[HN Gopher] Charles Babbage - Passages from the Life of a Philos...
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Charles Babbage - Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
Author : robin_reala
Score : 63 points
Date : 2021-12-18 12:14 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (standardebooks.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (standardebooks.org)
| andai wrote:
| _On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament],
| 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures,
| will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to
| apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such
| a question._
| wrp wrote:
| This quote comes up whenever Babbage is mentioned among geeks,
| but the common interpretation of its significance may be wrong.
| The quote is assumed to illustrate the hardship of a genius
| communicating with a society of dunces, but I think the problem
| may have been the reverse. The fact is that Babbage was a
| terrible explainer and the questions put to him may have been
| sensible extrapolation on what he said. I came to this opinion
| largely from seeing how much effort Ada Lovelace had to put
| into getting Babbage to clarify his ideas. It seems that he
| truly could not "apprehend the kind of confusion" that his
| explanations caused in others.
| wzdd wrote:
| I think that this passage and various other parts of the book
| are a particularly English form of understated humour, where
| Babbage is playing up his public perception as a frustrated
| genius in order to add a little levity to what might
| otherwise be fairly dry writing.
|
| Plenty of other sections of the book hint at this. As an
| example, search for the word "philosopher" throughout the
| book. We get section headings musing about whether a
| Philosopher would deny being descended from Cain, quotes
| attributed to a recently-scalloped oyster who was also a
| philosopher writing in its shell, a sequence of passages
| titled "The Philosopher writes a Ballet --Its rehearsal --Its
| high moral tone --Its rejection on the ground of the probable
| combustion of the Opera-house", and so on and so on. Does
| Babbage consider himself a philosopher? Maybe (probably, even
| -- he clearly had a good opinion of himself in any case), but
| he is also well aware of how the public perceives such
| people.
|
| In other words, Babbage is doing a "bit" and playing with the
| public perception of him and of scientists of the time (and
| even now) -- i.e. as being so removed from the real world
| that they not only can't explain something, but can't even
| understand why they can't explain it. Which is an
| understandable thing to do, particularly if you're a
| mathematician and engineer writing an autobiography for a lay
| audience.
|
| This doesn't mean that he was actually good at explaining
| anything, of course, or that he wasn't in fact a frustrated
| genius. It just means that he was aware of how he was
| perceived and was capable of a little humour at his own
| expense.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| The member of parilment was probably playing him as well...
| jhbadger wrote:
| The term "scientist" was just starting to become a thing in
| Babbage's time. "Philosopher" was used in a much broader
| sense than it is today.
| lou1306 wrote:
| Indeed, science was simply known as "natural philosophy",
| as in Newton's "Mathematical Principles of Natural
| Philosophy", i.e, the Principia.
| sjtindell wrote:
| Feels to me like the start of a tale as old as time - tech
| support explaining to users what they think should be
| obvious.
| yesenadam wrote:
| Using an error-correcting code he could say "Well, sometimes,
| yes!"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_correction_code
| messe wrote:
| You could argue that an error correction code just expands
| the set of correct inputs.
| dbtc wrote:
| I would argue that it corrects errors :)
| mrkramer wrote:
| >if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right
| answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind
| of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
|
| Volkswagen emissions software scandal comes to mind.
| samwillis wrote:
| Good to see his estimation of the British parliament still
| stands today...
| moffkalast wrote:
| Haha yeah this reminds me of that recent Google congressional
| hearing where the only thing they accomplished was showing
| how little the questioners understand anything at all about
| tech.
| jurassic wrote:
| For any Charles Babbage fangirls/boys out there, the Royal Mint
| recently honored him with a commemorative 50p coin as part of
| their Innovation in Science series:
| https://www.royalmint.com/our-coins/events/charles-babbage/c...
| new_guy wrote:
| Sadly once we all go cashless commemorative coins will be a
| thing of the past.
| jurassic wrote:
| I kinda doubt that. The US Mint manufactures a ton of
| commemorative coins in denominations and materials (e.g.
| silver dollars, gold $5, etc) that have no relationship to
| the circulating coinage. As long as there's an audience for
| it, I expect they will keep launching products.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| There will still be NFTs :)
| ffhhj wrote:
| Expected to see his face on the other side of the coin.
| [deleted]
| matt_f wrote:
| I looked into the source of the above link and it's a
| collaborative git-managed team effort.
|
| https://standardebooks.org/about
|
| What an awesome project.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Wikisource also has On the Economy of Machinery and
| Manufactures[1] in their current Monthly "sprint"[2]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:On_the_economy_of_machi...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Community_collabor...
| jackfoxy wrote:
| This is a good read documenting technology history in the
| first half of the 19th century. Babbage drew on his
| experiences trying to source manufactured parts for his
| Analytical Engine. At the time manufacturers just could not
| meet the specifications (tolerances) for the many mass-
| produced parts the project required.
|
| I think by the end of Babbage's life the parts could have
| been manufactured, but by then both Babbage and his
| financiers had moved on.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| See also Sydney Padua's 2D Goggles: https://2dgoggles.com/
| Ftuuky wrote:
| It eludes me how nobody has yet made a movie about Babbage and
| Lovelace. Such colorful characters and way ahead of their times.
| samwillis wrote:
| See also "Plan 28" a project that plans to build a replica of
| Charles Babbages Analytical engine. (Started by HNs and
| CloudFlares jgrahamc)
|
| https://plan28.org/
| jgrahamc wrote:
| Happy to AMA about that.
| retrac wrote:
| I'm a bit conflicted. On one hand, it is a sin that it still
| hasn't been built! And it must be powered by a literal steam
| engine!
|
| On the other hand, Babbage never really finished the Analytical
| Engine. It was always in pre-alpha. In a sense, there is no
| Analytical Engine. Only a lifetime of sketches for various
| parts and extensive commentary on how the various parts might
| fit together. An actual implementation requires making a lot of
| hard decisions, and basically inventing a fair bit as well.
|
| It's clear the Plan 28 folks appreciate all this, of course.
| They've appropriately started with a complete review of the
| literature:
|
| > With the first-pass inspection of the manuscript archive
| complete, attention has turned to analysis and interpretation,
| and organising the findings to aid navigation. Babbage shed
| versions of the design as it developed in the form of 'Plans' -
| large 'systems drawings' which serve as developmental staging
| posts - the main ones of which number Plan 1 through to Plan
| 28.
|
| This might hint at why Babbage ultimately failed, really. He
| was a tinkerer and he didn't commit to a design. It was always
| provisional. When he ran into a minor hitch, or had another
| good idea, he would go back to the drawing board and start
| over. If he had just committed and scaled up the original, much
| simpler and fully-designed difference engine he had been
| contracted for, he might just have got the funding to continue
| more theoretical and larger-scale work with thinking machines.
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(page generated 2021-12-18 23:01 UTC)