Stefan Wermter

The Mechanization of the Mind: On the Origins of of modelling and scientific explanation, the physics Cognitive Science, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, translated by of dissipative processes, aspects of neurophysiology M.B. DeBevoise, Princeton University Press, 2000, and embryology, and more, all without once trivializ$29.95 / £19.95, 240 pp. ISBN: 0-691-02574-6 ing his subject or falling victim to the use of extremely technical jargon. The book differs from The idea that cognitive agents process information similar projects (e.g., Heims, 1980, 1991) in its focus by virtue of neural computations performed in their on the origin and early development of ideas that led brains is, deservedly or otherwise, a central tenet of to current cognitive science in particular. contemporary cognitive science. As central perhaps Dupuy retraces the intellectual history of cyberas the idea of natural selection is to evolutionary netics as beginning with wartime research on feedbiology. Yet, while every biologist knows, at least in back systems and code cracking. The incipient some mythical version, the story of how Darwin and movement was reflected in seminal events, notably Wallace introduced the concept of evolution by in publications by McCulloch & Pitts (1943), and common descent by means of natural selection, the Rosenblueth et al. (1943), as well as von Neumann’s number of researchers in cognitive science and collaboration in the construction of ENIAC (also in 1 artificial intelligence for whom a paper published in 1943) . But it would be after the war (from 1946 to 1943 by McCulloch and Pitts is but an early neural 1953) that what was to be called the cybernetics network model and not one of the foundational group would acquire its character through a series of events of their disciplines can be worryingly large. ten interdisciplinary meetings held in New York and Similar things could be said, risking only a slight sponsored by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. The exaggeration, about the relation between the concept name of these meetings would evolve from ‘‘Feedof feedback and purposeful behaviour, about the first back Mechanisms and Circular Causality in Biouses of terms such as ‘information’ and ‘complexilogical and Social Systems’’ to simply ‘‘Cyberty’, and in general about the very idea that the mind netics’’ following Heinz von Foerster’s proposal to can be understood by the scientific study of the adopt the title of Norbert Wiener’s 1948 book formal properties of brain mechanisms. (Wiener, 1961). These meetings gathered researchers In this book, Dupuy explores the initial stages of from mathematics, engineering, neurophysiology, the intellectual history of cognitive science. He does psychology, social sciences and philosophy. Their so with dexterity, drawing on primary and secondary most salient members included Norbert Wiener, sources and delivering a vision of the original