The Mechanical Mind in History (Introduction)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For information about special quantity discounts, please email special_sales@ Through myths, literature, and popular science, the idea of intelligent machines has become part of our public consciousness. But what of the actual science of machine intelligence? How did it start? What were the aims, influences, ideas, and arguments that swirled around the intellectual environment inhabited by the early pioneers? And how did the principles and debates that shaped that founding period persist and evolve in subsequent research? As soon as one delves into these questions, one finds oneself enmeshed in the often obscured roots of ideas currently central to artificial intelligence, artificial life, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Here one confronts a rich network of forgotten historical contributions and shifting cross-disciplinary interactions in which various new questions emerge, questions such as: What intellectual importance should we give to little-known corners of the history of the mechanical mind, such as cyber-netic art, the frequently overlooked British cybernetic and pre-cybernetic thinkers, and cybernetic influences in politics? And, more generally, how is our understanding of the science of machine intelligence enriched once we come to appreciate the important reciprocal relationships such work has enjoyed, and continues to enjoy, with a broad range of disciplines? Moreover , issues that we sometimes address from within an essentially ahis-torical frame of reference take on a new, historicized form. Thus one wonders not ''What is the relationship between the science of intelligent machines and the sciences of neuroscience and biology?'' but, rather, ''In different phases of its history, how has the science of intelligent machines interacted with the sciences of neuroscience and biology?'' Of course, once one has taken proper account of the past, the present inevitably looks different. So, having forged a path through the history of the mechanical mind, one is driven to ask: How far have we really come in the search for the mechanization of mind? What have we actually learned? And where should we go next? The issues raised in the previous paragraph were what inspired, and subsequently drove the development of, the present volume. Unsurprisingly, given the nature and scope of these issues, the volume is essentially and massively cross-disciplinary in character, bringing together papers by scientists …