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*Choice* Outstanding Academic Book 2007
Mind as Machine
A History of Cognitive Science
Margaret Boden
1,712 pages
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Illus.
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246x171mm
978-0-19-954316-8
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Paperback
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26 June 2008
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- The definitive history of cognitive science
- One of the twentieth-century's most fascinating new disciplines
- Brings together a host of other subjects, from linguistics to AI
- Boden is the ideal author to tell the story - she has known many of the key figures personally
- A rich resource for anyone working on the mind
The development of cognitive science is one of the most remarkable and fascinating intellectual achievements of the modern era. The quest to understand the mind 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 thinking about 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 revolutionary ideas, 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, and even 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 her conviction 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 to know how our understanding of our mental activities and capacities has developed. Readership: Scholars and students working on the mind in any discipline
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Margaret Boden, University of Sussex
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"Mind as Machine is instructive, thought-provocative, and interdisciplinary in its approach...One cannot deny the fact that Professor Margaret Boden is an excellent writer" - Yves Laberge Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy "lively and interesting...highly readable...This is, as far as I know, the first full-scale history of cognitive science...Future histories of the subject will have to be build on this one." - Gilbert Harman, American Scientist "Mind as Machine is a magisterial review of major theoretical developments about mental computation...[this] illuminating book should be a great boon to efforts to understand mind and intelligence through interdisciplinary collaboration." - Paul
Thagard, Artificial Intelligence "A magnum opus, a stunning achievement." - Aaron Sloman, University of Birmingham "The writing is clear and engaging throughout, so much so that it often sounds less like scientific prose than literature." - Roy Behrens, Leonardo OnLine "These volumes are thought provoking and open a doorway towards improved understanding of the patterns of science in the second half of the twentieth century." - Stephen T. Casper, Medical History.
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1: Setting the Scene
2: Man as machine: origins of the idea
3: Anticipatory engines
4: Maybe minds are machines too
5: Movements beneath the mantle
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?
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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