The Philosophy of Computer Science (2017)
"Computer science could be called the post-Turing decline in the study of formal systems."  (One of my favorite jokes.  Dijkstra's I think.)<p>FWIW, the foundation of it all is the act of making a <i>distinction.</i><p>"In the beginning was the void, and the void was without form."<p>Operationally, if the thing in your brain that makes distinctions is suppressed (by e.g. a stroke) you literally lose the ability to distinguish between your body and the world and enter into an "oceanic bliss".<p>> "My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientistʼs Personal Journey", (2008) is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning book written by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard-trained and published neuroanatomist. In it, she tells of her experience in 1996 of having a stroke in her left hemisphere and how the human brain creates our perception of reality and includes tips about how Dr. Taylor rebuilt her own brain from the inside out.<p>~ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Stroke_of_Insight" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Stroke_of_Insight</a><p>(There's also a TED talk.)<p>Semantically, distinction is the sole act required to produce logic (and therefore computers and teh science thereof.)  See "Laws of Form".<p>> "Laws of Form" is a book by G. Spencer-Brown, published in 1969, that straddles the boundary between mathematics and philosophy.<p>~ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_Form" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_Form</a>