ABSTRACT
Cognitive science is a relatively new and diverse interdisciplinary fi eld
of knowledge. Its theoretical presuppositions can be traced to the Hixon
Symposium on “Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior” featuring Warren
McCulloch, Karl Lashley, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, and Walter
Pitts and held in 1948 at the California Institute of Technology. Their
innovative papers challenged the prevailing dogmas in the study of human
behavior and their critical insights laid out the essential tenets and defi ned
the characteristics for future cognitive scientists. A conference held at MIT
on “Information Theory” in September 1956 advanced the foundational
ideas set out in 1948, elucidated the major themes and assumptions, and,
according to George Miller, offi cially launched cognitive science as a distinct
fi eld of scientifi c inquiry (Baars 1986: 3; Chomsky 1997: 15; Gardner
1987: 28). Miller, along with Noam Chomsky, Alan Newell, Herbert
Simon, and other leading fi gures, presented papers on such topics as the
logic machine, experimental psychology, computational models of mind,
and the linguistic structures of language acquisition on syntactic theory.
