Contingent Computation

M. Beatrice Fazi is Lecturer in the School of Media, Film and Music at the University of Sussex. Her primary areas of expertise are the philosophy of computation, the philosophy of technology and the emerging field of media philosophy.

• IntroductionPart I Aesthetics1. Continuity versus Discreteness2. Computation3. ProcessesPart II Abstraction4. Computational Idealism5. Axiomatics6. Limits and PotentialPart III Experience7. Computational Empiricism8. Factuality9. ActualityConclusion

Contingent Computation by M. Beatrice Fazi is a brilliantly original work arguing that the contingent does not lie outside computation but at its very heart, in the demonstrations by Gödel and Turing that some problems are incomputable and that formal systems, including computational axiomatics, are incomplete. Her approach opens our understanding of what computers can—and cannot—do to new modes of analysis that introduce contingency into technical systems in an entirely new way, refuting views that see computers as merely mechanical systems incapable of novelty. Highly recommended for humanities scholars and others interested in thinking about the role that computers play in a world that remains unknowable in its full complexity.