News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on In the 17th Century, Leibniz Dreamed of a Machine That Could Calculate Ideas.

Re:In the 17th Century, Leibniz Dreamed of a Machine That Co... by wrp on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @02:06AM (#21450323)
Description of his interest in mechanized reasoning generally ignores the other half of his proposed project, which was to create a database of propositions for the machine to operate on. His idea was along the lines of Doug Lenat's Cyc, to represent all of human knowledge in propositional form. As I recall, in his grant proposal to the French court, he estimated that it would take a small group of clerks about 5 years to complete the job. The French didn't express any interest.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:In the 17th Century, Leibniz Dreamed of a Machine That Co... by aasasd on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @06:05AM (#21451288)
With the early start of 350 years, we could probably have a sizeable compendium going on by now. After all, much of human knowledge only began to be created at that time.

Maybe mathematical notation would also be established earlier―after the clerks would get tired of spelling it out.

[ Parent | on HN ]