An Algorithmic View of the Universe

In the years since Alan Turing, and following his lead, computer scientists advanced their understanding of computational phenomena by developing a very specialized, original and penetrating way of rigorous thinking. Now it turns out that this "algorithmic" way of thinking can be applied productively to the study of important phenomena outside computation proper (examples: the cell, the brain, the market, the universe, indeed mathematical truth itself). This development is an exquisite unintended consequence of the fact that there is latent computation underlying each of these phenomena, or the ways in which science studies them.