The Mechanization of the Mind

Rating:
Summary: A required reading for all students of Cognitive Science
Review: An history of the first cybernetics, the transdisciplinary movement initiated in 1946 by John von Neumann, Warren McCulloch and Nobert Wiener, aimed to the creation of a general science of systems, complexity and mind. Jean-Pierre Dupuy, a very bright French philosopher, untied the intricate tangle of the genesis of ideas to offer one of the sharpest scientific detective work I have ever read. Those who still think that cognitive science was born with the advent of digital computers will be surprised... and enlightened, since I find it is almost impossible to understand the origins and conflicts of the different schools of thought in cogsci without such an healthy historical contextualization.