Science of Computing: From Functions and Sequentiality to Processes and Concurrency

摘要

The first part of the talk will be about history: I will discuss the origins of a few important concepts of concurrency theory, and how these concepts have changed the meaning of 'Science of Computing'. The second part of the talk will focus on one of such concepts, namely coinduction. Coinduction is the dual of induction - a pervasive tool in Computer Science and Mathematics for defining objects and proving properties on them. Today coinduction is widely used in Computer Science, but also in other fields, including Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Mathematics, Modal Logics, Philosophy, particularly for reasoning about objects that may be potentially infinite or circular. If time permits I will show examples in which coinductive techniques are combined with other techniques, such as inductive techniques or type-based techniques or techniques based on unique-solution of equations [1—3].