DARK HERO OF THE INFORMATION AGE: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics
I read this book the other day. Attached is a paper by McCulloch and Pitts which I discovered upon reading the book. Offhandedly, I believe this paper is superior to the work of Hubel and Wiesel - simply because of who we are dealing with. McCulloch and Pitts were world-class mathematical prodigies; Hubel and Wiesel were not in their league.
The important thing to keep in mind, as Martin recently pointed out, is the historical context of their work - the background against which these peoples’ work is placed. This frog paper was published a decade after the infamous break between the duo and Wiener (the greatest mathematical prodigy of all time). This break is significant because it represents a schism which should not be there. The untimely deaths of Pitts due to alcoholism and the general lack of Wiener’s presence raises further flags.
There was a 2015 Nobel prize awarded for work on the mechanisms of DNA repair. In my mind, the split between McCulloch and Pitts and Wiener is an unrepaired break in the DNA (which persists today). If we take a close look at this frog paper in the light of PCT, we will be able to begin repair of the double-stranded break.
McCulloch’s papers are archived at the American Philosophical Society (in Philadelphia). You may be interested in looking into them. In 1970, apparently in some quite obscure connection to a small grant I had received from them to work on Sapir’s Yana materials with the aim of writing a grammar, the APS offered me a job organizing and preparing them for posthumous access and publication. (He had just died the year before.) I had already committed to other work. Tant pis.
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On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 12:30 AM, PHILIP JERAIR YERANOSIAN pyeranos@ucla.edu wrote:
DARK HERO OF THE INFORMATION AGE: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics
I read this book the other day. Attached is a paper by McCulloch and Pitts which I discovered upon reading the book. Offhandedly, I believe this paper is superior to the work of Hubel and Wiesel - simply because of who we are dealing with. McCulloch and Pitts were world-class mathematical prodigies; Hubel and Wiesel were not in their league.
The important thing to keep in mind, as Martin recently pointed out, is the historical context of their work - the background against which these peoples’ work is placed. This frog paper was published a decade after the infamous break between the duo and Wiener (the greatest mathematical prodigy of all time). This break is significant because it represents a schism which should not be there. The untimely deaths of Pitts due to alcoholism and the general lack of Wiener’s presence raises further flags.
There was a 2015 Nobel prize awarded for work on the mechanisms of DNA repair. In my mind, the split between McCulloch and Pitts and Wiener is an unrepaired break in the DNA (which persists today). If we take a close look at this frog paper in the light of PCT, we will be able to begin repair of the double-stranded break.