One

UNDERSTANDING THE NATURAL AND THE ARTIFICIAL WORLDS

THE ARTIFICIAL

THE ENVIRONMENT AS MOLD

The Artifact as "Interface"

p 9

An artifact can be thought of as a meeting point -an "interface" in today's terms- between an "inner" environment, the substance and organization of the artifact itself, and an "outer" environment, the surroundings in which it operates.

...

Notice that this way of viewing artifacts applies equally well to many things that are not man-made...

p 10

...we should expect to find this separability [...] in all large and complex systems, whether they are artificial or natural.

Functional Explanation

Functional Description and Synthesis

p 12

... a science of the artificial that would depend on the relative simplicity of the interface as its primary source of abstraction and generality.

Limits of Adaptation

UNDERSTANDING BY SIMULATING

Techniques of Simulation

p 17

Simulation as a technique for achieving understanding and predicting the behavior of systems, predates the course of the digital computer.

Simulation as a Source of New Knowledge

p 19-20

There are two related ways in which simulation can provide new knowledge... [the first] is that, even when we have correct premises, it may be very difficult to discover what they imply. [The second] Simulation of Poorly Understood Systems [understanding of an appropriate abstraction].

Note from Bertrand Russel, Preface to "Principia Mathematica", p 20-21

...the chief reason in favour of any theory on the principles of mathematics must always be inductive, i.e., it must lie in the fact that the theory in question enables us to deduce ordinary mathematics. In mathematics, the highest degree of self-evidence is usually not to be found quite at the beginning, but at some later point; hence the early deductions, until they reach this point, give reasons rather for believing the premises because true consequences follow from them, than for believing the consequences because they follow the premises.

Simulation of Poorly Understood Systems

THE COMPUTER AS ARTIFACT

p 22

A computer is an organization of elementary functional components.

Computers as Abstract Objects

p 23

Such a microtheory [of the laws that govern the components] might indeed be simply irrelevant.

Computers as Empirical Objects

p 24

To understand them, the systems had to be constructed and their behavior observed. In a similar vein, computer programs designed to play games or discover proofs for mathematical theorems spend their lifes in exceedingly large and complex task environments. Even when the programs themselves are only moderately large and intricate [...], too little is known about their task environments to permit accurate prediction of how well they will perform...

...

In theorem proving, for example, there has been a whole series of advances in heuristic power based on and guided by empirical exploration...

Computers and Thought

p 26

...we shall discover that in large part their behavior is governed by simple general laws, that what appears as complexity in the computer program was to a considerable extend complexity of the environment...

... it opens up an exceedingly important role for computer simulation as a tool for achieving a deeper understanding of human behavior.

SYMBOL SYSTEMS: RATIONAL ARTIFACTS

p 26

The computer is a member of an important family of artifacts called [...] physical symbol systems. Another [...] member of the family [...] is the human mind and brain. It is with this family of artifacts, and particularly the human version of it, that we will be primarily concerned in this book.

Basic Capabilities of Symbol Systems

Intelligence as Computation

p 28

...the hypothesis is that a physical symbol system of the sort I have just described has the necessary and sufficient means for general intelligent action. The hypothesis is clearly an empirical one, to be judged true or false on the basis of evidence.

Economics: Abstract Rationality