Computers and the nature of man: a historian's perspective on controversies about artificial intelligence

Throughout history, developments in the sciences have caused people to change their views of man and his place in the universe. The Copernican Revolution placed man on a planet, adrift in space; the Darwinian Revolution changed our view of human origins. Computers, too, raise questions about the nature of man: can computers think the way we do, and, if so, are we—like them—just thinking machines? Of course the question "can a machine think?" has been raised before, as long ago as the seventeenth century: by Descartes and Pascal, who said no; by Hobbes, who said that thought was mechanical; and somewhat later by La Mettrie, who saw man himself as a machine. But only in our century, as a result of work in the mathematical sciences, has the question "can a machine think? " been given widespread and rigorous discus-sion. Today computer scientists have devised programs that solve problems which, if solved by people, would seem to require intelligent thought. This point is made explicit by John McCarthy's name for the field: "artificial intelligence. " As we shall see, the real controversy about artificial intelhgenc