Informatics is branching out to any field of scientific, industrial, business and societal relevance. While its technological advances are unprecendeted, the very development challenges the nature of informatics (computer science) as a science. What is its scientific core? What are the fundamental questions the field is addressing? What are its key paradigms and how are they developing? What is the role of information technology (computing)? What can the digital lense tell us about the world? How far has the philosophy of computer science (informatics) progressed in addressing these issues?

The Center for Philosophy of Computer Science was created for the advanced study of these questions. The Center is headed by professor Jan van Leeuwen, and is part of the Department of Information and Computing Sciences of Utrecht University.

Philosophical Studies of Computer Science

Research

• Computation: model-driven algorithms, algorithic mechanisms, extended computability, non-classical computing.
• Complexity: resource-bounded agents, computational complexity, non-uniform complexity.
• Design: algorithmic thinking, information flow, information organization, algorithmic modeling e.g. in the Life Sciences.
• Philosophy of Informatics: foundations of informatics, nature of information technology, perspectives.

• Conferences:
  • Computing and Philosophy conferences (IA-CAP).
  • Computability in Europe 2012 - How the World Computes (Turing Centenary conference, Cambridge, June 18-23, 2012)
• Weblogs:
  Theory of computation (Lipton), Technology innovation and business (DeMillo), Bits and pieces (Lewis), Life after the digital explosion (Abelson, Ledeen, Lewis), Practical ethics - Web/tech (Oxford), Shtetl-optimized (Aaronson), Computing and humanities (Beki70), Freedom-to-tinker (Princeton), It's only a theory (Contessa).
• News:
  • Building Watson: IBM and the Jeopardy challenge; algorithms design team
  • Sixth Sense Technology (TED, Patty Maes).
  • A Deluge of Data Shapes a New Era in Computing (Gray, 2007).
  • Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers (APA).
  • The Alan Turing Year - A Centenary Celebration of the Life and Work of Alan Turing (2012).
• Associations:
  Computability in Europe (CiE), European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST), European Philosophy of Science Association (EPSA), International Association for Computing and Philosophy (see also: here), Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT), Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (SSAISB).
• Computer science is fun:
  • cs4fn (UK).
• Some research links:
  • Philosophy of the Information and Computing Sciences (NIAS/Lorentz Center Workshop, Febr 8 -12, 2010, Leiden).
  • ERC, ESF.

• The Algorithm: Idiom of Modern Science (Chazelle).
• Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity (Aaronson).
• Great principles of computing (Denning).
• Towards a philosophy of the information and computing sciences (van Leeuwen, NIAS Newsletter 42, pdf).
• Informatics - Constructing a new world (van Leeuwen, 35th anniversary Dept of CS, Bratislava, 2009, pdf).
• Computation as unbounded process (van Leeuwen, Lorentz Center workshop, Leiden, 2010, pdf)
• Open problems in the philosophy of information (Floridi).
• Student enrollment and image of the Informatics discipline (van Leeuwen & Tanca, Informatics Europe report, pdf).
• See: More reports and papers (surveys, courses, books, viewpoints, ..)

Philosophical pointers and diversions

• Philosophy and Theoretical Computer Science (Aaronson)
• The philosophy of Computer Science (Stanford Encyclopedia).
• Mapping great debates: can computers think? (MacroVU).
• Research Group in Philosophy of Information (U Hertfordshire).
• Technology assessment (Rathenau Institute).
• See: More philosophical pointers (references, papers, surveys, courses, books, viewpoints, ..)

Turing 2012

• The Alan Turing Homepage, Alan Turing (pages by Andrew Hodges), Alan M. Turing (Wikipedia)
• Alan Turing: one of The Great Philosophers (Hodges).
• Turing test (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Turing test (Wikipedia)
• Apology to A.M. Turing: PM apology after Turing petition (2009).

• Encyclopedias: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), Computers and Information Technology (Encyclopedia Smithsonian), History of computers (Hitmill).
• Journals/Proceedings: Electronic journals (Utrecht University), ACM portal (ACM), ACM digital lib (ACM), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS, see also here), Electronic Notes in TCS (vol 1 -) , Science Direct (Elsevier).
• Collections: Computer science bibliography (Trier, see also: old format ), ResearchIndex (CiteSeer), Collection of computer science bibliographies.
• Scientific search engines: Best search , Google, Google Scholar (Google in papers), Google Book Search (Google in books), Alltheweb (cf Yahoo), Bing (Microsoft), Scirus , Scopus.
• General online encyclopedias: Wikipedia, Wikipedia (NL version), Scholarpedia, NationMaster.
• Archives: e-Print archive (arXiv), CoRR (computing research repository), computer science (e-prints).

`Philosophy of Computer Science'

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