This text is a description of a computer-based system designed to assist physicians with clinical decision-making. This system, termed MYCIN, utilizes computer techniques derived principally from the subfield of computer science known as artificial intelligence (AI). MYCIN's task is to assist with the decisions involved in the selection of appropriate therapy for patients with infections.

MYCIN contains considerable medical expertise and is also a novel application of computing technology. Thus, this text is addressed both to members of the medical community, who may have limited computer science backgrounds, and to computer scientists with limited knowledge of medical computing and clinical medicine. Some sections of the text may be of greater interest to one community than to the other. A guide to the text follows so that you may select those portions most pertinent to your particular interests and background.

The complete book in a single file.

Reprinted in Readings in Uncertain Reasoning, G. Shafer and J. Pearl, eds., pp. 259-273, San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc., 1990.See also: Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research (BMIR).… quantifying confirmation and then manipulating the numbers as though they were probabilities quickly leads to apparent inconsistencies or paradoxes. Carl Hempel presented an early analysis of confirmation (Hempel, 1965), pointing out as we have that C[h,e] is a very different concept from P(hle ). His famous Paradox of the Ravens was presented early in his discussion of the logic of confirmation. Let hl be the statement that "all ravens are black" and h2 the statement that "all nonblack things are nonravens." Clearly hi is logically equivalent to h,2. If one were to draw an analogy with conditional probability, it might at first seem valid, therefore, to assert that C[hl,e] = C[h2,e] for all e. However, it appears counterintuitive to state that the observation of a green vase supports hi, even though the observation does seem to support h,2. C[h,e] is therefore different from P(hle) for it seems somehow wrong that an observation of a vase could logically support an assertion about ravens. Another characteristic of a quantitative approach to confirmation that distinguishes the concept from probability was well-recognized by Carnap (1950) and discussed by Barker (1957) and Harrd (1970). They note it is counterintuitive to suggest that the confirmation of the negation of a hypothesis is equal to one minus the confirmation of the hypothesis, i.e., C[h,e] is not 1 - C[-qh,e]. The streptococcal decision rule asserted that a gram-positive coccus growing in chains is a Streptococcus with a measure of support specified as 7 out of 10. This translates to C[h,e]=0.7 where h is "the organism is a Streptococcus" and e is the information that "the organism is a gram-positive coccus growing in chains." As discussed above, an expert does not necessarily believe that C[mh,e] = 0.3. The evidence is said to be supportive of the contention that the organism is a Streptococcus and can therefore hardly also support the contention that the organism is not a Streptococcus. Ch.13 of Mycin Book; revised from Math. Biosci. 23:351-379

AIAA Journal, 3 (8), 1445-1450.

E.A. Feigenbaum and J. Feldman (Eds.). Computers and Thought. McGraw-Hill, 1963. This collection includes twenty classic papers by such pioneers as A. M. Turing and Marvin Minsky who were behind the pivotal advances in artificially simulating human thought processes with computers. All Parts are available as downloadable pdf files; most individual chapters are also available separately. COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE. A. M. Turing. CHESS-PLAYING PROGRAMS AND THE PROBLEM OF COMPLEXITY. Allen Newell, J.C. Shaw and H.A. Simon. SOME STUDIES IN MACHINE LEARNING USING THE GAME OF CHECKERS. A. L. Samuel. EMPIRICAL EXPLORATIONS WITH THE LOGIC THEORY MACHINE: A CASE STUDY IN HEURISTICS. Allen Newell J.C. Shaw and H.A. Simon. REALIZATION OF A GEOMETRY-THEOREM PROVING MACHINE. H. Gelernter. EMPIRICAL EXPLORATIONS OF THE GEOMETRY-THEOREM PROVING MACHINE. H. Gelernter, J.R. Hansen, and D. W. Loveland. SUMMARY OF A HEURISTIC LINE BALANCING PROCEDURE. Fred M. Tonge. A HEURISTIC PROGRAM THAT SOLVES SYMBOLIC INTEGRATION PROBLEMS IN FRESHMAN CALCULUS. James R. Slagle. BASEBALL: AN AUTOMATIC QUESTION ANSWERER. Green, Bert F. Jr., Alice K. Wolf, Carol Chomsky, and Kenneth Laughery. INFERENTIAL MEMORY AS THE BASIS OF MACHINES WHICH UNDERSTAND NATURAL LANGUAGE. Robert K. Lindsay. PATTERN RECOGNITION BY MACHINE. Oliver G. Selfridge and Ulric Neisser. A PATTERN-RECOGNITION PROGRAM THAT GENERATES, EVALUATES, AND ADJUSTS ITS OWN OPERATORS. Leonard Uhr and Charles Vossler. GPS, A PROGRAM THAT SIMULATES HUMAN THOUGHT. Allen Newell and H.A. Simon. THE SIMULATION OF VERBAL LEARNING BEHAVIOR. Edward A. Feigenbaum. PROGRAMMING A MODEL OF HUMAN CONCEPT FORMULATION. Earl B. Hunt and Carl I. Hovland. SIMULATION OF BEHAVIOR IN THE BINARY CHOICE EXPERIMENT Julian Feldman. A MODEL OF THE TRUST INVESTMENT PROCESS. Geoffrey P. E. Clarkson. A COMPUTER MODEL OF ELEMENTARY SOCIAL BEHAVIOR. John T. Gullahorn and Jeanne E. Gullahorn. TOWARD INTELLIGENT MACHINES. Paul Armer. STEPS TOWARD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Marvin Minsky. A SELECTED DESCRIPTOR-INDEXED BIBLIOGRAPHY TO THE LITERATURE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Marvin Minsky.

... The literature does not include any general discussion of the outstanding problems of this field. In this article, an attempt will be made to separate out, analyze, and find the relations between some of these problems. Analysis will be supported with enough examples from the literature to serve the introductory function of a review article, but there remains much relevant work not described here.Proc. Institute of Radio Engineers 49, p. 8-30

The suggestion is based on the similarity of behaviour of these formal systems and or animals. The design of classification computers is discussed in the first paper; the design of conditional probability computers Is discussed in a third paper (Uttley, 1958, ref. 15); in both papers working models are described. FUrther reference to these papers will be by date only. It is the aim of the present paper to consider whether the two principles might operate in nervous systems. Mere are four requirements for the principle of classification to operate in an area of a nervous system.

Biometrics is a scientific journal emphasizing the role of statistics and mathematics in the biological sciences. Its object is to promote and extend the use of mathematical and statistical methods in pure and applied biological sciences by describing developments in these methods and their applications in a form readily assimilable by experimental scientists. JSTOR provides a digital archive of the print version of Biometrics. Authorized users may be able to access the full text articles at this site.

Proc. First Intern. Congress of Cybernetics, Namur, 8S-56