Re: brains, telphones and microprocessors

nate (schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu)
Sat, 2 Oct 1999 07:36:58 -0500

(Thorndike and Woodworth 1901) "The mind consisting not of large capacities
such as memory and reasoning waiting to be developed. but of "multitudious
sperate individual functions", a kind of switch board with innummerable
wires connecting discrete points."

----- Original Message -----
From: George McKinlay <mckinlay who-is-at unr.edu>
To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Saturday, October 02, 1999 1:34 AM
Subject: brains, telphones and microprocessors

>
>
> I remember reading an interesting analogy between the human brain and a
telephone system, needless to say
> it was a rather dated piece of work (the analogy I mean) but it did so
much smack of the "brain as
> computer" model that I thought it would be rather fun to do a little
comparison... now my problem (among
> others) is that my brain doesn't store information like a computer does;
so I have this rather vague
> recollection about that work...
>
> Anybody out there know the source of my telephonic analogy
>
> Of course any other trivial trivia about treating the brain like a hunk
of silicon would also be
> appreciated
>
> Cheers
>
>
>
>