Analogies and Algorithms Reconfigured, in-between creation and

invention.
Computing practices have longstanding and singular relations with analogies the recent european
BRAIN project being probably the greatest expression of the last couple of years. At its core lies the
making of algorithms, i.e. step-by-step procedures fullfilling a precise task.
As soon as algorithms become too complex, their behaviours are not formally predictable. They
turn into objects of experiments. Then, computer scientists must analyze statistically algorithm's
reactions to different kind of problems. However, the activity of inventing barely knowable objects
seems to imply a peculiar version of an understanding to which analogies are partly related. Instead
of tackling this curious alliance in abstracto, we want to focus on a precise subfield of Computer
Science richly entitled 'metaheuristics' this time as it may provide us with some more general
insights.
Metaheuristics belongs to broader field named 'Optimization'. Optimization algorithms seek
to minimize or maximize a defined function e.g. find a path linking a dozen warehouses by
minimizing the fuel consumption. While the heuristics algorithms propose to find a
good enough solution relatively to a definite problem within an acceptable time, the
different metaheuristics propose more general ways for tackling families of different
problems.
During the last decades, metaheuristics has seen a proliferation of nature-inspired algorithms, e.g.
'genetic algorithms', 'simulated annealing', 'ant colony optimization', etc. Following technical and
scientific literature on the one hand, such algorithms refer 'analogically' to their natural system. An
important technoscientific controversy concerning 'harmony search' (a new metaheuristic related to
musical harmony) stirred up around 2010 (Weyland 2010, Geem 2010, Padberg 2011, Srensen
2013). Some researchers attempted to reduce 'harmonic search' algorithms to a subfamily of 'genetic
algorithm', who made its first appearance thirty years before. At the core of this debate lies the
problem of the ability to discriminate between the invention of a novel algorithm and the creation of
a new analogy: What does count as a novel algorithm ?
Attempting to better understand what makes analogies interestesting and problematic in this process
of inventing, we want to orient our discussion around one main claim : the possibility for the
practicians to use such analogies resides in the linguistic characteristics of the source code itself. In
that sense, analogies furnish a usefull tool for imagining new mechanisms to implement within an
algorithm and playing with it. In our case, the analogical model does not represent an existing
phenomenon (M. Morgan), but support cognitively, imaginatively as well as pedagogically the
construction of the algorithm. Drawing on the methodology deployed by historians of mathematics
for analyzing technical and scientific formal text (R. Netz), we want to compare articles' writings,
code's structure and pseudocode formalizations to highlight cognitive effects embedded.
The core of our philosophical argument concerns the proper qualification of what could be
designated as a technical understanding : in-between concreteness and abstraction, analysis and
synthesis. Telling the biographies of genetic algorithms and harmony search seems the best way to
achieve this goal. How a represented phenomenon changes itself in analogon, and how the latter
mutates in an algorithm who has to be programmed within a source code ? Conceptually, this path
brought us to integrate the genealogical approach of images and technical objects proposed by G.
Simondon, to the philosophical attempts by E. Fox-Keller to characterize the roles of the models
and analogies within the diverse process of understandings.

Bibliography
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Community can be Misled by a "Novel" Methodology", in International Journal of Applied
Metaheuristic Coputing, no. 2, 2010, pp. 50-60.
Evelyn FOX-KELLER, Making Sense Of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models,
Metaphors, and Machines, Harvard University Press, 2002.
Zong Woo GEEM, "Research Commentary: Survival of the Fittest Algorithm or the Novelest
Algorithm?", in International Journal of Applied Metaheuristic Coputing, no. 2, 2010, pp. 75-79.
Mary HESSE, Models and Analogies in Science, Notre Dame University Press, 1966.
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Philip MIROWSKI (ed.), Natural Images in Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Reviel NETZ, The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics, Cambridge University Press, 1999
M. PADBERG, "Harmony Search Algorithms for binary optimization problems", in Operations
Research Proceedings, 2011, pp.343-348.
Judith SCHLANGER, Penser la bouche pleine, De Gruyter Mouton, 1975.
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Operational Research, 2013.

Thesis Presentation
My thesis subject can be worded as follow: Epistemology and Technology of Computing. At the
crossroad of technical, scientific and juridico-political normativities. Taking account of the
advances made possible by the sciences studies, I would rather charachterize my approach in the
terms of grounded philosophy . Thus, my research is structured by three field inquiries allowing
me to consider the algorithm from, at least, three different perspectives : algorithm as a an
instrument (metaheuristics and operations research in IRIDIA), algorithm as a method (complex
systems modeling in NAXYS) and algorithm as a tool (market algorithms at AXA). Restraining my
scope to applications of computing to economics allows me to avoid dispersion and to maintain a
strong relation between epistemology and politics in a large sense. How can we write the
biography of an algorithm ? could be taken as my research question.
I am leading this research in philosophy at the Universit de Namur (uNamur), with A. Rouvroy as
main director and T. Berns as co-director. Member of Centre de Recherche Information Droit et
Socit (CRIDS), I am affiliated to the Unit Technique et Socit (UTS), attached to the Faculty
of Computer Science. My research project takes place into a more general one funded by the Fonds
de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS / FNRS), entitled algorithmic governmentality (Universit
Libre de Bruxelles, uNamur, Universit Saint-Louis). This larger project aims to study the
emergence of new govermentality techniques, grasping phenomenon going from crime prediction to
marketing profiling. This program intends to think, in a same movement, the technical and
epistemic requirements these new statistical and algorithmic practices presupposes, and the juridic
and political consequences they entails.