The History of Consciousness department, in collaboration with the Humanities in the Age of AI Cluster, is pleased to present “From the Alphabet to AI: Discretizing the World” delivered by Giuseppe Longo. The talk will take place April 21st at 1pm in Humanities 1 Room 210, with a virtual attendance option available. To attend virtually, join here.

The invention of the alphabet marked a fundamental shift in our epistemic relation to the world. In particular, the Greek alphabet played a crucial role in shaping our cultures, leading up to today’s “term re-writing machines” that are transforming our lives. The vision of a world that can be fully described in elementary and simple components lies at the foundation of two techno-sciences of great interest and power. We informally compare the perspectives developed in cognitive and natural sciences through the lens of differing mathematical tools, e.g. continuous vs discrete mathematics. Both historical and contemporary scientific alternatives will be briefly discussed.

Giuseppe Longo is a Research Director CNRS (Emeritus), Cavaillès interdisciplinary center of Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris (ENS), formely in the Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science, at ENS (1990-2012). He has been Professor of Mathematics for Informatics, University of Pisa (1981-1990) and adjunct professor, School of Medicine, Tufts U., Boston (2013-19). He spent three years in the USA (Berkeley, M.I.T., Carnegie Mellon) as researcher and visiting professor, and frequent visitor in Oxford (GB) and Utrecht (NL). Founder and editor-in-chief (1990-2015) of Mathematical Structures in Computer Science, Camdridge U.P.., he is (co-)author of more than 100 papers and six books. In the last 20 years, he extended his research interests and work to the epistemology of mathematics and theoretical biology.