Pluralism in Software Engineering

"What an absolutely cool guy!"--- Dennis Shasha, NYU"Fascinating... very worthwhile"--- Robert Harper, CMUWhat mathematical rigor has and has not to offer to software engineers.Peter Naur wrote his first research paper at the age of 16. Soon aninternationally acclaimed astronomer, Naur’s expertise in numericalanalysis gave him access to computers from 1950.He helped design and implement the influential ALGOLprogramming language. During the 1960s, Naur was in sync with theresearch agendas of McCarthy, Dijkstra, and others. By 1970, however,he had distanced himself from them. Instead of joining Dijkstra’sstructured programming movement, he made abundantly clear why hedisapproved of it. Underlying Naur’s criticism is his plea forpluralism: a computer professional should notdogmatically advocate a method and require others to use it in theirown work. Instead, he should respect the multitude of personal stylesin solving problems.What philosophy has to do with software engineering.Though Peter Naur definitely does not want to be called aphilosopher, he acknowledges having been influenced byPopper, Quine, Russell, and others. Naur’s writings of the 1970s and1980s show how he borrowed concepts from philosophy to further hisunderstanding of software engineering. In later years, he mainlyscrutinized the work in philosophy and mathematical logic & rules inparticular. By penetrating deeply into the 1890 research of WilliamJames, Naur gradually developed his own theory of how mental life islike at the neural level of the nervous system. This development, inturn, helps explain why he always opposed the Turing Test andArtificial Intelligence, why he had strong misgivings about theFormal Methods movement and Dijkstra’s research in particular.