Herbert A. Simon: The Bounds of Reason in Modern America

Portada
JHU Press, 27 abr 2005 - 420 páginas

Rarely does the world see as versatile a figure as Herbert Simon. A Nobel laureate in economics, he was an accomplished political scientist, winner of a lifetime achievement award from the American Psychological Association, and founder of the Department of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. In all his work in all these fields, he pursued a single goal: to create a science that could map the bounds of human reason and so enlarge its role in human affairs.

Hunter Crowther-Heyck uses the career of this unique individual to examine the evolution of the social sciences after World War II, particularly Simon's creation of a new field, systems science, which joined together two distinct, powerful approaches to human behavior, the sciences of choice and control. Simon sought to develop methods by which human behavior, specifically human problem-solving, could be modeled and simulated. Regarding mind and machine as synonymous, Simon applied his models of human behavior to many other areas, from public administration and business management to artificial intelligence and the design of complex social and technical systems.

In this informed and discerning study, Crowther-Heyck explores Simon's contributions to science and their influences on modern life and thought. For historians of science, social science, and technology, and for scholars of twentieth-century American intellectual and cultural history, this account of Herbert Simon's life and work provides a rich and valuable perspective.

 

Índice

The Garden of Forking Paths
12
The Chicago School and the Sciences of Control
31
Mathematics Logic and the Sciences of Choice
60
Research and Reform
75
Homo Administrativus or Choice under Control
96
Decisions and Revisions
120
Structuring His Environment
140
Islands of Theory
166
The Cognitive Revolution
233
Homo Adaptivus the Finite Problem Solver
255
Scientist of the Artificial
275
The Expert Problem Solver
291
A Model Scientist
315
Appendix Patrons of the Revolution
329
Notes
339
Essay on Sources
399

A New Model of Mind and Machine
184
The Program Is the Theory
215

Otras ediciones - Ver todo

Términos y frases comunes

Pasajes populares

Página 9 - The capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world— or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality.
Página 8 - ... forces, temperatures ; this difficult science is formed slowly, but it preserves every principle which it has once acquired ; it grows and strengthens itself incessantly in the midst of the many variations and errors of the human mind. Its chief attribute is clearness ; it has no marks to express confused notions. It brings together phenomena the most diverse, and discovers the hidden analogies which unite them.

Sobre el autor (2005)

Hunter Crowther-Heyck is an assistant professor of history of science at the University of Oklahoma and former exhibits curator at the National Library of Medicine.

Información bibliográfica