ABSTRACT
“Reasoning is but reckoning,” said Hobbes (1651, ch. V), in the earliest expression of the computational view of thought. Three centuries later, with the development of electronic “computers,” his idea finally began to catch on; and now, in three decades, it has become the single most important theoretical hypothesis in psychology (and several allied disciplines), and also the basis of an exciting new research field, called “artificial intelligence.” Recently, the expression cognitive science has been introduced to cover all these varied enterprises, in recognition of their common conceptual foundation. This term, therefore, does not apply to every scientific theory of cognition, but only to those sharing a certain broad outlook—which is sometimes called the “information processing” or “symbol manipulation” approach. Perhaps, at last, Hobbes's philosophical insight has found its home in a proper scientific paradigm (Kuhn, 1970).
