The Mechanization of Thought, featuring a Significant article by W. McCulloch (1958)

The Mechanization of Thought Processes, Teddington, National Physical Laboratory. A collection of 12 preprints for papers presented at the symposium for November 27, 1958. No doubt these were distributed to attendees, to be read before the symposium began, as well as to all interested parties (I guess, though I'm not sure). Every paper here has some sort of notation on the front wrapper, usually in pencil but sometimes in ink; there are also notes in the papers themselves. I cannot recall the source for these papers, so I cannot say who the notes were made by, which is unfortunate, because they seem interesting to me (more so if we knew the author). VG condition overall. SOLD

 

Richard L. Gregory, In his book Odd Perceptions (Routledge, chap 6), remember this 1958 conference as the one which “launched a new way of thinking about brain functions and mind, in terms of neural nets and computing”, and mentioning papers by Minsky, McCarthy, Rosenblatt, Uttley, Selfridge. When Gregory got to the McCulloch paper (above), he calls it “the most memorable of them all”.

Gregory wrote his recollection of Warren McCulloch, about to give his talk at the symposia and whose paper is offered below), asking his audience how many people had read his paper—with that, only a few hands were raised. Given the complexity of the paper and the newness of the ideas, McCulloch evidently was pissed enough to simply throw his lecture sheets in the air and abandoned his subject. )

On the paper wrapper cover of each is printed “to be presented at a symposium on the Mechanization of Thought Processes”, National Physical Laboratory, Teddington. They would be published in Mechanization of Thought Processes: Proceedings of a Symposium Held at the National Physical Laboratory, London, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, November, 24-27 1958, in two volumes, in 1959.

• There were 32 papers overall from the symposium. Note: the notations for “Paper 3-6” relates to the section/paper number of the printed version of the symposium published in two volumes in 1959.

 

The papers:

McCulloch W.S., “Agatha Tyche: of nervous nets the lucky reckoners”, 24x17.5cm, 15pp. The cover has an old vertical crease, otherwise VG.

“A magnificent piece of work called Agathe Tyche: The lucky reckoners offers a fair overview of muchof his philosophy with respect to ways of building reliable machinery from unsafe components. The classic by Cowan called Reliable Computation in the Presence of Noise and almost all of his later work on reliable computing was the result of McCulloch’s expansion of Von Neumann’s original concept.”--Roberto Moreno-Díaz (Instituto Universitario de Ciencias y Tecnologías Cibernéticas Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), Neurocybernetics and Artificial Intelligence.

“It took me 5 years to develop probabilistic logic sufficiently to handle two things: first, circuits which, like the respiratory mechanism, keep working despite common shift of threshold even under surgical anaesthesia, and second, by a proper segregation of the possible errors, circuits which suffered random but limited perturbations of excitation, threshold, and local synapsis, and to show in them a nonzero rate of error-free operation. You will find these tricks described in “Agathe Tyche”  “ McCulloch, in referencing von Neumann “ Probabilistic logic and synthesis of reliable organisms from unre­liable components” (1956). --McCulloch W. S., ”Reliable systems using unreliable units”, in: David McKenzie Rioch. & Edwin A. W. (eds.) Disorders of communication, 1964, p. 24.

Also included:

A.M. Andrews, “Learning Machines”, 24x17.5 cm 31pp., “Paper 3-6”. Very Good.
H.B. Barlow, “Sensory Mechanisms, the Reduction of Redundancy, and Intelligence”, 24x17.5cm, 25pp, “Paper 4-1”.

D.B. Fry and P. Denes, “An Analogue of the Speech recognition Process”, 24x17.5cm, 10pp, “Paper 3-1”. Near-fine copy, save for a note in pen on the front cover, and some extensive notes on two pages (6-7) also in pen.

S. Gill, “Possibilities for the Practical Utilization of Learning Processes” 24x17.5 cm, 9pp

R.L. Gregory, “Models and the Localisation of Function in the Central Nervous System”. 24X17.5cm, 13pp. “Paper 4-5”. VG

P. Ladefoged, “The Perception of Speech”, 24x17.5cm, 13pp, “Paper 3-2”. Near-fine save for some notes in pen on the front cover (“evolution as a Markoff Process”.

D.M. MacKay, “Operational Aspects of Intellect”, 24x17.5 cm, 16pp, “Paper 1-2”. This is no doubt an early photographic reproduction of the original paper, printed on one side only, and stapled at top-left. There are several ms notes through the text. Good.

Newman, E.A. “An Analysis of Non-Mathematical Data Processing”, 24x17.5cm, 12pp., “Paper 4-12”. Notes in pen rather than the usual pencil, otherwise a VG copy.

A.W. Uttley, “Conditional Probability Computing in a Nervous System”, 28x20cm. 27pp., Paper 1-5. Uneven tear in the cover at right-edge middle. Good.

A.J. Watson, “Some Questions Concerning the Explanation of Learning in Animals”, 24x17.5cm, 30pp, “Paper 4-6”. Very Good.

Whitfield, “Sensory Mechanisms and Sensations”, 28x20cm, 10pp, “Paper 2-6”. VG copy if not for ink underlining on page 9.