The Computer and the Brain: Second Edition (Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman Memorial Lectures) (Paperback)

~ John von Neumann (Author) "I begin by discussing some of the principles underlying the systematics and the practice of computing machines..." (more)
Key Phrases: basic active organs, control sequence point, stimulation criterion (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Whether they think that artificial intelligence is impossible or inevitable, most people have highly polarized views on it. John von Neumann, genius, mathematician, and inventor of the nearly ubiquitous computer architecture that bears his name, blazed trails for both camps in The Computer and the Brain. This short book, which was written originally for Yale's Silliman lectures, but published posthumously, summarizes his views on machine and biological intelligence with unprecedented clarity and precision. His understanding of neuroscience was that of a brilliant and strongly motivated amateur at the end of the 1950s--good enough to take on the problem, but by no means matching his comprehension of the machines to which he had devoted much of his professional life. Still, his take on intracranial computation is stunningly prescient--he looks beyond the then-fashionable digital metaphors to suggest a semi-analog strategy that uses parallel processing to make up for its deficiency in speed. Prominent neuroscientific thinkers Paul M. Churchland and Patricia S. Churchland provide a brief, enlightening foreword to this second edition, placing the author's thinking in context and grounding the reader in the scientific milieu that gave rise to The Computer and the Brain. Although his computer architecture slowly is growing obsolete, von Neumann has given us a more lasting legacy in his thinking about thinking. --Rob Lightner

Product Description

With a foreword by Paul M. Churchland and Patricia S. ChurchlandThis book represents the views of one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century on the analogies between computing machines and the living human brain. John von Neumann concludes that the brain operates in part digitally, in part analogically, but uses a peculiar statistical language unlike that employed in the operation of man-made computers. This edition includes a new foreword by two eminent figures in the fields of philosophy, neuroscience, and consciousness.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 2 Sub edition (July 11, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300084730
• ISBN-13: 978-0300084733
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #270,203 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great book for exploring the human brain as computer model, March 30, 1999

By	Harvey B. Vedder "Loperman" (NYC, where else?) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Computer and the Brain (The Silliman Memorial Lectures Series) (Paperback)

A book for a limited audience. You have got to be interested in some really seminal, currently unresolved issues of how the great invention of the ALU (arithmetic logic unit) still employed in every computer built to the present day, was a compromise effort by this genius. His thought was to model the human brain, and the ALU succeeded in modeling just a small part, but he was totally frustrated and unsatisfied by the result--for good reason. He points out that the very language of the human brain has not yet been discovered--the orders of magnitude by which its process and results exceed the merely digital high speed comparator we call a computer (my apologies to Bill Gates!) clearly demonstrate the existence of a logic and a mathematics, the simplest rules of which as yet defy all our efforts to understand its workings, while we experience its results every time we think. Depth of logical levels, and depth of arithmetic levels necessary to achieve the requisite results we obtain from our Crays and our PCs are scorned by the human brain in a radical simplicity as yet undiscovered (not in that it does it, but in how it does it: therefore he postulates the existence of a radically, essentially different math and logic inherent in its workings). He lays out the discoveries of Turing, McCullough and Weiner in a brilliant tour de force of known (1955)neurological and cybernetic discoveries, and how they charted his course in creating the ALU. He compares analog and digital and mixed models of computing but (in my opinion) oversimplifies the digital aspect of thinking and memory, deeming them to be the route used by the human brain in performing its unruffled magic. He closes by posing two questions that express the wonderment faced by a high level intelligence when accosted by the facts he was unable to wrap mental arms around: 1)"what essential inferences about the arithmetical and logical structure of the computing machine that the nervous system represents can be drawn from these ...conflicting observations? and 2)what are the logics and mathematics in the central nervous system [that must be]structurally *essentially* different from those languages to which our common experience refers? His fellow researcher, Warren McCullough similarly closed out his life and research by repeating a question that plagued him all his life: What is a number, that a man can know it, and a man that he can know a number?

This is a great book that pushed the limits of his time; his swan song, to be delivered as the Yale Silliman lecture, but never was, due to Von Neumann's tragic untimely death in his early fifties.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The un-digital brain., September 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Computer and the Brain (The Silliman Memorial Lectures Series) (Paperback)

Perhaps the most famous and often quoted line in this remarkable book appears on page 39, where von Neumann declares that "The most immediate observation regarding the nervous system is that its functioning is prima facie digital."

The "prima facie" modifier is commonly taken to mean von Neumann saw the brain as "obviously digital," or "patently digital," and that it therefore must resemble a digital computer. But as you read the rest of the book, you quickly discover that this is not what John von Neumann intended. Von Neumann uses words cautiously and precisely, and to him, "Prima facie" means exactly what it says: "on its face."

In 1956, the brain appeared digital. But von Neumann thought this impression might be superficial. He thought that deeper biological investigation might well demonstrate that the nervous system is not, in fact, digital, or not completely digital. He believed it might work in some more sophisticated way, and suggests that perhaps some intermediate signaling mechanism, a hybrid between analog and digital, might be at work in the brain. For this and other reasons he actively resisted labeling the brain as a digital computer.

In the mid 90s, evidence began to appear that von Neumann was probably right to reserve his judgment. These curious new results show that a single nerve impulse is somehow able to convey information to the brain. This signal seems distinctly un-digital. A number of theories have popped up, some attempting to explain this whopping new mystery, others attempting to explain it away. But its impact on neurophysiology, and on conventional computer models of the brain, is pretty shocking. Not to say, devastating. (See Spikes, by Rieke et al, for a readable account of this story.) When the smoke clears, it would not be surprising if people go all the way back to John von Neumann, looking for traction, fresh starting points, and for von Neumann's wonderfully broad sense of what is possible in neurobiology - a sense we have evidently lost to progress in the years since he wrote this splendid essay.

Von Neumann did not include in this book his interesting views on the nervous system of the eye. He was an early adopter of visual memory systems in digital computers, and he was evidently intrigued by the way the retinal cells of the eye are arranged to look backward, that is, toward the screen of the back wall of the eye. Possibly he thought the retinal cells saw back there a thin film diffraction pattern. You can find his interest in the nervous system of the eye remarked in his brother Nicholas Vonneumann's book, John von Neumann as seen by his Brother, and this reminiscence is also paraphrased in Poundstone's Prisoner's Dilemma. Finally, some of the worldly story of von Neumann, his digital computers, and their role in the creation of the hydrogen bomb can be found in MaCrae's biography.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but no goosebumps, January 26, 2005

By	D. Sean West (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

After the quick read that it was this morning I am left uncertain as to exactly how I feel about this book. On the positive side even though one does get the feeling that The Computer and the Brain is slightly dated (1958) it has held up remarkably well despite the extreme rate of technological development. On the negative side though it is a bad sign when the most enjoyable part of a book is the foreword.

The cover of the book basically tells the whole story, apples and oranges- for while as von Neumann recognizes that "the most immediate observation regarding the nervous system is that its functioning is prima facie digital" the connection between them is not as strong as a first glance might suggest.

There doesn't seem to be too much that a study of one can teach us about the other but maybe finding out that lack of an underling connection is just as useful as finding such a connection. While this book is a fairly good recitation of the facts (at least as they were known in 1958) I can't say there is really much here to recommend it to the casual reader- think that only as a reference work can this book gain high praise.