[The correspondence context is not relevant, but in red, under the cited 1960 date, appears, hand-written:

[i.e. November 25, 1977 4:15 p.m., when this gem was discovered in a file. [Evidently I had not yet had my chat with Warren McCullouch and others, which led me to coin the name "Plex" for my budding philosophy (-- only to have a Harvard student point out, after a presentation, that already "plex" was in the Oxford English Dictionary, with essentially my meaning! It also was before "Computer Science" came into vogue.]

…on MIT ELECTRIC SYSTEMS LABORATORY stationery...

A year ago I was asked by the Public Relations Department here at MIT to make a brief statement on my personal view of the importance of computer applications. My reply was as follows:

"Modern computers are remarkable devices, but they can perform no useful function until they are instructed or programmed. The field of computer applications, however, is more than merely a search for ways to use computers. A new dimension has been added to man’s problem-solving abilities, and a fundamental aspect of computer applications is to explore and exploit this new dimension. Any new science begins as an art, and present-day computer applications are considerably more artistic than scientific. As knowledge is gained in the field, however, the philosophies and techniques of this new branch of science will become increasingly important to science in general, and the ability to manipulate numbers will fade in relative importance. With so vast a potentiality, science without computers is unthinkable, but so also are computers without science unthinkable. The computer applications specialists have a mandate to improve their infant science to its proper stature. Such a mandate is becoming recognized by our universities, and MIT will play a significant role in this as well as the engineering aspects of the new science of computers." (February 27, 1959)

Since that time I have become increasingly convinced that the true role of computational techniques in the history of scientific development will not be as number manipulators nor even symbolic and logical manipulators. The long-range impact of the introduction of computers and the ideas of programming and problem solving will come at a more abstract and greatly more powerful level by changing scientists themselves.

Although at the present time we cannot see even the vaguest outlines clearly, a new discipline is gradually evolving which I am firmly convinced will supplant mathematics as we now know it as the "queen of the sciences." It appears at this time that this new discipline (we have no good name for it yet) could in fact develop into the very epitomization of the scientific method, and thereby exert a profound influence on every field of scientific endeavor. The new discipline, even though at present unbounded and unnamed, will be the most powerful tool of thought devised by man and will alter every aspect of his relationship to his physical and theoretical or philosophical environment.

These vast potentialities are not a chimera, but neither are they to be the fruits of immature or amateur efforts, waiting to be plucked by the first individual who manages to stumble around the appropriate corner. The very recognition of the facets of this new discipline, much less its full development and exploitation, will require careful painstaking work by inspired individuals with philosophical as well as technical depth, coupled with a drive and determination which follow naturally from the excitement of true scientific activity. The scholars and teachers whose fields of interest will form the basis for the outgrowth of this new discipline must do better than they have in the past in pursuing philosophical goals for the sake of philosophy, and pass along to their successive generations of students a sense of the reality of this search. The whole teaching and research environment must be geared to pass along to the student the thought discipline and pedagogic techniques for their own further development as well as the teaching of others, and the sense of urgency which is a necessary ingredient of great achievement.

We need a name for this new discipline, but more important, we must ensure that those who can contribute to its infancy and growth recognize early that it is a new, vitally important field which is destined to become of equal if not greater stature than the other recognized fields of science which form the organizational basis of our universities. It borders on the criminal, in my estimation, to treat subjects in this category as incidental topics in the mathematics department or the electrical engineering department or, most incongruous of all, the accounting department. This is where most of the teaching of this type is now performed. The great inertia of faculty and administrative organizations, with all the attendant issues of internal and external politics, poses very great problems for the establishment of the proper climate in which the new discipline can grow and develop without disfiguring abnormalities.

I feel that a thorough and free airing of these philosophical questions is of vastly more importance at this time than detailed bickering on whether the binary number system should be taught. If it would be possible to achieve some measure of mutual understanding, if not agreement, on these important philosophical questions, then many of the administrative and curricular questions would be much more easily resolved. I look forward with great interest to any reply you may wish to make to this letter...

Very truly yours,

Douglas T. Ross

Head, Computer Applications Group cc: GSB, JFR (MIT)

[Gordon S. Brown, Head, Electrical Engineering Department

J. Francis Reintjes, Director, Electronic Systems Laboratory, EE Dept.]