In Pursuit of Mind …

It is the ultimate scientific question underlying psychology and AI as well as a substantial part of philosophy: What is the nature of the mind? Newell's autobiography (American Psychological Association 1986) puts it thusly: The central line of Newell's research has remained always the quest for understanding the nature of the mind. The detailed analysis of protocols, the development of production systems, pulling together the theory of human problem solving (in the book of the same name, with Herb Simon), the development of the notion of cognitive architecture, the problem-space hypothesis, a theory of how humans acquire cognitive skills, work on artificial intelligence systems for doing demanding intellectual tasks (such as discovering algorithms), the development of a complete architecture for intelligence--these are some of the main stepping stones. They comprise various mixtures of artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology, as chance and opportunity would have it. This central question will occupy Newell for the rest of his research life, no doubt.