From owner-cse584-sp07-list@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Tue Feb 13 10:19:25 2007 Received: from ares.cse.buffalo.edu (ares.cse.Buffalo.EDU [128.205.32.79]) by castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (8.13.6/8.12.10) with ESMTP id l1DFJPMa006434 for ; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:19:25 -0500 (EST) Received: from front3.acsu.buffalo.edu (upfront.acsu.buffalo.edu [128.205.4.140]) by ares.cse.buffalo.edu (8.13.6/8.13.6) with SMTP id l1DFJF20008441 for ; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:19:15 -0500 (EST) Received: (qmail 14084 invoked from network); 13 Feb 2007 15:19:15 -0000 Received: from mailscan4.acsu.buffalo.edu (128.205.6.136) by front3.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 13 Feb 2007 15:19:15 -0000 Received: (qmail 14066 invoked from network); 13 Feb 2007 15:19:14 -0000 Received: from deliverance.acsu.buffalo.edu (128.205.7.57) by front3.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 13 Feb 2007 15:19:14 -0000 Received: (qmail 2749 invoked from network); 13 Feb 2007 15:19:02 -0000 Received: from listserv.buffalo.edu (128.205.7.35) by deliverance.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 13 Feb 2007 15:19:02 -0000 Received: by LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 14.5) with spool id 3294302 for CSE584-SP07-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:19:02 -0500 Delivered-To: cse584-sp07-list@listserv.buffalo.edu Received: (qmail 3825 invoked from network); 13 Feb 2007 15:19:02 -0000 Received: from mailscan7.acsu.buffalo.edu (128.205.6.158) by listserv.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 13 Feb 2007 15:19:02 -0000 Received: (qmail 28642 invoked from network); 13 Feb 2007 15:19:01 -0000 Received: from castor.cse.buffalo.edu (128.205.32.14) by smtp5.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 13 Feb 2007 15:19:01 -0000 Received: from castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (rapaport@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (8.13.6/8.12.10) with ESMTP id l1DFJ1Wm006396 for ; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:19:01 -0500 (EST) Received: (from rapaport@localhost) by castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (8.13.6/8.12.9/Submit) id l1DFJ13P006395 for cse584-sp07-list@listserv.buffalo.edu; Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:19:01 -0500 (EST) X-UB-Relay: (castor.cse.buffalo.edu) X-PM-EL-Spam-Prob: : 7% Message-ID: <200702131519.l1DFJ13P006395@castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU> Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:19:01 -0500 Reply-To: "William J. Rapaport" Sender: "Philosophy of Computer Science, Spring 2007" From: "William J. Rapaport" Subject: ETYMOLOGY OF "COMPUTE" To: CSE584-SP07-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Precedence: list List-Help: , List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Owner: List-Archive: X-UB-Relay: (castor.cse.buffalo.edu) X-DCC-Buffalo.EDU-Metrics: castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU 1029; Body=0 Fuz1=0 Fuz2=0 X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.0 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,SUBJ_ALL_CAPS autolearn=no version=3.1.7 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.7 (2006-10-05) on ares.cse.buffalo.edu X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.88.6/2560/Mon Feb 12 13:06:19 2007 on ares.cse.buffalo.edu X-Virus-Status: Clean Status: R Content-Length: 1893 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: ETYMOLOGY OF "COMPUTE" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ You might find the following information interesting. Whether it's philosophically relevant is another matter! "compute" comes from the Latin word /computare/, meaning "arithmetic accounting, reckoning". Clearly, its meaning has been extended to include non-numerical "reckoning". /computare/ itself comes from Latin /com/, meaning "with" and Latin /putare/, meaning "to settle, clear up, reckon". So, in ancient Rome at least, to "compute" seems to have meant, more or less, something like "to settle things together" or maybe "to reckon with (something)". The English word "reckon" originally meant "to count, to calculate, to figure". The origins of *these* words, in turn, is of interest: "count" also came from /computare/ "calculate" came from Latin /calculus/, meaning (not the contents of MTH 141, but) "pebble" (!), since counting was done with pebbles originally! The verb "to figure" means "to use figures to reckon", where the noun "figure" seems originally to have meant "numerical symbol" (the earliest citation for "figure" in the OED is from 1225, where it means "numerical symbol"). A citation from 1250 has the meaning "embodied (human) form", and a citation from 1300 has the more general meaning of "shape". (This conversion of the noun "figure" to a verb is an example of what the computer scientist Edsgar Dijkstra meant when he said, "in English, any noun can be verbed" :-) To see the OED online, go to from any UB machine. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bottom line: to "compute" seems to have originally meant something very closely related to our modern notion of "symbol [i.e., shape] manipulation".