Goldstein and his idea of self-actualization influence (julto н few young personality theorists and therapists

A ig them would be Gordon Allport, Carl Rogers, and

Ala sham Maslow, founders of the American humanistic г < Imlogy movement.

Unit 7

History of Psychology: The Cognitive Movement

The roots of the cognitive movement are extremely varied: It includes gestalt psychology, behaviorism, even humanism; it has absorbed the ideas of E. C. Tolman, Albert Bandura, and George Kelly; it includes thinkers from linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and engineering; and it especially involves specialists in computer technology and the field of artificial intelligence. Let's start by looking at three of the greatest information processing theorists: Norbert Wiener, Alan Turing, and Ludwig von Bertalanffy.

Norbert Wiener

Norbert Wiener was born November 26, 1894 in Columbia, Missouri. His father was a professor of Slavic languages who wanted more than anything for his son to be a genius. Fortunately, Norbert was up to the task. He was reading by age three, started high school at nine, graduated at 11, got his bachelors at 14, and his masters — from Harvard, — at 17. His received his PhD a year later, in 1913, with a dissertation on mathematical logic.

After graduation, he went to Cambridge to study under Bertrand Russell, and then to the University of Gottingen to study under the famous mathematician David Hilbert. When he returned, he taught at Columbia, Harvard, and Maine University, spent a year as a staff writer for the Encyclopedia Americana, another year as a journalist for the Boston Herald, and (though a pacifist) worked as a mathematician for the army.

Finally, in 1919, he became a professor of mathematics at MIT, where he would stay put until 1960. He married Margaret Engemann in 1926, and they had two daughters.

He began by studying the movement of particles and quantum physics, which led him to develop an interest in information transmission and control mechanisms. While working on the latter, he coined the term cybernetics, from the Greek word for steersman, to refer to any system that has built-in correction mechanisms, i.e. is self-steering. Appropriately, he worked on control mechanisms for the military during World War II.

In 1948, he published Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. In this book, he introduced such terms as input, output, and feedback.

Later, in 1964, he published the book God and Golem, Inc., which he subtitled «a comment on certain points where cybernetics impinges on religion*. He was concerned that someday machines may overtake us, their creators. That same year, he won the National Medal of .' '.dence. A few weeks later, March 18, he died in Stockholm, Sweden.

Alan M. Turing

Alan Turing was born June 23, 1912 in Paddington, London, the second child of Julius Mathison Turing and Bthel Sara Stoney. His parents met while his father and Dl mother's father were serving in Madras, India, as part "I the Civil Service. He and his brother were raised in

Part II

other people's homes while his parents continued their life in India.

A turning point in his life came when his best friend at Sherborne School, Christopher Marcom, died in 1930. This led him to think about the nature of existence and whether or not it ends at death.

He went to King's College of Cambridge in 1931, where he read books by von Neumann, Russell and Whitehead, Goedel, and so on. He also became involved in the pacifist movement at Cambridge, as well as coming to terms with his homosexuality. He received his degree in 1934, and stayed on for a fellowship in 1935.

The Turing Machine idea was introduced in a 1936 paper, after which he left for Princeton in the US. There, he received his PhD in 1938, and returned to King's College, living on his fellowship.

He began working with British Intelligence on breaking the famous Enigma Code by constructing code-breaking machines. In 1944, he made his first mention of «building a brain*.