The Webbed Emergence of Fuzzy Sets and Computer Science Education from Electrical Engineering

Abstract

Historically, Computer science emerged from electrical engineering and from mathematics in the 1960s. From the content of some unpublished documents and also some rather less-well-known papers by Lotfi A. Zadeh it is argued that the emergences of Computer science and Fuzzy Set Theory have been interlinked. Zadeh’s task as Chair of the Electrical Engineering Department in Berkeley in the 1960s, his activities in Education of Engineering and his creation of the theory of Fuzzy sets generated his view on the scientific discipline of Com- puter science as a fuzzy set. This view could establish a new approach to history and philosophy of science.