AUTOMATA STUDIES

Printed in the United States of America PREFACE Among the most challenging scientific questions of our time are the corresponding analytic and synthetic problems: How does the brain function? Can we design a machine which will simulate a brain? Speculation on these problems, which can be traced back many centuries, usually reflects in any period the characteristics of machines then in use. Descartes, in DeBomine, sees the lower animals and, in many of his functions, man as automata. Using analogies drawn from water-clocks, fountains and mechanical devices common to the seventeenth century, he imagined that the nerves transmitted signals by tiny mechanical motions.