雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第8章:水銀延時線(27)

Even the EDVAC proposals carried the feeling that the pulses in the delay lines would somehow actually be numbers.

就連EDVAC草案，也給人造成一種感覺：延遲線上的脈衝其實就是數字。

But the Turing conception was rather different, and took a more abstract view.

但是，圖靈的概念則完全不同，他的想法更爲抽象。

In the ACE, one might regard pulses as representing numbers, or as representing instructions.

在ACE上，脈衝可能表示數字，也可能表示指令，

But it was really all in the mind of the beholder.

這完全取決於使用者的想法。

The machine acted, as he put it, 'without understanding', and in fact operated not on numbers nor on instructions, but on electronic pulses.

正如圖靈所說，機器本身並不需要"理解"它的工作，它只需要"執行"。機器的工作對象並不是數字或指令，而只是脈衝，

One could 'pretend that the instruction was really a number', because the machine itself knew nothing about either.

我們可以把脈衝理解成指令或數字，但機器本身並不知道這些脈衝是什麼意思。

There was a reason for his facility to take this liberated approach.

圖靈要推行這種思想上的解放，是完全有理由的。

Ever since he first thought about mathematical logic, he was aware of mathematics as a game played with marks on paper, to be manipulated by chess-like rules, regardless of their 'meaning'.

從他最早接觸數理邏輯的時候起，直到現在，他一直把數學當成一種符號遊戲，就像國際象棋一樣，是由規則來控制的。他從來沒有想過那些棋子有什麼"意義"，

This was the outlook that the Hilbert approach encouraged.

這也正是希爾伯特所提倡的觀點，

Godel's theorem had cheerfully mixed up 'numbers' and 'theorems', and Computable Numbers had represented instruction tables as 'description numbers'.

正如哥德爾定理將"數字"和"定理"結合起來，以及《可計算數》用描述數來表示指令表。

His proof of the existence of unsolvable problems depended upon this mixing up of numbers and instructions, by treating them all alike as abstract symbols.

圖靈正是依靠這種數據和指令的混合，把它們同等地視爲抽象的符號，從而證明了那個問題。

It was therefore a small step to regard instructions, and instruction tables, as grist to the ACE's own mill.

因此，在ACE上實踐這種思想，是完全在意料之中的。

Indeed, since so much of his war work had depended upon indicator systems, in which instructions were deliberately disguised as data, there was no step for him to make at all.

事實上，圖靈的戰時工作經常涉及到指示信號，而這種信號，往往都是蓄意地僞裝在數據當中的。所以，這對圖靈來說是個非常自然的想法。

He saw as obvious what to others was a jump into confusion and illegality.

但同時，圖靈也意識到，這對於別人來說，卻是一種混亂不堪，甚至無法無天的想法。