Things A Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About
Things A Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About
Copyright notice: Excerpted from Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About
by Donald E. Knuth, published by CSLI Publications. 2001 by CSLI Publications.
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LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION
(6 OCTOBER 1999)
school. Ive done a lot of reading in my spare time, but why should
I expect you to listen to me talk about one of my hobbies?
When I read what other people have written about matters of
faith, its quite clear to me that my own ideas dont measure up to
those of world-class philosophers and theologians. Im not too bad
at reacting to other peoples notions of religion, but Im not too good
at introducing anything that is fundamentally new or important in
this area.
In other words, as far as theology goes, Im
a user, not a developer.
A week and a half ago, I went to Memorial
Chapel at Harvard and was in the audience when
Billy Graham came. Im happy to say that he not
only had a standing-room-only crowd, as we have here today, but
people lled the aisles and the doorways. He certainly deserves it.
Turning things around, however, what if an eminent theologian
were to give a series of lectures about computer programming?
Would I go out of my way to go to hear them? Would I nd them of
value afterwards? Im not sure.
On the other hand, all computer people present here today
know that discussions of computer science are not totally different
from discussions of religion, especially when we consider languages
for computer programming. In the 60s, people would often talk
about Algol-theologians; these were people who were skilled in
the exegesis of obscure texts passed down by international committees. Programmers could use all the analogies of religious studies
when we were discussing computer languages. Over the years numerous high priests of programming have expounded one language
or one methodology over another with religious zeal, and theyve
often had very fanatical disciples. Thus everyone knows that the
world of computer science is full of cults. In this sense religion
and computer science are not completely separate; they share a fair
amount of common ground.
We are all familiar with C. P. Snows famous metaphor of the
two cultures that divide educated people into two camps, humanists
and scientists. Last month I was in England and I visited the new
British Library in London, a magnicent building that has been built
to last at least 200 years. And I learned that it actually enshrines
the notion of two cultures permanently in stone. The new British
Library has two separate sections with two separate reading rooms,
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LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION 3
one for the humanities and one for the sciences. It turns out that
there are good reasons for this from the librarians standpoint: The
humanists tend to work with a small number of books from the
historic collections, while the scientists tend to work with lots of
books from current periodicals. So the architect gave the humanists
a big room with lots of desks in the middle, surrounded by reference
works on the four walls; the scientists got a room with lots of journals
in the middle, surrounded by desks on four sides. You see, he gave
the one-dimensional thing to the desks for the scientists and the twodimensional thing to their journals, but he switched the dimensions
for the humanists.
Actually this week Stanford is dedicating its own new library.
Henceforth in Stanfords University Library were going to have not
two cultures but three: humanities, sciences, and social sciences.
And everybody knows that engineering is yet another culture.
The truth in fact is that C. P. Snow got it wrong by at least an order of magnitude there are many more than two cultures. I think
a lot of you know the Apple Macintosh ads telling us to think different, but people already do. From my own corner of the academic
world, I know for example that physicists think different from mathematicians; mathematicians who do algebra think different from
mathematicians who do geometry; both kinds of mathematicians
think different from computer scientists who work on algorithms;
and so on and so forth. People often decry this lack of unity in the
knowledge of the world, but lets face it: People are different. Vive
la diffrence.
e
Even if people did think alike and they dont we in universities would have to cope with a vast growth of knowledge. In
my own eld, for example, it once was possible for a grad student
to learn just about everything there was to know about computer
science. But those days disappeared about 30 years ago. Nowadays
the subject is so enormous, nobody can hope to cover more than
a tiny portion of it. I receive on the average at least one copy of
a journal every day; the actual total is more like eight or nine per
week. These are just the ones I subscribe to, not the ones that I nd
in the library. Theyre lled with good stuff, yet they represent only
a fraction of my own small part of the eld. Growth is relentless. So
a constant trend towards more and more specialization is inevitable.
Scientists have to concentrate on a small part of the worlds knowledge if they want to have any hope of continuing to advance it.
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LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION 5
answer any question that the students had on any subject except
questions about religion or politics. Religion is taboo in Stanford
classes outside of the department of Religious Studies, although
other kinds of knowledge are not, and I guess that makes sense.
On the other hand, I remember reading a letter to the editor
of the Caltech alumni magazine many years ago. The writer said
that during the rst ten years after he graduated, he wished hed had
more training in his major eld. Then during the next ten years, he
wished hed had more training in management. During the next ten
he wished he had more training in business planning. Then for another ten, he wished hed learned more about medicine and health.
During the next ten he wished hed learned more about theology.
Ive been concerned for a long time, in fact, about the lack of
material about theology that is written for people like me. There are
plenty of books for other kinds of people, it seems, but not very much
for a computer scientist. I can remember once going into a large
so-called Christian book store and realizing that almost all of my
professional colleagues would nd it extremely oppressive just to
be in that room. Im disturbed by the notions of religion that many
of my academic friends have; but I understand that their notions
have been formed quite naturally, in reaction to the things that they
see in the media, aimed at different subcultures. From my point of
view, the way they perceive religion is strange and totally distorted
from the kind of religion that I grew up with. Therefore when I was
asked to give a series of lectures in the God and Computers program
at MIT, my rst reaction No way can I contribute anything of
quality was tempered by second thoughts that maybe I could
say a few things that might be helpful to some of the people in this
audience because such things are so rarely discussed.
Naturally I never agree to give a talk unless I think I have
something to say. In this case I realized that there is one important
message that I can bring to you that no theologian could ever do,
precisely because of my amateur status. Namely, I can give testimonials that theologians have basically done a good job. After looking
at hundreds of their books, I can report, as an essentially disinterested observer, that a lot of their work has been both interesting
and valuable to me as I continue to seek to know more about God.
Therefore I can explain, to other people who share my own peculiar
way of thinking, what Ive learned by reading works outside my own
eld of expertise.
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LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION 7
LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION 9
10
Q: The Bible has so many verses. Why did you choose to study
chapter 3, verse 16, and what signicance could that have?
A: I guess youre wondering if I chose 3:16 because the square
root of 10 is 3.16, or something like that. The answer is, Come
next week.
Q: What Bible did you use?
A: As I said, I went to the Bible Museum to look at every Bible I
could get my hands on. In the Boston Public Library I found many
Bibles that I hadnt seen anywhere else; the Bible Museum also
has a room full of Bibles and I found a wide variety there. New
Bible translations were also coming out during the time I was doing
this project. I studied the Bishops Bible of 1568, which was the
chief English translation before the famous King James Version of
1611, and I also went back to Tyndales original translation of 1525.
Altogether I had about 25 different versions. It took much longer
than Id expected to write everything out in longhand, but I carefully
copied 25 translations of each 3:16 verse and I got writers cramp
in the process. The third lecture in this series is going to be about
translating the Bible; I nally decided to make my own translations,
and Im going to explain in the third lecture why that turned out to
be one of the best decisions I ever made.
Q: I wonder about your colleagues, who you had related to only
from the point of view of scientic culture in earlier years, the people
who knew you only as a computer scientist. How do they relate to
you now that youve published this book in which you discuss your
faith and your religious feelings?
A: Let me try to explain that in a couple of different ways. First of
all, my colleagues seem to approve. (To my face, at least; I dont
know what theyre saying to each other behind my back and in
emails.) After publishing the book, I expected negative reactions,
but what happened was exactly the opposite; Ive gotten amazingly
positive mail and a lot of positive feedback.
I dont particularly aunt my faith; I generally wait for people to
ask me about it, if theyre interested in such things. For example, let
me tell you a little story. I dont like to wear suits, but every once in
awhile I like to wear something thats a little bit dressed up. (I have
a special shirt on today. Did any of you notice?) About twenty years
ago my wife presented me with a wonderful Christmas present, a
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LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION 11
12
A: I have kind of a radical idea about this, but Ive had it for 30
years now and still havent found anything wrong with it. Namely,
suppose someone asks, Why did computer science jell so fast during the 60s, all of a sudden becoming a department at almost every
university in the world? I answer that the reason is not to be found
in the fact that computers are so valuable as tools. Theres not
a department of Electron Microscope Science at every university,
although electron microscopes are great and powerful tools.
Im convinced that computer science grew so fast and is so
vital today because there are people all over the world who have
a peculiar way of thinking, a certain way of structuring knowledge
in their heads, a mentality that we now associate with a discipline
of its own. This mentality isnt sharply focused, in the space of
all possible ways of thinking; but its different enough from other
ways from the mentalities of physicists and mathematicians that I
spoke of earlier that the people who had it in the old days were
scattered among many different departments, more or less orphans
in their universities. Then suddenly, when it turned out that their
way of thinking correlated well with being able to make a computer
do tricks, these people found each other.
I believe it was this way of thinking that brought computer
scientists together into a single department, where they met other
people who understood the same analogies, people who structured
knowledge roughly the same way in their heads, people with whom
they could have high-bandwidth communications. Thats what I
meant when I referred to a computer science perspective.
I didnt choose to be a computer scientist because my main
mission in life was to advance computation. I chose computer science simply because I was good at it. For some reason, my peculiar
way of thinking correlated well with computers. Moreover, Im sure
that people had this way of thinking hundreds of years ago; when I
read old publications I think I can recognize the authors who would
have been computer scientists if they had lived in the time of computer science departments. There was a time when physicists were
called natural philosophers, and there was a time before chemists
belonged to departments of chemistry. From considerations like this
I believe that computer science will eventually take its place on
essentially the same level as every other eld of study, say 100 years
from now; the fact that this mode of thinking never had a name until
quite recently is just a historical accident.
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LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION 13
One of the main characteristics of a computer science mentality is the ability to jump very quickly between levels of abstraction,
between a low level and a high level, almost unconsciously. Another characteristic is that a computer scientist tends to be able to
deal with nonuniform structures case 1, case 2, case 3 while a
mathematician will tend to want one unifying axiom that governs an
entire system. This second aspect is sometimes a weakness of computer science: When we encounter a situation that can be explained
by one axiom, we might still give it ve, because ve different rules
are no sweat for us. But were at our best in circumstances when
no single principle sufces; then we can handle the discrepancies
between different cases very nicely.
One of the rst people to receive a Ph.D. in computer science
was Renato Iturriaga de la Fuente, who graduated from Carnegie
Institute of Technology in 1967. When I met him in Mexico City
in 1976, he was head of the Mexican equivalent of our National
Science Foundation. He told me then about his conviction that
an ability to shift seamlessly between levels of abstraction and to
deal uently with nonuniform models helped him greatly to deal
with scientists of many different backgrounds. In his job, he said, a
computer scientists way of thinking tended to be more effective than
that of other scientists, even though he wasnt doing any computer
programming or computer science research himself at the moment.
So thats what I think tends to be different about computer
scientists. Experience shows that about one person in 50 has a
computer scientists way of looking at things.
Q: Do you have any comments on other religions?
A: When I said briey that I nd deep connections between Christianity and other world religions, I didnt mean to imply agreement
in terms of specic doctrines but rather in terms of attitudes. I see
aspects of Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, Islam, and other faiths that appear essentially Christian to me; conversely, I encounter other things
that so-called Christian preachers say on the radio that I dont think
are Christian at all. Of course Im just one person, and other people
are entitled to their own opinions.
In the later lectures Im going to try to get a little further into
questions like this. Ask yourself what you would do if you were
God and you wanted to deal with people on the earth; how would
you present yourself?
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14
Q: Earlier you said you thought that your colleagues would be put
off when walking through a Christian reading room in a book store.
What was it about such an environment the book titles, or whatever it was that you think would put them off? Does your book
3:16 address this in any way?
A: I cant explain it; I just felt like the ceiling was about four feet
lower, I dont know why. There was a certain heavy atmosphere,
an overpowering aura that was very much attuned to people who
already consider themselves enlightened.
But thats a cop-out; Ill try to explain. There is a certain kind of
art that looks kitschy, but it can be very meaningful to people who
traditionally associate it with worship. To other people it looks like
the kind of art that well, the kind of art that those people like.
It seemed to me that book
after book in the store was saying, Close your mind. But as
I said before, the tradition that
I grew up in encouraged me to
look at religion with an open
mind, as Luther did. Although
I didnt have much motivation
to check out the works of writers from other traditions until I
wrote the 3:16 book, in fact I was never told that it was dangerous to read other stuff. The vast majority of the books in this store
seemed to be of a much more prescriptive and restrictive kind, say, 10.
ing Heres the orthodoxy. Learn rules 1, 2, 3,
I guess thats the best way I can express my feelings now. My
own book doesnt address the problem especially well, since its full
title 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated implies that it illuminates the
Bible. Still, it might be appealing to my colleagues if they look for
it on the Web instead of in a bookshop.
LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION 15
16
Q: Can you mention some of the theologians youve read that you
nd compatible with your own culture?
A: Well, I tend to be a detail-oriented person, as you can guess, and
so are a lot of theologians. So I have often felt an instinctive kinship
when picking up a new commentary. In fact, my experiences as I
was writing the 3:16 book werent that different from writing computer books, although I wasnt using integral signs as much. The
processes of abstraction and generalization and interpreting texts
were much the same. Really I would say there wasnt that much
difference in mentality between the detail-oriented theologians and
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LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION 17
18
somehow, the theory that Ive learned while doing computer science
gives me more condence in the programs that I have written.
Working on the 3:16 project was kind of similar: Although I
didnt have a direct connection between numbers and the study of
Bible verses, the methodology that I had gradually developed by
working with numbers turned out to be useful when I worked with
less quantitative material.
Q: Do you have any comments or conclusions regarding the existence or the nature of evil?
A: The question is, for example, why are people killed in wars? Ill
be getting to this topic later on, but I dont have any new insights
that I havent picked up from other people.
The Book of Job discusses this problem at length and tries to
come to a conclusion. And if you look at ten different commentaries
on the Book of Job, each one says that the conclusion was different.
This proves, I think, that its really a tough problem.
But still there must be something there, and we ought to ponder
it. What would the world be like if there was no evil? I will be trying
to get into this question more deeply in the fth and sixth lectures.
Q: What do you think of the hypothesis that the human brain is a
giant computer program?
A: Such a hypothesis will obviously be very hard to conrm or deny.
I tend to believe that recently proposed models of the brain, which
are based on the idea of continuous dynamic evolution of symbolic
signals instead of on processes that resemble todays computing
machines, have good prospects for helping to explain the mysteries
of consciousness. If so, a lot of randomness must be involved in
that, and Ill be talking a little bit more about such things also in the
lectures to come.
(I guess Im using the future lectures too often as an excuse for
dodging your questions. Im glad youre interested in all of these
topics, but I dont want to get ahead of my story or Ill have nothing
left to say. Please bear with me.)
Maybe the brain uses random elements; maybe the universe
does too. Maybe all these things are controlled somehow by prayer
or whatever; who knows? We might only be perceiving three dimensions of some higher-dimensional reality. Im going to try to
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LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION 19
20
I had always been taught that God was the same yesterday, today,
and forever. But then the more I thought about it, the more I realized
that God would best be able to communicate sensibly by sending
messages that were appropriate for the current time.
For example, we know now that proteins are molecules made
up of atoms; but 2000 years ago, people didnt know what molecules
were, so Jesus didnt talk about them. Thus it only makes sense
that different kinds of revelation are appropriate as the people in
the world change. Its a very good question, whether the rapid
developments we are experiencing will lead to valid and trustworthy
new insights about God.
Im worried that somebody will start a new
religion based on fractals. What I mean is, religion has a certain power that charlatans can
take advantage of. So if you come up with
something that makes a little bit of sense and
has a little bit of mystery to it, you can fool a lot
of people. I also have that in mind as a possible
danger.
Q: If you were asked to give a lecture for an audience of theologians
on the subject of computer science, what would you talk about?
A: A lecture for an audience of theologians? Let me tell you that
the amount of terror that lives in a speakers stomach when giving a
lecture is proportional to the square of the amount he doesnt know
about his audience. Once I gave a series of lectures to biologists at
Caltech about computer science, and that was one of the hardest
tasks I ever had to face.
I guess, however, that I could explain something to the people
whose writings Ive read. I could explain to them some interesting
ideas about innity that they might be able to explore better than I.
In fact I hope to go into some of that in Lecture 6.
Q: Youve talked about a computer science perspective. Do you see
any danger in that perspective, considering that computer scientists
like to abstract things and say Okay, Ive got a handle on this.
With religious matters such an approach may not be possible. You
cant think of prayer as a black box, where you put something in and
get something else out. So I wonder if you see danger ahead, when
people think theyve got a handle on stuff that they really dont.
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LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION 21
22
Notes on Lecture 1
Page 2, Snows famous metaphor: C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures
and the Scientic Revolution (London: Cambridge University
Press, 1959); The Two Cultures: And a Second Look (London:
Cambridge University Press, 1964).
Page 2, new British Library: See Colin St. John Wilson, The Design
and Construction of the British Library (London: The British
Library, 1998).
Page 3, Stanfords University Library: See the article by James Robinson, Phoenix Rising: Restored Bing Wing respects past,
present, future, in Stanford [online] Report (6 October 1999),
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. Also Michael A. Keller et al., Reconstructing the heart of the university, Imprint 18, 2 (Stanford,
California: The Associates of the Stanford University Libraries,
Fall 1999).
Page 7, title of the book: Donald E. Knuth, 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated (Madison, Wisconsin: AR Editions, 1991).
Page 7, Joseph Sittler: I heard his comment on a videotaped interview by Robert M. Herhold, Theological Reections: Spirituality Explored (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Video Publishing, 1981),
28 minutes. Copies of this video are currently available from
. (The comSeraphim Communications,
ment occurs about 20:40 minutes into the tape.) Herhold had
previously assembled a number of Sittlers memorable remarks
in the book Grace Notes and Other Fragments (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1981). Sittlers implicit reference to an essentially complete cerebral bypass should of course be distinguished
from the cerebral arterial bypass operation that was once believed to help prevent strokes. To me it means, Respect the
limitations of your brain, but dont abandon logic altogether.
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LECTURE 1: NOTES 23
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Page 19, home pages for the Gospel: Michael Spencers Gospel of
Mark Homepage, currently
,
was established in 1997 and has links to many other sites. The
central reference for the Gospel of Mark is now, I think, Kata
Markon,
.
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