Recursive
(pronounced ri-kur-siv)
(1) Pertaining to or using a rule or procedure that can be applied repeatedly; periodically recurring.
(2) Drawing upon itself, referring back.
(3) In mathematics, of an expression, each term
of which is determined by applying a formula to preceding terms
(4) In computing, of a program or function that
calls itself (often in the form of an endlessly repeating script).
(5) In computing theory, of a function which can
be computed by a theoretical model of a computer, in a finite amount of time.
(6) In computing, a set whose characteristic
function is recursive.
(7) In linguistics (as recursive acronym), an
acronym in which the first letter of the first word represented by the acronym
is the acronym itself.
1790: From the stem of Latin recursus, perfect passive participle of recurrō (I run or hasten back; I return, revert, recur), the construct being recurs(ion) + -ive. The –ive suffix is from the Anglo-Norman -if (feminine -ive), from the Latin -ivus; the related forms are the adverb recursively and the noun recursiveness. Until the fourteenth century, all Middle English loanwords from the Anglo-Norman ended in -if (actif, natif, sensitif, pensif et al) and, under the influence of literary Neolatin, both languages introduced the form -ive. Those forms that have not been replaced were subsequently changed to end in -y (hasty, from hastif, jolly, from jolif etc). Like the Latin suffix -io (genitive -ionis), the Latin suffix -ivus is appended to the perfect passive participle to form an adjective of action. The use in mathematics dates from 1934. Recursive is an adjective inflected form of recursion which is a noun. Recursive is an adjective, recursivity & recursiveness are nouns and recursively is an adverb; the noun plural is recursivities.
The recursive acronym
Not an easy book for those without a helpful
background, even the title of Gödel,
Escher, Bach is at first glance misleading because it’s not a look at the
relationships between art, music and mathematics but instead an exploration
of the abstract structures which exist within each. These Hofstadter called “strange loops”, the logician
Kurt Friedrich Gödel (1906–1978) having demonstrated their existence in any mathematical
system of sufficient complexity.
Relativity, lithograph (1953) by MC Escher (1898–1972).
Hofstadter pursued these structural imperatives
in music and art, suggesting it’s strange loops which creates consciousness,
the connections and chemicals in the human brain creating the fundamental base
of the framework on which are hung ideas, feelings, hopes and desires, all of
which manifest further up the framework.
Consciousness became possible (and there are those who suggested inevitable)
because the hierarchy clinging to the framework can twist back on itself:
higher and lower levels influencing and interacting so the lower which once
must have entirely determined the upper is also changed, ideas and feelings having
an actual physical impact, this tangling of hierarchies being our sense of
self.
Others, tentatively had posed similar questions. Eugene Charniak’s (b 1946) strangely
neglected PhD thesis (MIT, 1974) at least hinted it might be fruitful to explore
the relationship of knowledge and inference to natural language understanding
and Gödel, Escher, Bach is a playful,
clever, if sometimes obviously contrived way to offer one explanation of how cognition
emerges from a mechanistic structure which is reflected in work that cognition
can allow to be created. As a technical
point, remarkably for a piece so dependent on the nuances and interplay of
language, Gödel, Escher, Bach has been
translated.
Many recursive acronyms come from the field of
computing; it’s nerd humor.
TLA: Three Letter Acronym
AROS: AROS Research Operating System
BAMF: BAMF Application Matching Framework
BIRD: BIRD Internet Routing Daemon
GNU: GNU's Not Unix
KGS: KGS Go Server
LAME: LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder
MINT: MINT Is Not TRAC
MiNT: MiNT is Not TOS (which later became MiNT is Now TOS)
TIARA: TIARA is a recursive acronym
UIRA: UIRA Isn't a Recursive Acronym
WINE: WINE Is Not an Emulator (was originally Windows Emulator)
XINU: Xinu Is Not Unix
XNA: XNA's Not Acronymed
XNU: X is Not Unix
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