Abacus as a Programming Language: Computer Science and History of Mathematics

Baptiste Mélès (1)

1 LHSP - Laboratoire d'Histoire des Sciences et de Philosophie - Archives Henri Poincaré

I show in this paper that programming paradigms, such as imperative or functional programming, can be put in correspondence with computing styles of calculating tools. The Chinese abacus actually follows a functional programming paradigm, while the ancient Chinese counting rods display an imperative programming style. More generally, I show that abstract concepts, such as currying or the semantics of programming languages, can be transposed from theoretical computer science to the historical description of the practice of computing tools.

Mots clés: Abacus; Philosophy of computer science; History of mathematics; Lambda Calculus; Computing tools

Domaines: Philosophie

Baptiste Mélès. Abacus as a Programming Language: Computer Science and History of Mathematics. Cultures of Mathematics and Logic. Selected Papers from the Conference in Guangzhou, China, November 9-12, 2012, , pp.43-59, 2016, Trends in the History of Science, 978-3-319-31500-3. ⟨10.1007/978-3-319-31502-7_3⟩. ⟨hal-01413931⟩