└── readme.org /readme.org: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | * History of Lambda Calculus 2 | 3 | The history culminating at the invention of Lambda Calculus is a bundle of braids that intertwine with each other to finally form the theoretical framework. The links could be traced back at least back until Aristotle and scholastic logic. But that would be a long winded way to open up the subject to an interested reader. 4 | 5 | One good point I think is to start right after the logistic bent of history of logic, post the publication of Whitehead and Russell’s landmark Principia Mathematica which inspired Schönfinkel, Post, Turing, Church, and Gödel to come up with their theories of computation. In Principia Mathematica, which was influenced by Hilbert’s problems and with the thrust of the Fregean notational revolution, Russell and Whitehead attempted to formalize all of mathematics with the undergirding of logic. This is the project from which Church got inspired to create his Lambda Calculus. 6 | 7 | * Completed 8 | 9 | ** [[https://amzn.to/2Lxak0t][Engines of Logic]] 10 | Martin Davis (2000) 11 | 12 | A good book by Martin Davis on the development that lead to mechanization of logic. 13 | 14 | ** [[https://pron.github.io/posts/computation-logic-algebra-pt1][Finite of Sense and Infinite of Thought: A History of Computation, Logic and Algebra]] 15 | Ron Pressler (2018) 16 | 17 | A detailed review by Ron Pressler on the historical incidents that generated the idea of computation. 18 | 19 | * Survey/Overview 20 | 21 | ** [[https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/57249.57252][Confluence of Ideas in 1936 ]] 22 | Robin Gandy (October 1988) 23 | 24 | ** [[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/959d/32cfa6df9299312ba51e2102045e1f25bc18.pdf][History of Lambda Calculus and Combinatory Logic]] 25 | Felice Cardone, Roger Hindley (2006) 26 | 27 | ** [[https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4640786][Highlights of the History of the Lambda-Calculus]] 28 | J. Barkley Rosser, 1984 29 | 30 | ** [[https://turing100.acm.org/lambda_calculus_timeline.pdf][Lambda Calculus Then and Now]] 31 | Dana Scott (2012) 32 | ACM Centenary Talk 33 | 34 | ** [[http://www.people.cs.uchicago.edu/~soare/History/handbook.pdf][The History and Concept of Computability]] 35 | Robert I. Soare 36 | 37 | ** [[https://f.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/4029/files/2018/11/Hammache_SlidesBertinoro_compact.pdf][Lambda Calculus: From logic to computation]] 38 | Wendy Hammache, 2018 39 | 40 | ** [[https://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jllang/Introduction_to_Lambda_Calculus_2020-02-20.pdf][Introduction to Lambda Calculus]] 41 | John Lång, 2020 42 | 43 | A great set of slides that explores the broad setting in which Lambda Calculus is situated. 44 | 45 | * Individual Subjects 46 | 47 | ** [[https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/MAHC.1981.10004][Origins of Recursive Function Theory]] 48 | 49 | ** [[https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-22156-4_1][Conceptual Confluence in 1936]] 50 | Post and Turing, Martin Davis and Wilfried Sieg (2015) 51 | 52 | ** [[http://people.uleth.ca/~jonathan.seldin/CCL.pdf][The Logic of Curry and Church]] 53 | Peter Seldin, March 3 2008 54 | 55 | * Tangential but interesting 56 | 57 | ** [[https://johnmacfarlane.net/church.html][Collection of Journal of Symbolic Logic reviews by Alonzo Church]] 58 | 59 | ** [[http://www.people.cs.uchicago.edu/~soare/History/handbook.pdf][History of Computability]] 60 | Robert I. Soare 61 | 62 | * People 63 | Notes on the People who have contributed to Lambda Calculus 64 | 65 | ** Immediate Predecessors 66 | 67 | - Frege 68 | - Hilbert 69 | - Ackermann 70 | - Russell 71 | - Moses Schönfinkel 72 | - Alonzo Church 73 | - Alan Turing 74 | - Kurt Gödel 75 | - Emil Post 76 | - Stephen Kleene 77 | - Haskell Curry 78 | - Barker 79 | - Dana Scott 80 | - Christopher Strachey 81 | - Peter Landin 82 | - John Reynolds 83 | - Gordon Plotkin 84 | - Bagrendt 85 | - D.A. Turner 86 | - Story 87 | 88 | ** Precedents 89 | 90 | *** 1800s 91 | - Charles Babbage 92 | - Jevons 93 | - Venn 94 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------