Started – Mechanisation of the Mind – the History of Cognitive Sciences by Dupuy (See below)
Actually only read the 6-page preface so far and looking very promising. Not only do we encounter Poincare’s “dazzling intuitions” and self-organising systems in the first page – (the latter concept apparently pre-dating the intended scope of CogSci / Cybernetics from day#1 in 1976) – but we have a long quote from a Stanford lecture entitled “Beyond the Dualism between Cultured Ignorami and Hidebound Savants” in which he describes the schizophrenia …
between American Neo-Positivism
and French Post-Structuralism
between Hidebound Savants
and Cultured Ignorami (or Foggie Froggies)
between the philosophies of science, mathematics and logic
and the philosophies of the human and social “sciences”
between the analytic, rigorous, democratic, shallow and tedious
and the rich and meaningful on the other
between knowing everything about almost nothing
and knowing almost nothing about everything
between the need for formal models
and his nevertheless deeply held belief that ….
literature is a superior form of knowledge to science.
Wow, all this from a book on cybernetics. I can’t wait.
Must stop gathering and start organising threads of thought.
Bumped in to Michael and friend Gaylon in the Pick last night. Discover Gaylon taught ZAMM at Stanford (or was it Berkeley ?), but strangely didn’t know Lila. Must talk sometime, maybe next week.
Moby Dick turns out to be an excellent conversation piece with waiters, barmen and barflies, most seem to wish they’d read, or to be planning to read it. Few have, but everyone seems to have an opinion.
Need Meta-tagging capability in Blog (Klog) publishing.
Tools for meta-tag “library” selection / creation / management.
Then bingo, self-organising knowledge (well peer-organising anyway)
[Oh yeah, and half an hour ago, England lost to Brazil – life goes on.]
5 thoughts on “Dupuy’s History of Cognitive Sciences”