Warren Sturgis McCulloch (November 16, 1898 – September 24, 1969) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
neurophysiologist and
cyberneticianCybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to control theory and systems theory...
, known for his work on the foundation for certain brain theories and his contribution to the cybernetics movement.
Biography
Warren Sturgis McCulloch was born in
OrangeThe City of Orange is a township in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2000 Census, the township population was 32,868...
,
New JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered on the north by New York, and to the east by the Hudson River, Upper New York Bay, the Kill Van Kull, Newark Bay, the Arthur Kill, Raritan Bay, Sandy Hook Bay, Westchester County, New York City, Long Island, and...
, in 1898. He attended
HaverfordHaverford College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in Haverford, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia.The college was founded in 1833 by area members of the Orthodox Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends to ensure an education grounded in Quaker...
and studied philosophy and psychology at
YaleYale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
, where he received an A.B. degree in 1921. He continued to study psychology at
ColumbiaColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
and received a M.A. degree in 1923. Receiving his MD in 1927 from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, he undertook an internship at Bellevue Hospital, New York, before returning to academia in 1934.
He worked at the Laboratory for Neurophysiology at Yale University from 1934 to 1941, before moving to the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
From 1952 he worked at the
MITThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological research...
Research Laboratory of Electronics. He also worked at Yale University and later at the
University of ChicagoThe University of Chicago is a private, coeducational research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by oil magnate and benefactor John D...
.
He was a founding member of the
American Society for CyberneticsThe American Society for Cybernetics is an organization for interdisciplinary collaboration and synthesis of Cybernetics.- Past presidents :* 2005-2008 Louis Kauffman* 2002-2004 Allenna Leonard* 1999-2001 Pille Bunnell* 1994-1998 Frank Galuszka...
and its second president during 1967–1968. He was a mentor to the British
operations researchOperations research or Quantitative management, as termed in the USA, Canada, South Africa and Australia, and operational research, as termed in Europe, is an interdisciplinary branch of applied mathematics that uses methods such as mathematical modeling, statistics, and algorithms to arrive at...
pioneer Stafford Beer.
Warren McCulloch had a remarkable range of interests and talents. In addition to his scientific contributions he wrote poetry (
sonnetThe sonnet is one of the poetic forms that can be found in lyric poetry from Europe.The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song". By the thirteenth century, it had come to signify a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme...
s), and he designed and engineered buildings and a dam at his farm in Old Lyme, Connecticut. He died in
CambridgeCambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, a nexus of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Notably, Cambridge is home to two internationally prominent...
in 1969.
Work
He is remembered for his work with Dusser de Barenne from
YaleYale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
and later with
Walter PittsWalter Pitts was a logician who worked in the field of cognitive psychology.He proposed landmark theoretical formulations of neural activity and emergent processes that influenced diverse fields such as cognitive sciences and psychology, philosophy, neurosciences, computer science, artificial...
from the
University of ChicagoThe University of Chicago is a private, coeducational research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by oil magnate and benefactor John D...
. Here he provided the foundation for certain brain theories in a number of classic papers, including "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" (1943) and "How We Know Universals: The Perception of Auditory and Visual Forms" (1947), both published in the Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics. This paper about Universals is "widely credited with being a seminal contribution to neural network theory, the theory of automata, the theory of computation, and cybernetics".
Neural network modelling
In the 1943 paper they attempted to demonstrate that a
Turing machineA Turing machine is a theoretical device that manipulates symbols contained on a strip of tape. Despite its simplicity, a Turing machine can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm, and is particularly useful in explaining the functions of a CPU inside of a computer. The Turing...
program could be implemented in a finite network of
formal neuronA neuron is an excitable cell in the nervous system that processes and transmits information by electrochemical signaling. Neurons are the core components of the brain, the vertebrate spinal cord, the invertebrate ventral nerve cord, and the peripheral nerves...
s, (in the event, the Turing Machine contains their model of the brain, but the converse is not true) that the neuron was the base logic unit of the brain. In the 1947 paper they offered approaches to designing "nervous nets" to recognize visual inputs despite changes in orientation or size.
From 1952 he worked at the
MITThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological research...
Research Laboratory of Electronics, working primarily on
neural networkTraditionally, the term neural network had been used to refer to a network or circuit of biological neurons. The modern usage of the term often refers to artificial neural networks, which are composed of artificial neurons or nodes...
modelling. His team examined the visual system of the
frogFrogs are amphibians in the order Anura , formerly referred to as Salientia . Most frogs are characterized by long hind legs, a short body, webbed digits , protruding eyes and the absence of a tail...
in consideration of McCulloch's 1947 paper, discovering that the eye provides the brain with information that is already, to a degree, organized and interpreted, instead of simply transmitting an image.
Reticular formation
McCulloch also posited the concept of "poker chip"
reticular formationThe reticular formation is a part of the brain that is involved in actions such as awaking/sleeping cycle, and filtering incoming stimuli to discriminate irrelevant background stimuli...
s as to how the brain deals with contradictory information in a democratic, somatotopical neural network. His principle of "Redundancy of Potential Command" was developed by
von ForsterHeinz von Foerster was an Austrian American scientist combining physics and philosophy. Together with Warren McCulloch, Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Lawrence J. Fogel, and others, Heinz von Foerster was an architect of cybernetics.-Biography:Von Foerster was born in 1911 in Vienna, Austria,...
and
PaskAndrew Gordon Speedie Pask was an English cybernetician and psychologist who made significant contributions to cybernetics, instructional psychology, experimental epistemology and educational technology....
in their study of
Self-organizationSelf-organization is a process of attraction and repulsion in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside source...
.
Publications
McCulloch wrote a book and several articles:
- 1965. Embodiments of Mind. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
- 1993. The complete works of Warren S. McCulloch. Intersystems Publications: Salinas, CA.
Articles, a selection:
- 1943. "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity". With: Walter Pitts
Walter Pitts was a logician who worked in the field of cognitive psychology.He proposed landmark theoretical formulations of neural activity and emergent processes that influenced diverse fields such as cognitive sciences and psychology, philosophy, neurosciences, computer science, artificial...
. In: Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics Vol 5, pp 115-133.
- 1945. "A Heterarchy of Values Determined by the Topology of Nervous Nets". In: Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, 7, 1945, 89-93.
- 1959. "What The Frog's Eye Tells The Frog's Brain". With Jerome Lettvin
Jerome Ysroael Lettvin is a cognitive scientist and professor Emeritus of Electrical and Bioengineering and Communications Physiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Jerome Lettvin is best known as author of...
, H.R. MaturanaHumberto Maturana is a Chilean biologist and philosopher. He is considered a member of the second wave of cybernetics, known for developing a theory of autopoiesis about the nature of reflexive feedback control in living systems.- Biography :After completing secondary school at the Liceo Manuel de...
and W.H. Pitts In: Proc. of the I. R. E. Vol 47 (11).
- 1969, "Recollections of the Many Sources of Cybernetics", publiced in: ASC FORUM Volume VI, Number 2 -Summer 1974.
Papers Published by the Chicago Literary Club:
Further reading
- New York Times (1969), Obituaries, September 25.
- Crevier, Daniel (1993), AI: The Tumultuous Search for Artificial Intelligence, BasicBooks, New York, NY.