Computing Surveys' Electronic Symposium on the Theory of Computation.

The article presents computing survey's electronic symposium on the theory of computation. The 25th anniversary of the European Association for the Theoretical Computing Science (EATCS) was celebrated during the 24th session of the "International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP) Bologna, Italy, from July 7-11, 1997. More than 300 scientists participated in the conference and its satellite events. There were many stimulating discussing about the role of theory in computer science. Papers of the symposium are divided into subareas such as algorithms, analysis, concurrency, formal methods, syntax and semantics and complexity of cognitive models. Algorithms area includes papers on approximate algorithms, algorithm engineering and online algorithms. The analysis area includes papers on program analysis based on game semantics and on abstract interpretation. The two papers on the complexity of cognitive models deal with simulating free will and simulating the mind.