Idiosophy

A physicist loose among the liberal arts

Computational Structure of Songs

It appears that the great computer scientist Donald Knuth was a pioneer in the discipline that would in a later century come to be known as Idiosophy. Alas, such was the benighted state of natural philosophy in that era that his seminal paper could only be published in the April issue of a learned journal.

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5 Comments

  1. I managed to hold it together until “Ist das nicht ein Schnitzelbank?”

  2. Joe

    The thing that scares me is, at just about the time that Knuth must have been writing this paper, I was proving that “Tutti Frutti” could be constructed algorithmically to an unlimited number of verses. (Thesis? What thesis?)

  3. Tara Dockery

    As a computer programmer myself, I am quite familiar with many of Knuth’s writings, but this one was new to me, despite the fact that I was at university at the time.

    His reference to K.C. and the Sunshine Band certainly parallels my own thoughts on that august group’s musical complexity.

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