Unix selon l’ordre des raisons : la philosophie de la pratique informatique

Abstract

In philosophy of science, it is sometimes fruitful to examine whether technical concepts originate from a structural necessity, rather than from the contingency of invention. Operating systems, for instance, rely on two main concepts: the notions of process and file. Trying to identify their raison d’être, we can see that they are, since Unix, the transposition in computer science of the abstract ontological notions of act and object, and that they satisfy all the properties that category theory may expect. Programming can therefore be seen as a “thematization,” i.e. the transformation of the act or process into an object or file. But we also realize that the execution of programs acts as an “antithematization:” a transformation of objects into acts, which also has instances in recent history of mathematics. Concepts and methods of computing practices can be for philosophy as pure objects as mathematics are.