The development of cognitive science is one of the most remarkable and fascinating intellectual achievements of the modern era. The quest to understand themind is as old as recorded human thought; but the progress of modern science has offered new methods and techniques which have revolutionized this enquiry.Oxford University Press now presents a masterful history of cognitive science, told by one of its most eminent practitioners. Cognitive science is the project of understanding the mind by modelling its workings. Psychology is its heart, but it draws together various adjoining fields of research, including artificial intelligence; neuroscientific study of the brain; philosophical investigation of mind, language, logic, and understanding; computational work on logic and reasoning; linguistic research on grammar, semantics, and communication;and anthropological explorations of human similarities and differences. Each discipline, in its own way, asks what the mind is, what it does, how it works,how it developed - how it is even possible.The key distinguishing characteristic of cognitive science, Boden suggests, compared with older ways of thinkingabout the mind, is the notion of understanding the mind as a kind of machine.She traces the origins of cognitive science back to Descartes's revolutionaryideas, and follows the story through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,when the pioneers of psychology and computing appear. Then she guides the reader through the complex interlinked paths along which the study of the mind developed in the twentieth century. Cognitive science, in Boden's broad conception, covers a wide range of aspects of mind: not just 'cognition' in the sense of knowledge or reasoning, but emotion, personality, social communication, andeven action. In each area of investigation, Boden introduces the key ideas and the people who developed them. No one else could tell this story as Boden can: she has been an active participant in cognitive science since the 1960s, and has known many of the key figures personally. Her narrative is written in a lively, swift-moving style, enriched by the personal touch of someone who knows the story at first hand.Her history looks forward as well as back: it is herconviction that cognitive science today - and tomorrow - cannot be properly understood without a historical perspective. Mind as Machine will be a rich resource for anyone working on the mind, in any academic discipline, who wants toknow how our understanding of our mental activities and capacities has developed. INDICE: 1. Setting the Scene; 2. Man as machine: origins of the idea; 3. Anticipatory engines; 4. Maybe minds are machines too; 5. Movements beneath themantle; 6. Cognitive science comes together; 7. The rise of computational psychology; 8. The mystery of the missing discipline; 9. Transforming linguistics; 10. When GOFAI was NEWFAI; 11. Of bombs and bombshells; 12. Connectionism, its birth and renaissance; 13. Swimming alongside the kraken; 14. From neurophysiology to computational neuroscience; 15. A-life in embryo; 16. Philosophies of mind as machine; 17. What next?
- ISBN: 978-0-19-954316-8
- Editorial: Oxford University Press
- Encuadernacion: Rústica
- Fecha Publicación: 01/06/2008
- Nº Volúmenes: 2
- Idioma: Inglés