ABSTRACT
The ultimate laws that govern the operation of biological information-processing systems and electronic information-processing systems are surely identical, but the known examples of these two types of computing engines are strikingly different in their capabilities and limitations. The vertices can be thought of as McCulloch-Pitts neurons, each capable of storing 1 bit of information which defines their state. A connecting edge is capable of various degrees of excitation or inhibition of the vertex, or neuron, upon which it terminates. A science progresses most rapidly when it has experimental tools that enable the researcher to observe and measure phenomena with a refinement that exceeds the capabilities of the unaided senses. This is perhaps one reason why the study of the processes of reason and the nature of intelligence has progressed so slowly in the past. The computing machine has offered for the first time the opportunity to test the predictions of models of cognitive phenomena.
