The Computer History Museum's page on the history of computer chess, from 1945-1997.

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Gilbert Harman reviews "Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science," by Margaret A. Boden (Oxford University Press, 2006).

"The term cognitive science, which gained currency in the last half of the 20th century, is used to refer to the study of cognition---cognitive structures and processes in the mind or brain, mostly in people rather than, say, rats or insects. Cognitive science in this sense has reflected a growing rejection of behaviorism in favor of the study of mind and 'human information processing.' The field includes the study of thinking, perception, emotion, creativity, language, consciousness and learning. Sometimes it has involved writing (or at least thinking about) computer programs that attempt to model mental processes or that provide tools such as spreadsheets, theorem provers, mathematical-equation solvers and engines for searching the Web. The programs might involve rules of inference or 'productions,' 'mental models,' connectionist 'neural' networks or other sorts of parallel 'constraint satisfaction' approaches. Cognitive science so understood includes cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and artificial life; conceptual, linguistic and moral development; and learning in humans, other animals and machines."

"Boden's goal, she says, is to show how cognitive scientists have tried to find computational or informational answers to frequently asked questions about the mind---'what it is, what it does, how it works, how it evolved, and how it's even possible.' How do our brains generate consciousness? Are animals or newborn babies conscious? Can machines be conscious? If not, why not? How is free will possible, or creativity? How are the brain and mind different? What counts as a language?"

"The first five chapters present the historical background of the field, delving into such topics as cybernetics and feedback, and discussing important figures such as Reneacute; Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Charles Babbage, Alan Turing and John von Neumann, as well as Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts, who in 1943 cowrote a paper on propositional calculus, Turing machines and neuronal synapses."

"Chapter 6 introduces the founding personalities of cognitive science from the 1950s.... Herbert Simon and Allen Newell developed a computer program for proving logic theorems."

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. As described by the publisher: "Psychology is the thematic heart of cognitive science, which aims to understand human (and animal) minds. But its core theoretical ideas are drawn from cybernetics and artificial intelligence, and many cognitive scientists try to build functioning models of how the mind works. In that sense, Margaret Boden suggests, its key insight is that mind is a (very special) machine. Because the mind has many different aspects, the field is highly interdisciplinary. It integrates psychology not only with cybernetics/AI, but also with neuroscience and clinical neurology; with the philosophy of mind, language, and logic; with linguistic work on grammar, semantics, and communication; with anthropological studies of cultures; and with biological (and A-Life) research on animal behaviour, evolution, and life itself. Each of these disciplines, in its own way, asks what the mind is, what it does, how it works, how it develops\---|and how it is even possible." See [review above.]

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