Thinking about Automating Thinking: An History of Early Computing and Cognition

• In Event: Working with Algorithms, Thinking through Automation

Abstract

Much has been written about the relationship between the sciences of the brain and mind (cognitive science, cognitive psychology, neuroscience) and computing. Indeed, many of the ideas that are foundational to how we think about thinking involve work on computers, what they can do, and what they tell us about who we are. Although this connection is explicit in the cybernetic and cognitive revolutions of the 1940s and 50s, I ask the question: what can the early history of computing, or even the first theorizations of computing technologies tell us about the study of how we think? My paper presents a series of preliminary findings of a much broader project about computers and brains, and in particular, the epistemological foundations of the theorization of digital computing. Between the first notion of a computer and those who formalized the concepts central to digital computing, there exists a gap: how did the nascent thought surrounding human reason vis-à-vis mechanical and digital technology coalesce into the various ‘disciplines of thinking’ that exist today? I sketch the relationship between computing and cognition in the early history of the computer in order to offer historiographical notes towards how we might study computing and thinking today.

Author

• Sam Hugh Franz, University of Michigan