Computer Science as a Lens on the Sciences

Summary form only given. This article trace the growing influence of fundamental ideas from computer science on the nature of research in a number of scientific fields. There is a growing awareness that information processing lies at the heart of the processes studied in fields as diverse as quantum mechanics, statistical physics, nanotechnology, neuroscience, linguistics, economics and sociology. Increasingly, mathematical models in these fields are expressed in algorithmic languages and describe algorithmic processes. The author describe connections between quantum computing and the foundations of quantum mechanics, and between statistical mechanics and phase transitions in computation. The author indicates how the growth of the Web has created new phenomena to be investigated by sociologists and economists, spurring new developments in computational game theory and the study of social networks. The author then focus on computational molecular biology, where the view of living cells as complex information processing systems has become the dominant paradigm.