Margaret A. Boden, Mind As Machine: A History of Cognitive Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 2 volumes, 1712 Pps., $250.00.
Margaret A. Boden is Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, and of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. She holds a Cambridge ScD as well as honorary doctorates from Bristol, Sussex, and the Open University. Boden herein presents a selective, but illuminative, history of cognitive science (CS). Although the two volume set is encyclopedic in length, it is a historical essay, written by one person’s perspective, and not an encyclopedia of cognitive science. She presents CS as a whole, what is trying to do as a whole, and what hope there is to doing it. A prevalent theme throughout the work is that cognitive science today cannot be understood except from a historical perspective. This work shows how cognitive scientists have tried to answer puzzling questions about minds and mental capacities.
Boden presents her masterful narrative as a discussion of ideas and not as a compendium of anecdotes about ideas. As such, she explains how the key questions in the field arose and how they came together. Thus, she speaks little about the public reception of ideas. Chapter one sets the scene for the discussion that follows and presents a general timeline for the development of CS. Therein, Boden argues that CS is a catholic field in three ways: first, it covers all aspects of mind and behavior; second, it draws on many disciplines; and third, it relies on more than one kind of theory. Thus, it is an ‘interdisciplinary study of mind, informed by theoretical concepts drawn from computer science and control theory’ (12). Chapters two through six moves along the established timeline from antiquity up until the twentieth century.
Chapters seven through sixteen branch out into the various disciplines which comprise CS, according to Boden’s narrative. She approaches the study of cognitive science’s development from seven disciplines, to each of which a chapter is devoted: 1) psychology, 2) neuroscience, 3) linguistics, 4) philosophy, 5) anthropology, 6) artificial intelligence (AI), and 7) artificial life (A-Life). Each of these seven distinct but overlapping disciplines asks about mental processes and how the brain/mind works. The answers to these questions serve to unify the field of CS. Each discipline also, in its own way, asks what the mind is, what it does, how it works, and how it developed. Boden contends that the best way to think about this discussion is as the study of Mind As Machine; hence the title of this two set volume. Boden acknowledges that a fully detailed history of CS would necessitate one large volume for each of the seven disciplines listed above. As such, it may be best to think of Boden’s work as a ‘thumbnail sketch’ of what such a massive history might look like rather than a comprehensive record.
Despite the large size of the two-volume set, coverage of the field of CS is limited to North America and the UK. Cognitive science in Europe and Asia are neglected. In addition, the large size makes for a user unfriendly document. There are many cross-references to other sections of the text, but the cross-references are imprecise, to a large section, and it is not always obvious what is being referred to by the cross-reference. Although most easily read by practicing cognitive scientists, Boden has attempted to make this two volume set easily accessible to the mass of people. Although in no manner an easy read, I deem her attempt to have been largely successful. The set is best read in its entirety as the narrative nature of the work is not best comprehended in bite-sized pieces.
In sum, for scholars who have interest in the ongoing discussion of mind, this two volume set presents a veritable interdisciplinary approach to the subject that is indispensable. As such, Mind as Machine will be a rich resource for anyone working on the mind, in any academic discipline, who wants to know how our understanding of our mental activities and capacities has developed.
Bradford McCall, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA