d, 4th, and 5th of September, 1670. Done by themselves, in A Compleat Collection of State-Tryals, and Proceedings upon High Treason, and other Crimes and Misdemeanours, vol. 2 (London, 1719), p. 56.

  5. The Trial of William Penn and William Mead, 2:60.

  6. Ibid.

  7. William Penn, Petition to Charles II, May 1680, in Jean R. Soderlund, ed., William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania, 1680–1684 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), p. 23.

  8. William Penn to Robert Boyle, August 5, 1683, in Works of Robert Boyle, vol. 5 (London, 1744), p. 646.

  9. Deed of October 20, 1701 between Penn and Stockton, as quoted in John Frelinghuysen Hageman, A History of Princeton and its Institutions (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1879) vol. 1, p. 36.

  THREE: VEBLEN’S CIRCLE

  1. Mrs. R. H. Fisher, in Joseph Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen and His America (New York: Viking, 1934), p. 504.

  2. Herman Goldstine, interview with Albert Tucker and Frederik Nebeker, March 22, 1985, The Princeton Mathematics Community in the 1930s: An Oral History Project, transcript 15, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. (http://www.princeton.edu/​mudd/​math); Albert Tucker, interview in The Princeton Mathematics Community in the 1930s: An Oral History Project, transcript 15; Abraham Flexner to Herbert Maass, December 15, 1937, IAS.

  3. Herman Goldstine, in Thomas Bergin, ed., 50 Years of Army Computing: From ENIAC to MSRC, a record of a conference held at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, on November 13 and 14, 1996 (Aberdeen, Md.: U.S. Army Research Laboratory, 2000), p. 32.

  4. Deane Montgomery, interview with Albert Tucker and Frederik Nebeker, March 13, 1985, in The Princeton Mathematics Community in the 1930s, transcript 25; Klára von Neumann, Two New Worlds, ca. 1963, KVN; Herman Goldstine, interview with Albert Tucker and Frederik Nebeker.

  5. Forest Ray Moulton, in David Alan Grier, “Dr. Veblen Takes a Uniform: Mathematics in the First World War,” American Mathematical Monthly 108 (October 2001): 928.

  6. Norbert Wiener, Ex-Prodigy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953), p. 254; ibid., p. 258; ibid., p. 259; ibid., p. 257.

  7. Oswald Veblen to Simon Flexner, October 24, 1923, IAS.

  8. Oswald Veblen to Simon Flexner, February 23, 1924, IAS.

  9. Simon Flexner to Oswald Veblen, March 11, 1924, IAS.

  10. Abraham Flexner, I Remember (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940), p. 13; Abraham Flexner, “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge,” Harper’s Magazine, October 1939, p. 548.

  11. Klára von Neumann, Two New Worlds.

  12. Oswald Veblen to Frank Aydelotte, n.d., IAS.

  13. Oswald Veblen to Abraham Flexner, March 19, 1935, IAS.

  14. Science, New Series 74, no. 1922 (Oct. 30, 1931): 433; Herman Goldstine, interview with Albert Tucker and Frederik Nebeker.

  15. Oswald Veblen to Albert Einstein, April 17, 1930, IAS-BS.

  16. Albert Einstein to Oswald Veblen, April 30, 1930, IAS-BS.

  17. Herbert H. Maass, Report on the Founding and Early History of the Institute, n.d., ca. 1955, IAS; Abraham Flexner, “The American University,” Atlantic Monthly, vol. 136, October 1925, pp. 530–41; Maass, Report on the Founding and Early History of the Institute.

  18. Flexner, I Remember, p. 356.

  19. Abraham Flexner, Universities: American, English, German (New York: Oxford University Press, 1930), p. 217.

  20. Louis Bamberger and Carrie Fuld, letter to accompany codicil to their wills, draft, n.d., ca. January 1930, IAS.

  21. Oswald Veblen to Abraham Flexner, January 1930, in Beatrice Stern, A History of the Institute for Advanced Study, 1930–1950, 1:126, available at library.ias.edu/​files/​stern_pt1.pdf; Abraham Flexner to Oswald Veblen, January 27, 1930, IAS.

  22. Louis Bamberger to the Truste
es, June 4, 1930, IAS.

  23. Flexner, “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge,” p. 551.

  24. Julian Huxley to Abraham Flexner, December 11, 1932, IAS-BS; Louis Bamberger to the Trustees, April 23, 1934, IAS.

  25. Oswald Veblen to Abraham Flexner, June 19, 1931, IAS.

  26. Charles Beard to Abraham Flexner, June 28, 1931, in Stern, A History of the Institute for Advanced Study, 1930–1950, 1:104; Felix Frankfurter to Frank Aydelotte, December 16, 1933, IAS.

  27. Abraham Flexner to the Trustees, September 26, 1931, IAS.

  28. Flexner, “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge,” p. 551.

  29. Abraham Flexner, “University Patents,” Science 77, no. 1996, March 31, 1933, p. 325; Flexner, “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge,” p. 544.

  30. Abraham Flexner to Trustees, September 26, 1931, IAS; ibid.

  31. Abraham Flexner to Louis Bamberger, March 15, 1935, IAS.

  32. Herbert Maass to Abraham Flexner, June 9, 1931, IAS; Edgar Bamberger to Abraham Flexner, December 9, 1931, IAS; Maass, Report on the Founding and Early History of the Institute.

  33. Abraham Flexner to Oswald Veblen, December 22, 1932, IAS.

  34. John von Neumann to Abraham Flexner, April 26, 1933, IAS.

  35. Harry Woolf, ed., A Community of Scholars: The Institute for Advanced Study Faculty and Members, 1930–1980 (Princeton, N.J.: Institute for Advanced Study, 1980), p. ix.