The Making of Cognitive Science

Cognitive Science represents the convergence of workers in diverse disciplines- artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology - in a unified effort to understand human mental life. This book, first published in 1988, is a collection of essays about the development of cognitive science by colleagues of George A. Miller, a central figure whose own intellectual history is to a large extent a history of the field. The distinguished contributors take the story from work on formalism in psychology in the late 1950s to the organization of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard, where many first-generation cognitive psychologists were trained, to the expanding interdisciplinary enterprises of first psycholinguistics and then the cognitive neuroscience, and finally to the institutionalization of cognitive science within universities. Together, they essays constitute a fascinating and readable personal account of the way in which an exciting new science has come into being. The Making of Cognitive Science will be welcomed by a broad audience in the cognitive science community, as well as by historians of psychology.