Born of the Ones and Zeroes

Computers as an example of Consilience

<< The idea of Consilience came into Wilson's mind, I think, as he studied what he calls the 'hard' sciences: Biology, Chemistry, and most importantly Physics. Classical Physics, anyway. All of these sciences build on, and in some ways are just extensions of the basic phsyical laws of the universe that scientists have slowly discovered over time.
    For years and years, the more we have discovered of these laws, the more then can explain for us. Recently, scientists have been engaged in a struggle to take all of the laws and find how they might become one single, simple, unifying law for the entire universe. Should such a thing exist, certainly it would fit into the idea of Wilson's Consilience.

Once when thinking about computers, I found that in a sense, such a thing already does exist. This realization was the root of this argument. If you compare computer study to the sciences and universal forces and constants, you are likely to realize that in the world of computers, we have our unified law, our basic building blocks.
    In the world of computers, everything is made of bits, ones and zeroes that store simply true or false, or more accurately, existence and lack. From these most simple units, all things are made. Forgive me if I sound a bit like a fanatic here, but it never ceases to amaze me that we have found such a simple means of storing just about any sort of information... symbolically if not directly.
    Given these building blocks, the computer world, to exist as it does, also needs some sort of law. Wilson, I think, would only find it fitting that for computers that law is logic. Along with true and false, two simple logical concepts, computers are given and, or, and not. After this, slightly more complicated rules like if/then, looping, and memory... but I get ahead of myself.

Just as the sciences share, or in an utterly Consilient world would share, several basic immutable laws and pieces, so do computers already mimic such a world. >>