Week 1 (9/20): 7
Themes and Agenda |
Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, Ch. 1 and overview
of overall structure. |
Week 2 (9/27):
The Natural and the Artificial
Reporter: Emily Brock |
Primary
Aristotle, Physics, Book II
Bacon, The New Organon, Book I
Robert Hooke, Micrographia, Preface
Secondary
Peter Dear, Discipline & Experience, Ch. 6, "Art, Nature,
Metaphor"
S. Lelas, "Science as Technology", Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 44(1993),
423-42
J.E. Tiles, "Experiment as Intervention", Brit. J. Phil. Sci.
44(1993), 463-75
Background
Paolo Rossi, Philosophy, Technology, and the Arts in the Early Modern
Era
Ian Hacking, Representing and Intervening |
Week 3 (10/4):
The Clockwork Universe
Reporter: Carla Makler |
Primary
Descartes, The
World, or Treatise on Light, and Treatise on Man
Christiaan Huygens, On
the Center of Oscillation (for other texts on mechanics by Descartes
and Huygens, click here)
Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy,
Preface, Axioms or Laws of Motion, and Book I, Sect. 2 (passim)
Secondary
Alan Gabbey, "Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy:
A Treatise on 'Mechanics'?", in P.M. Harman and A.E.Shapiro (eds),The
Investigation of Difficult Things, 305-322
Michael S. Mahoney, "The Determination of Time and of Longitude at
Sea", in H.J.M Bos, et al, Studies on Christiaan Huygens,
234-270
Michael S. Mahoney, "The
Mathematical Realm of Nature", in D.E. Garber et al.(eds.), Cambridge
History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, Vol. I, pp. 702-55
Otto Mayr, Authority, Liberty, and Automatic Machinery in Early
Modern Europe, Ch. 3, "The Clockwork Universe"
Background and Additional References
See syllabus for HIS
591, Spring '97
Esthetic Intellectual Experience
William J.H. Andrewes, The Quest for Longitude (Harvard Collection
of Historical Scientific Instruments, 1996) |
Week 4 (10/11):
The World of Energy
Reporter: Matt Wisnioski |
Primary
Sadi Carnot, Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire; E Clapeyron,
Memoir
on the Motive Power of Heat; R. Clausius, On the Motive Power of
Heat (published togegther by E. Mendoza)
Charles Babbage, On
the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures
Joseph Fourier, Théorie analytique de la chaleur [1812,
1822]; cf. original versions, "Mémoire sur la propagation de la
chaleur avec notes séparées sur cette propagation ... ",
in Ivor Grattan-Guiness and J.R. Ravetz, Joseph Fourier 1768-1830
(Cambridge, MA, 1972)
Secondary
M. Norton Wise, "Work and Waste: Political Economy and Natural
Philosophy in Nineteenth Century Britain", History of Science 27(1989),
263-301, 391-449; 28(1990), 221-61
Wise, "Mediating Machines", Science in Context 2,1(1988), 77-113
Background and Additional References
Crosbie Smith, The Science of Energy |
Week 5 (10/18):
Cybernetics
Reporter: Joe November |
Primary
Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener and Julian Bigelow, "Behavior, Purpose
and Teleology," Philosophy of Science 10 (1943): 18-24
Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the
Animal and the Machine (Cambridge: MIT, 1948; 2nd ed., 1961)
W. Ross Ashby, An Introduction to Cybernetics
Secondary
Michael A. Arbib, "A Historical Perspective [on Cybernetics]",
in his Brains, Machines, and Mathematics, 2nd. ed. Chap. 1
Peter Galison, "The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic
Vision," Critical Inquiry 21 (1994): 228-265
David A. Mindell, "'Datum for it Own Annihilation:' Feedback, Contol,
and Computing, 1916-1945" (Ph.D., MIT, 1996), Chapter 9
Geof Bowker, "How to be Universal: Some Cybernetic Strategies, 1943-70,"
Soc.
Stud. Sci. 23 (1993): 107-27
H. Kalmus, "A Cybernetical Aspect of Genetics," Journal of Heredity
41 (1950): 19-22
Robert Trappl, ed. Cybernetics: Theory and Application (Washington:
Hemisphere, 1983); students should look at the range of fields covered
under "Applications"
Background and Additional References
Otto Mayr, The origins of feedback control
Steven J. Heims, The Cybernetics Group, 1946-1953: Constructing
a Social Science for Postwar America |
Week 6 (10/25):
Information Theory
Reporter: Tania Munz |
Primary
Claude Shannon, The Mathematical Theory of Communication
Henry Quastler (ed.), Essays on the Use of Information Theory in
Biology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1953)
F. H. C. Crick, "On Protein Synthesis," Symposium of the Society
for Experimental Biology 12 (1958): 138-63
J.B.S. Haldane, "Data Needed for a Blueprint of the First Organism,"
in Sideney W. Fox, ed. The Origins of Prebiological Systems (Academic
Press, 1965)
Ken Thompson, "On
Trusting Trust", Communications of the ACM, 27, 8(1984), 761-763
Secondary
William Aspray, "The Scientific Conceptualization of Information: A
Survey," Annals of the History of Computing 7:2 (1985): 117-140
Mindell, Chapter 4
Sahotra Sarkar, "Biological Information: A Skeptical Look at Some Central
Dogmas of Molecular Biology," The Philosophy and History of Molecular
Biology: New Perspectives (Kluwer, 1996), pp. 187-231
Evelyn Fox Keller, "The Body of a New Machine: Situating the Organism
Between the Telegraph and the Computer," last essay in Refiguring Life:
Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1995).
Lily E. Kay, "Cybernetics, Information, Life: The Emergence of Scriptural
Representations of Heredity", Configurations 5(1997), 23-91; and
"Who Wrote the Book of Life? Information and the Transformation of Molecular
Biology," Science in Context 8 (1995): 609-34.
Background and Additional References
Lila L. Gatlin, Information Theory and the Living System (Columbia
U.P., 1972), Chaps. 1,6,7
Francois Jacob, The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity (Pantheon,
English translation 1973, French 1970)
John R. Pierce, An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols,
Signals and Noise (NY: Harper, 1961; 2nd. rev. ed., NY: Dover, 1980) |
|
FALL BREAK
|
Week 7 (11/8):
Game Theory and Economics |
Primary
John v. Neumann and Oscar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic
Behavior (1944), Chapter I
Secondary
Margaret Schabas, "Alfred W. Marshall, W. Stanley Jevons, and the mathematization
of economics", ISIS 80(1989): 60-73; cf. her A World Ruled by
Number: William Stanley Jevons and the Rise of Mathematical Economics
(1990)
Robert J. Leonard, "Creating a context for game theory", in E. Roy
Weintraub (ed.), Toward a History of Game Theory, 29-76
Philip Mirowski, "What were von Neuman and Morgenstern trying to accomplish?",
ibid.,
113-147
Background and Additional References
Philip Mirowski, More heat than light: Economics as social physics,
Physics as nature's economics (1989) [a controversial
book; cf. "Review Symposium on Philip Mirowski's 'More Heat than Light
...", Philosophy of the Social Sciences 22(1992), 77-141, esp. the
critique of M. Norton Wise]
Bruna Ingrao and Giorgio Israel, The invisible hand: Economic equilibrium
in the history of science (1990)
Mary S. Morgan, The history of econometric ideas |
Week 8 (11/15):
The Computer and the
Church-Turing Thesis
Reporter: Jane Murphy |
Primary
John von Neumann, "First Draft of a Report on the Edvac" (1945) and
"General and Logical Theory of Automata" (1954)
M.S. Mahoney, "Computer
Science: The Search for a Mathematical Theory", in J. Echeverria,
A. Ibarra and T. Mormann (eds.), The Space of Mathematics (Berlin/New
York: De Gruyter, 1992), 347-61
Robert Rosen, "Church's Thesis and Its Relation to the Concept of Realizability
in Biology and Physics", Bull. Math. Biophysics 24(1962), 375-393
Robert Rosen, "Effective Processes and Natural Law", in The Universal
Turing Machine, ed. R. Herken, 485-98
B. Jack Copeland, "The
Church-Turing Thesis", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v.
Background and Additional References
Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing, The Enigma (visit Hodge's extensive
Turing
home page, which includes a link to a working Turing
Machine applet)
William Aspray, John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing |
Week 9 (11/22):
Artificial Intelligence
Reporter: Craig Cornelius |
Primary
Alan M. Turing, "Computing
Machinery and Intelligence", Mind 59(1950), 433-60
John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, Claude E. Shannon,
A
Proposal
for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence(1956)
Marvin Minsky,
"Steps Toward Artificial Intelligence", in Edward
Feigenbaum and Julian Feldman, Computers and Thought (1963),
406-450.
"Artificial Intelligence: A Debate" ( John Searle vs. Paul and Patricia
Churchland), Scientific American (January 1990), 25-37
Simon, Chaps. 3-4
Secondary
Allen
Newell, "Intellectual Issues in the History of Artificial Intelligence",
in Fritz Machlup and Una Mansfeld (eds.), The Study of Information:
Interdisciplinary Messages, 187-227
Background and Additional References
Margaret A. Boden (ed.), The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence
(includes Turing's and Searle's papers)
Hubert L. Dreyfus, What Computers Can't Do (Harper & Row,
1972)
Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind (Simon and Schuster, 1986)
Daniel Crevier, AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial
Intelligence (Basic Books, 1993) |
Week 10 (11/29):
Models of Growth |
|
Week 11 (12/6):
Cellular Automata and Adaptive Systems
Artificial Life |
Primary
Christopher Langton, "Artificial Life", in Margaret A. Boden (ed.)
The Philosophy of Artificial Life, Chap. 1
Thomas S. Ray, "An Approach
to the Synthesis of Life", ibid., Chap. 3; see the Tierra
home page and get a copy of the software
John Maynard Smith, "Evolution -- Natural and Artificial" ibid.,
Chap. 5
Elliott Sober, "Learning from Functionalism -- Prospects for Strong
Artificial Life", ibid., Chap. 14
John L. Casti, "Newton, Aristotle and the Modeling of Living Systems",
in John Casti and Anders Karlqvist (eds.),
Newton to Aristotle: Toward a Theory of Models for Living Systems,
47-89
Walter Fontana, Günther Wagner, Leo W. Buss, "Beyond Digital Naturalism",
in Christoper G. Langton (ed.), Artificial Life: An Overview, 211-228
(online
version [requires PostScript viewer and/or printer])
Secondary
Claus Emmeche, The Garden in the Machine: The Emerging Science of
Artificial Life
Background and Additional References
John H. Holland, Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity
Richard Doyle, On Beyond Living: Rhetorical Transformations of the
Life Sciences, Chap. 7, "Emergent Power: Vitality and Theology in Artificial
Life"
Stefan Helmreich, Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life
in a Digital World
John L. Casti, Alternate Realities: Mathematical Models of Nature
and Man, Chap. 2 |
Week12 (12/13):
A Philosophy of Complexity |
Simon, Chap. 7
Cilliers, Complexity
and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems (London/NY, 1998) |