Lily E. Kay [*] from Logical Neurons to Poetic Embodiments of Mind: Warren S
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Constructing Artificial Intelligence Paul Edwards, the Closed World
* c 4 1 v. N > COMPUTERS . discourse »"• "u m com *»» *l't"'tA PAUL N. EDWARDS The Closed World Inside Technology edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, W. Bernard Carlson, and Trevor Pinch Wiebe E. Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bahelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, editors, Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies m Sociotechnical Change Stuart S. Blume, Insight and Industry: On the Dynamics of Technological Change in Medicine Louis L. Bucciarelli, Designing Engineers Geoffrey C. Bowker, Science on the Run: Information Management and Industrial Geophysics at Schlumberger, 1920-1940 H. M. Collins, Artificial Experts: Social Knowledge and Intelligent Machines Paul N. Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America Pamela E. Mack, Viewing the Earth: The Social Construction of the Landsat Satellite System Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance Donald MacKenzie, Knowing Machines: Essays on Technical Change The Closed World Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America Paul N. Edwards The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England ©1996 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Baskerville by Pine Tree Composition, Inc. and printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Edwards, Paul N. The closed world : computers and the politics of discourse in Cold War America / Paul N. -
A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity*
Bulletin of Mothemnticnl Biology Vol. 52, No. l/2. pp. 99-115. 1990. oo92-824OjW$3.OO+O.MI Printed in Great Britain. Pergamon Press plc Society for Mathematical Biology A LOGICAL CALCULUS OF THE IDEAS IMMANENT IN NERVOUS ACTIVITY* n WARREN S. MCCULLOCH AND WALTER PITTS University of Illinois, College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry at the Illinois Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, U.S.A. Because of the “all-or-none” character of nervous activity, neural events and the relations among them can be treated by means of propositional logic. It is found that the behavior of every net can be described in these terms, with the addition of more complicated logical means for nets containing circles; and that for any logical expression satisfying certain conditions, one can find a net behaving in the fashion it describes. It is shown that many particular choices among possible neurophysiological assumptions are equivalent, in the sense that for every net behaving under one assumption, there exists another net which behaves under the other and gives the same results, although perhaps not in the same time. Various applications of the calculus are discussed. 1. Introduction. Theoretical neurophysiology rests on certain cardinal assumptions. The nervous system is a net of neurons, each having a soma and an axon. Their adjunctions, or synapses, are always between the axon of one neuron and the soma of another. At any instant a neuron has some threshold, which excitation must exceed to initiate an impulse. This, except for the fact and the time of its occurence, is determined by the neuron, not by the excitation. -
THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS of the Mcculloch
JHBS—WILEY RIGHT BATCH Top of ID Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 38(1), 3–25 Winter 2002 ᭧ 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (PHYSIO)LOGICAL CIRCUITS: THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF THE Base of 1st McCULLOCH–PITTS NEURAL NETWORKS line of ART TARA H. ABRAHAM This article examines the intellectual and institutional factors that contributed to the col- laboration of neuropsychiatrist Warren McCulloch and mathematician Walter Pitts on the logic of neural networks, which culminated in their 1943 publication, “A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity.” Historians and scientists alike often refer to the McCulloch–Pitts paper as a landmark event in the history of cybernetics, and funda- mental to the development of cognitive science and artificial intelligence. This article seeks to bring some historical context to the McCulloch–Pitts collaboration itself, namely, their intellectual and scientific orientations and backgrounds, the key concepts that contributed to their paper, and the institutional context in which their collaboration was made. Al- though they were almost a generation apart and had dissimilar scientific backgrounds, McCulloch and Pitts had similar intellectual concerns, simultaneously motivated by issues in philosophy, neurology, and mathematics. This article demonstrates how these issues converged and found resonance in their model of neural networks. By examining the intellectual backgrounds of McCulloch and Pitts as individuals, it will be shown that besides being an important event in the history of cybernetics proper, the McCulloch– Pitts collaboration was an important result of early twentieth-century efforts to apply mathematics to neurological phenomena. ᭧ 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. -
THE RISE of CYBORG CULTURE OR the BOMB WAS a CYBORG David Porush
Document generated on 09/25/2021 8 a.m. Surfaces THE RISE OF CYBORG CULTURE OR THE BOMB WAS A CYBORG David Porush SUR LA PUBLICATION ÉLECTRONIQUE Article abstract ON ELECTRONIC PUBLICATION Pictured by the author as a cybernetic rather than an atomic age, the Cold War Volume 4, 1994 is shown to be structured by the quest for a cybernetic modelling of human intelligence capable to eliminate uncertainty. The rise of the cyborg figure in URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1064963ar science fiction is brought into consideration as an illustration. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1064963ar See table of contents Publisher(s) Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal ISSN 1188-2492 (print) 1200-5320 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Porush, D. (1994). THE RISE OF CYBORG CULTURE OR THE BOMB WAS A CYBORG. Surfaces, 4. https://doi.org/10.7202/1064963ar Copyright © David Porush, 1994 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ THE RISE OF CYBORG CULTURE OR THE BOMB WAS A CYBORG David Porush ABSTRACT Pictured by the author as a cybernetic rather than an atomic age, the Cold War is shown to be structured by the quest for a cybernetic modelling of human intelligence capable to eliminate uncertainty. -
Your Brain Is Like a Computer: Function, Analogy, Simplification
M. Chirimuuta November 2018 draft. Please do not circulate or quote without permission. Comments welcome! Your Brain is Like a Computer: Function, Analogy, Simplification M. Chirimuuta ([email protected]) History & Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh ABSTRACT The relationship between brain and computer is a perennial theme in theoretical neuroscience, but it has received relatively little attention in the philosophy of neuroscience. This paper argues that much of the popularity of the brain-computer comparison (e.g. circuit models of neurons and brain areas since McCulloch and Pitts [1943]) can be explained by their utility as ways of simplifying the brain. More specifically, by justifying a sharp distinction between aspects of neural anatomy and physiology that serve information-processing, and those that are ‘mere metabolic support,’ the computational framework provides a means of abstracting away from the complexities of cellular neurobiology, as those details come to be classified as irrelevant to the (computational) functions of the system. I argue that the relation between brain and computer should be understood as one of analogy, and consider the implications of this interpretation for notions of multiple realisation. I suggest some limitations of our understanding of the brain and cognition that may stem from the radical abstraction imposed by the computational framework. 0. PREAMBLE: LEIBNIZ THE INVENTOR Many histories of computation begin with the unrealised ambition of Gottfried Leibniz to devise a “universal characteristic”, a symbolic language in which factual propositions could be represented and further truths inferred by means of a mechanical calculating device (Davis 2000). Amongst the 20th century pioneers of computer science and artificial intelligence who took Leibniz for an inspirational figure1 were Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts (Lettvin 2016: xix). -
How Cybernetics Connects Computing, Counterculture, and Design
Walker Art Center — Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia — Exhibit Catalog — October 2015 How cybernetics connects computing, counterculture, and design Hugh Dubberly — Dubberly Design Office — [email protected] Paul Pangaro — College for Creative Studies — [email protected] “Man is always aiming to achieve some goal language, and sharing descriptions creates a society.[2] and he is always looking for new goals.” Suddenly, serious scientists were talking seriously —Gordon Pask[1] about subjectivity—about language, conversation, and ethics—and their relation to systems and to design. Serious scientists were collaborating to study Beginning in the decade before World War II and collaboration. accelerating through the war and after, scientists This turn away from the mainstream of science designed increasingly sophisticated mechanical and became a turn toward interdisciplinarity—and toward electrical systems that acted as if they had a purpose. counterculture. This work intersected other work on cognition in Two of these scientists, Heinz von Foerster and animals as well as early work on computing. What Gordon Pask, took an interest in design, even as design emerged was a new way of looking at systems—not just was absorbing the lessons of cybernetics. Another mechanical and electrical systems, but also biological member of the group, Gregory Bateson, caught the and social systems: a unifying theory of systems and attention of Stewart Brand, systems thinker, designer, their relation to their environment. This turn toward and publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog. Bateson “whole systems” and “systems thinking” became introduced Brand to von Foerster.[3] Brand’s Whole Earth known as cybernetics. Cybernetics frames the world in Catalog spawned a do-it-yourself publishing revolution, terms of systems and their goals. -
Warren S. Mcculloch: What Is a Number, That a Man May Know It, and a Man, That He May Know a Number?, In: (Winter-Edition 2008/09), J
Winter-Edition 2008/09 Warren S. McCulloch [*] What Is a Number, that a Man May Know It, and a Man, that He May Know a Number? GENTLEMEN: I am very sensible of the honor you have conferred upon me by inviting me to read this lecture. I am only distressed, fearing you may have done so under a misapprehension; for, though my interest always was to reduce epistemology to an experimental science, the. bulk of my publications has been concerned with the physics and chemistry of the brain and body of beasts. For my interest in the functional organization of the nervous system, that knowledge was as necessary as it was insufficient in all problems of communication in men and machines. I had begun to fear that the tradition of experimental epistemology I had inherited through Dusser de Barenne from Rudolph Magnus would die with me, but if you read "What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain," written by Jerome Y. Lettvin, which appeared in the Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, November 1959, you will realize that the tradition will go on after I am gone. The inquiry into the physiological substrate of knowledge is here to stay until it is solved thoroughly, that is, until we have a satisfactory explanation of how we know what we know, stated in terms of the physics and chemistry, the anatomy and physiology, of the biological system. At the moment my age feeds on my youth – and both are unknown to you. It is not because I have reached what Oliver Wendell Holmes would call "our anecdotage" – but because all impersonal questions arise from personal reasons and are best understood from their histories – that I would begin with my youth. -
Contrasting Theories of Life: Historical Context, Current Theories
BioSystems 188 (2020) 104063 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect BioSystems journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biosystems Review article Contrasting theories of life: Historical context, current theories. In search of an ideal theory Athel Cornish-Bowden <, María Luz Cárdenas Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, BIP, IMM, Marseille, France ARTICLEINFO ABSTRACT Keywords: Most attempts to define life have concentrated on individual theories, mentioning others hardly at all, but here Autocatalytic sets we compare all of the major current theories. We begin by asking how we know that an entity is alive, and Autopoiesis continue by describing the contributions of La Mettrie, Burke, Leduc, Herrera, Bahadur, D'Arcy Thompson and, Chemoton especially, Schrödinger, whose book What is Life? is a vital starting point. We then briefly describe and discuss Closure (M, R) systems, the hypercycle, the chemoton, autopoiesis and autocatalytic sets. All of these incorporate the Hypercycle Metabolic circularity idea of circularity to some extent, but all of them fail to take account of mechanisms of metabolic regulation, (M, R) systems which we regard as crucial if an organism is to avoid collapsing into a mass of unregulated reactions. In Origin of life a final section we study the extent to which each of the current theories can aid in the search for a more Self-organization complete theory of life, and explain the characteristics of metabolic control analysis that make it essential for an adequate understanding of organisms. Contents 1. General introduction -
Cybernetics, Information Turn, Biocomplexity
INDIANA [email protected] Nature.com; ANDY POTTS; TURING FAMILY UNIVERSITY informatics.indiana.edu/rocha McCulloch & Pitts Memory can be maintained in circular networks of binary switches McCulloch, W. and W. Pitts [1943], "A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity". Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 5:115-133. A Turing machine program could be implemented in a finite network of binary neuron/switches Neurons as basic computing unit of the brain Circularity is essential for memory (closed loops to sustain memory) Brain (mental?) function as computing Others at Macy Meeting emphasized other aspects of brain activity Chemical concentrations and field effects (not digital) Ralph Gerard and Fredrik Bremmer INDIANA [email protected] UNIVERSITY informatics.indiana.edu/rocha cybernetics post-war science Synthetic approach Macy Conferences: 1946-53 Engineering-inspired Supremacy of mechanism Postwar culture of problem solving Interdisciplinary teams Cross-disciplinary methodology All can be axiomatized and computed Mculloch&Pitts’ work was major influence “A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity”. Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 5:115-133 (1943). A Turing machine (any function) could be implemented with a network of simple binary switches (if circularity/feedback is present) Warren S. McCulloch Margaret Mead Claude Shannon INDIANA [email protected] UNIVERSITY informatics.indiana.edu/rocha cybernetics universal computers and general-purpose informatics the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation Meetings post-war science 1946-1953 Interdisciplinary Since a large class of ordinary phenomena exhibit circular causality, and mathematics is accessible, let’s look at them with a war-time team culture Participants John Von Neumann, Leonard Savage, Norbert Wiener, Arturo Rosenblueth, Walter Pitts, Margaret Mead, Heinz von Foerster, Warren McCulloch, Gregory Bateson, Claude Shannon, Ross Ashby, etc. -
Kathleen A. Powers Dissertation
UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Cybernetic Origins of Life Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9d8678w5 Author Powers, Kathleen Alicia Publication Date 2020 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California The Cybernetic Origins of Life By Kathleen A. Powers A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Rhetoric and the Designated Emphasis in Science and Technology Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Chair Professor David Bates Professor James Porter Professor Emeritus Gaetan Micco Professor Sandra Eder Fall 2020 1 Abstract The Cybernetic Origins of Life by Kathleen A. Powers Doctor of Philosophy in Rhetoric and the Designated Emphasis in Science and Technology Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor David Bates, Chair This dissertation elucidates the cybernetic response to the life question of post-World War II biology through an analysis of the writings and experiments of Warren S. McCulloch. The work of McCulloch, who was both a clinician and neurophysiologist, gave rise to what this dissertation refers to as a biological, medical cybernetics, influenced by vitalist conceptions of the organism as well as technical conceptions of the organ, the brain. This dissertation argues that the question ‘what is biological life?’ served as an organizing principle for the electrical, digital model of the brain submitted in “Of Digital Computers Called Brains” (1949) and the formal, mathematical model of the brain required by the McCulloch-Pitts neuron in “A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity” (1943). -
Chapter 1 of Artificial Intelligence: a Modern Approach
1 INTRODUCTION In which we try to explain why we consider artificial intelligence to be a subject most worthy of study, and in which we try to decide what exactly it is, this being a good thing to decide before embarking. INTELLIGENCE We call ourselves Homo sapiens—man the wise—because our intelligence is so important to us. For thousands of years, we have tried to understand how we think; that is, how a mere handful of matter can perceive, understand, predict, and manipulate a world far larger and ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE more complicated than itself. The field of artificial intelligence, or AI, goes further still: it attempts not just to understand but also to build intelligent entities. AI is one of the newest fields in science and engineering. Work started in earnest soon after World War II, and the name itself was coined in 1956. Along with molecular biology, AI is regularly cited as the “field I would most like to be in” by scientists in other disciplines. A student in physics might reasonably feel that all the good ideas have already been taken by Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and the rest. AI, on the other hand, still has openings for several full-time Einsteins and Edisons. AI currently encompasses a huge variety of subfields, ranging from the general (learning and perception) to the specific, such as playing chess, proving mathematical theorems, writing poetry, driving a car on a crowded street, and diagnosing diseases. AI is relevant to any intellectual task; it is truly a universal field. 1.1 WHAT IS AI? We have claimed that AI is exciting, but we have not said what it is. -
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) remains an international leader in electrical engineering, computer engineering, and computer science by setting standards both in research and in education. In addition to traditional foci on research, teaching, and student supervision, the department is actively engaged in a range of efforts in outreach and globalization and continues to evolve its recent major initiative in undergraduate curriculum reform. Research within the department is primarily conducted through one of the affiliated interdisciplinary research labs. Research expenditures within the department in FY2010 were $84.5 million, up 14% from FY2009. In FY2011, research expenditures were $99 million. (Note that this total may include some EECS-affiliated lab members who are not EECS faculty.) Specific research highlights and expenditures are presented in the separate reports by the affiliated research laboratories. EECS continues to display enrollment trends that are ahead of national trends. At the undergraduate level, the number of new majors has shown small but steady increases over the past five years. The percentage of women undergraduate majors (31%) has held steady over the past three years. At the graduate level, we continue to see significant interest in the department, with 2,887 applications this year; 211 of these applicants were offered admission, of whom 46 were women. One hundred and forty-three students accepted, resulting in an acceptance rate of 67.8%, reflecting the high interest in the department. Thirty-five of these students were women, resulting in an acceptance rate of 76% for women who were offered admission.