History and People in Cognitive Science
Revised:
2004-02-09
The Hixon Symposium (1948)
- adapted from: Gardner, Howard. The Mind's New Science: A
History of the Cognitive Revolution. New York: Basic Books,
1987.
Mathematics and Computation
- Computers used to be people!
- Russell and Whitehead--Principia Mathematica
- attempted to formalize mathematics
- failure revealed much about complexity
- foreshadowed Godel's work
- Allen Turing
- worked on Enigma during World War II
- Turing test was first definition of AI
- Universal Turing machine helps define computability
- Jon von Neumann
- first one to realize that both data and instructions could
be stored in memory
- led to current model of computer (nearly all computers),
neural network computers are the exception
- Kurt Godel
- Incompleteness theorem
- Demonstrated the limits of knowledge
The Neuronal Model
- McCulloch and Pitts
- demonstrated the idea of neural nets for the first
time
- Neural networks
- Minsky and Papert's Perceptrons closed the books on
neural networks for many years
- Neural network research revived in last 15 years with
computer-based tools for designing them
- Complexity is the issue here. Trying to decipher the "wiring
diagram" for billions of neurons is a practical impossibility
The Cybernetic Synthesis
- Norbert Wiener
- servomechanisms
- self-correcting devices
- Anti-aircraft gun research during WW II
- purposeful machines
- beginning of efforts to create autonomous machines
- note that animals work, learn, live with relatively
little "computing power"
- animals were used much more extensively in past
The following is from Anecdotes About Scientists: (formerly
http://park.tartu.ee/~park/science/8.html)
Wiener was in fact very absent minded. The following story is told
about him: When they moved from Cambridge to Newton his wife, knowing
that he would be absolutely useless on the move, packed him off to
MIT while she directed the move. Since she was certain that he would
forget that they had moved and where they had moved to, she wrote
down the new address on a piece of paper, and gave it to him.
Naturally, in the course of the day, an insight occurred to him. He
reached in his pocket, found a piece of paper on which he furiously
scribbled some notes, thought it over, decided there was a fallacy in
his idea,and threw the piece of paper away. At the end of the day he
went home (to the old address in Cambridge, of course). When he got
there he realized that they had moved, that he had no idea where they
had moved to, and that the piece of paper with the address was long
gone. Fortunately inspiration struck. There was a young girl on the
street and he conceived the idea of asking her where he had moved to,
saying, "Excuse me, perhaps you know me. I'm Norbert Wiener and we've
just moved. Would you know where we've moved to?" To which the young
girl replied, "Yes daddy, mommy thought you would forget."
The capper to the story is that I asked his daughter (the girl in
the story) about the truth of the story, many years later. She said
that it wasn't quite true -- that he never forgot who his children
were! The rest of it, however, was pretty close to what actually
happened...
- Definition of Cybernetics
- entire field of control and communication theory
- Braitenberg's view on cybernetics--Vehicles
- theoretical view of purposiveness in machines
- humans tend to overjudge the intelligence of machines
Information Theory
- Claude Shannon
- Information theory
- Any piece of information can be sent any distance reliably
(trick is to put in enough repetition)
Psychology and Behaviorism
- Karl Lashley
- Lashley, K.S. (1951) The problem of serial order in
behaviour. In: Cerebral mechanisms in behaviour: the Hixon
symposium. Edited by L. A. Jeffress. New York, NY: John Wiley
& Sons.
- Lashley was a pioneer in neuropsychology, searched and
never found the engram, devised the laws of mass action and
equipotentiality
- Ivan Pavlov
- B.F. Skinner
- operant conditioning
- teaching machines
- E.L. Thorndike
- law of effect
- trial-and-error learning
- J.B. Watson
- first to promote behaviorism
Neuropsychology
- War studies
- Both WW I and WW II, unfortunately, yielded vast numbers of
subjects for studies of traumatic brain damage
- Different types of aphasias were discovered and were
difficult to interpret within the behaviorist model
- Synergy
- A large number of researchers from many disciplines
gradually learned that they were working on similar problems:
- W. Ross Ashby, Herbert Simon, George Miller, Allen
Newell, Marvin Minsky, and many others
Founding of Cognitive Science
- September 11, 1956 (according to George Miller)
- Three seminal papers at Symposium on Information Theory,
MIT:
- Newell and Simon--Logic Theory Machine
- Chomsky--Three Models of Language
- Miller-- The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two:
Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information
- Overoptimism
- Since the beginning, cognitive science has been burdened
with an overoptimistic spirit. Recently, a more sober
realization of the inherent difficulty of cognitive science has
led to more realistic expectations of progress (300
years!).
Characteristics and Problems of Cognitive Science
- Multidisciplinary
- philosophy, psychology, linguistics, AI
- Focus
- study mental processes that create behavior, not studying
behavior for its own sake
- theoretical emphasis and data follows, not reverse (i.e.,
like behaviorism)
- Problems
- What is origin of complexity of systems?
- environment?, brains?, both?
- What is the appropriate level of analysis?
- pathic? (passive knowledge), iconic? (formulaic
knowledge), noetic (knowledge originating in the mind)?
- Can the levels of linguistic analysis be combined?
- Can universal dictionaries and translators be created?
- What is humor?
- Lack of historical context and depth.
- New modes of communication and interaction
- keyboards, voice input, pen pads, mouse, track ball,
touch screen
- design of software and hardware
URLs
- General Information
- The
Prehistory of Cognitive Science--index, basic, short,
links, graphics (works 2004-02-09)
- Page on philosophers who contributed to the development
of cognitive science (Berkeley, Burton, Hobbes and Locke).
Arranged in several ways: by subject, by chronology, and by
author. Also includes a bibliography. http://www.rc.umd.edu/cstahmer/cogsci/
- Information
Age--index, basic, medium, links, graphics (works
2004-02-09)
- Page illustrates artifacts in information technology
from an exhibit at the National Museum of American History.
Items include: the Morse telegraph, telephones, a stock
ticker, Hollerith tabulating machine, the Enigma machine
(decoder used in World War II, and more. http://photo2.si.edu/infoage/infoage.html
- Computers: From the
Past to the Present--tutorial, basic, short, links,
graphics (new link 2004-02-09)
- A series of lectures on topics in computing, includes
topics from prehistory to the present. Some topics included
are: Pascal's Pascaline Calculator, the Difference Engine,
Herman Hollerith, the Turing Machine, ENIAC, PCs Today, the
Web, and servers and clients. http://lecture.eingang.org/
- Anectodes
About Scientists--text, basic, long (new link
2004-02-09)
- John von Neumann
- Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics, and Braitenberg's Vehicles
- What
is an Artificial Neural Network?--tutorial, interm.,
short, links, graphics (new link 2004-02-09)
- Norbert
Wiener: A Memoir--text, basic, medium, links (works
2004-02-09)
- Cybernetics:
A Definition--text, interm., medium, links, graphics
(works 2004-02-09)
- Cybernetics--text,
basic, short, links, graphics (works 2004-02-09)
- Cybernetics--text,
basic, short, links (new link 2004-02-09)
- Dawson's
Margin Notes on Vehicles--index, interm., medium, links,
graphics (new link 2004-02-09)
- Provides links keyed to Valentino Braitenberg's book,
Vehicles. That book was seminal in the area of
synthetic psychology, or psychology from the bottom up. The
vehicles are mechanistic thought experiments whose
"physiology" is known, making their behavior more easily
explainable. http://www.bcp.psych.ualberta.ca/~mike/Pearl_Street/Margin/Vehicles/
- Braitenberg
Vehicles--index, basic, medium, links, graphics (works
2004-02-09)
- Godel
- Godel's
Incompleteness Theorem--tutorial, basic, long, links
(new link 2004-02-09)
- Godel,
Escher, Bach Page--index, basic, short, links, graphics
(works 2004-02-09)
- The Kurt Godel
Society--index, interm., long, links, graphics (new link
2004-02-09)
- Claude Shannon
- Heroes
of Hyperspace: Claude Shannon--index, interm., long,
links, graphics, search (works 2004-02-09)
- Remembering
Claude Shannon--text, basic, short, links, graphics (new
link 2004-02-09)
- Information
Theory--text, basic, short, links, graphics (new link
2004-02-09)
- Claude
Shannon--text, basic, short, links, graphics (works
2004-02-09)
- Other
- The
Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two--article,
interm., long, links, graphics (works 2004-02-09)
- The full text of George Miller's article (1956) "The
Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our
Capacity for Processing Information." This is a must read
for any serious student of psychology. http://www.well.com/user/smalin/miller.html
- See Leonard Kleinrock e-mail sent 2/09/2004. It is about
ubiquitous computing.
- Millenium
Project-index, basic, short, links, graphics (new link
2004-02-09)
- Karl
Spencer Lashley-tutorial, basic, short. links, graphics
(new link 2004-02-09)
- Lashley-Hebb
Priority--index, advanced, medium, links (works
2004-02-09)
- Parallel
models of serial behavior: Lashley revisited,--article,
advanced, long, links, graphics (works 2004-02-09)
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