1950's Science and Technology | The Computer and the Brain

Monograph

By: John von Neumann

Date: 1958

Source: Von Neumann, John. The Computer and the Brain. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1958, 42–44.

About the Author: John Louis von Neumann (1903–1957) was born in Budapest, Hungary, and received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Budapest in 1926. In 1930 he emigrated to the United States, joining the mathematics faculty at Princeton University. After World War II he helped develop the hydrogen bomb and during his career published some 150 articles. He died in Washington, D.C.

Introduction

Scientists have always had difficulty putting the study of human cognition on an empirical basis. The seventeenth-century French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes founded the study of cognition on the dichotomy between mind and body, asserting that because only humans had a mind, humans...