Overall correspondence

The full substantive content given to creativity utterly lacking can be recalled collectively, as a general characterization.

so mechanical or routine

entirely typical ... end product ... garden-variety

could not be more obvious ... the most basic information

dictated by state law

an age-old practice, firmly rooted in tradition and so commonplace that it has come to be expected as a matter of course ... practically inevitable ... time-honored tradition.

(Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., Inc., 1991, pp. 362-363)

‘[S]o mechanical’ obtains priority from its initial position. ‘[M]echanicaP and all the other constituent terms of the characterization could all be understood in their central ordinary discourse senses.

The overall effect of the meanings of the substantive terms delineating the creative utterly lacking is analogous to a concept of compelling modern significance, to computability. The concept of computability was captured in a classic statement of its significance.

It seems that this importance [of Turing’s computability] is largely due to the fact that with this concept one has for the first time succeeded in giving an absolute definition of an interesting epistemological notion, i.e., one not depending on the formalism chosen. In all other cases treated previously, such as demonstrability or definability, one has been able to define them only relative to a given language, and for each individual language it is clear that the one thus obtained is not the one looked for.

(Godel, 1946/2004, p. 84)

The analogy rests primarily on an overall, or gestalt, effect of correspondence. The atomic fact, or primitive concept, with which creativity utterly lacking has been correlated, is of compelling contemporary significance, and, as instantiated in working computational processes, also of acute practical relevance (see also Box 5.1 on computability and its significance). A highly significant correlation has then been indicated.

Box 5.1 Computability and its significance

The working algorithms which form part of our everyday experience are equivalent to the computational processes modeled by Turing in 1936 (1936-1937/2004). Turing was concerned to give form to the concept of computability, to what would naturally be regarded as computable. As Time noted in 1999:

everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a wordprocessing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine.

(Quoted in Davis, 2000, p. 193)

The concept of a Turing machine would include the automatic operations of the spreadsheet or word-processing program but not necessarily direct human non-mechanical interaction with such processes (except as a choice machine, or, under some interpretations, as nondeterminism). In everyday practice, an automatic mechanical procedure is represented by the automatic operations of spreadsheet or word-pro-cessing program, while human intervention would strongly tend to be non-mechanical.

Turing’s model of the computational process has become dominant, since its formulation. The thesis that a process is computable, if and only if, it is Turing machine computable is regarded as still valid (Herken, 1994; Cockshott and Michaelson, 2007). Within the discipline of computer science, the thesis has a fundamental and largely unquestioned status (Cockshott and Michaelson, 2007, p. 232). It can be regarded as an absolute concept and as bedrock for our discussion.

Turing’s model of computability also obtains wide current significance from its instantiation in practice, although the concept of computability itself may not necessarily be as widely explicitly diffused or fully publicly understood.

The concept of computability is, then, of compelling contemporary significance, both theoretically and practically, as instantiated in working computers and computational processes. It can be received as an absolute concept.

The clauses in the opinion and the particular characterization of computability have only one substantive word in common, time in ‘time-honored’ (Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., Inc., 1991, p. 363) in the judgment and ‘for the first time’ (Gbdel, 1946/2004, p. 84) in the characterization of computability, but specific conceptual and verbal correlations can be found. ‘[M]echanicaF in ‘so mechanical’ can be correlated with a mechanical procedure or algorithm, and ‘so mechanical’ (Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural

Tel. Service Co., Inc., 1991, p. 362) as a whole with an automatic mechanical procedure or automatic computational process. Identifying specific correlations should have the effect of strengthening the overall analogy. The clauses in the opinion with a historical resonance, from ‘an age-old practice’ to ‘time-honored tradition’ (Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., Inc., 1991, p. 363), can be correlated with an element of the foundation for the concept of computability, with the natural in what would naturally be regarded as computable.