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What is a number that man may know it, and man that he may know a number? (1960) [pdf]
- jimhefferon 6y agoThank you for posting this, it was delightful. I wonder if some folks here might not know that this is by the coauthor of McCulloch and Pitts (1943) A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity, which started the study of Neural Nets and was also Kleene's inspiration for starting the study of Finite State machines. (And, forgive me, I can't resist linking to a wonderful article about Pitts, http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with-logic. http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-r...)
- kick 6y agoFor anyone interested in the history of computing and cybernetics, McCulloch absolutely is an essential figure within. The field would look significantly different without the butterfly effect the man had; Minsky would have had an entirely different trajectory, for example.
- JadeNB 6y agoThank you for that link! The Markdown parser included the following period, so that it doesn't go to the correct place: http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with-logic http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-r... .
- lordleft 6y agoThis is the WASP-iest thing I've ever read. A delight.