Andrew Hodges's Alan Turing: The Enigma

Reflection #2 Alan Turing: The Enigma is a book written by Andrew Hodges, a reputable mathematics professor at the University of Oxford, that tells the story of Alan Turing, who invented one of the first prototypes of the modern computer. Because the novel was written by a math professor, the intended audience mostly consists of math students (at a college level) and because of that it is teeming with esoteric mathematical language. To help reduce the strain on readers, however, Hodges implements many rhetorical devices that help make the novel interesting, simpler to read, and prove his claims. Mainly, the novel is full of irony, humor, and sometimes sarcasm. The humorous tone becomes obvious after a while, and it helps break up some of the monotony of the story. And, while the majority of the math and logic-based explanations and statements appeal to logos, these humorous sections appeal to pathos, which makes Hodges’ point that much stronger. To touch on ethos, Hodges covers this extensively by giving an endless barrage of primary documents, facts, …show more content…
I learned many things from this book on those topics, especially many pieces of information about how codes, The Enigma, early computers, etc., worked during Turing’s time, which was extremely interesting. There are many topics that I could write a controversial paper on. One could be arguing that Turing fathered the modern computer, which from this text seems obvious, but some would still disagree. Another topic could be the injustices of homophobia and how it causes great people, like Turing, to end their lives or otherwise not contribute to the global society as they would were they straight and untargeted by