Warren Sturgis McCulloch (November 16, 1898 – September 24, 1969) was an American neurophysiologist and cybernetician, known for his work on the foundation for certain brain theories and his contribution to the

cybernetics Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson ma ...

movement.Ken Aizawa (2004),
McCulloch, Warren Sturgis
. In: Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind. Retrieved May 17, 2008. Along with Walter Pitts, McCulloch created computational models based on

mathematical Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

algorithms In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...

called threshold logic which split the inquiry into two distinct approaches, one approach focused on biological processes in the brain and the other focused on the application of

neural networks A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

Biography

Warren Sturgis McCulloch was born in

Orange, New Jersey The City of Orange is a township in Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2010 U.S. census, the township's population was 30,134, reflecting a decline of 2,734 (−8.3%) from the 32,868 counted in 2000. Orange was original ...

, in 1898. His brother was a

chemical engineer In the field of engineering, a chemical engineer is a professional, equipped with the knowledge of chemical engineering, who works principally in the chemical industry to convert basic raw materials into a variety of products and deals with the ...

and Warren was originally planning to join the

Christian ministry In Christianity, ministry is an activity carried out by Christians to express or spread their faith, the prototype being the Great Commission. The ''Encyclopedia of Christianity'' defines it as "carrying forth Christ's mission in the world", ...

. As a teenager he was associated with the theologians

Henry Sloane Coffin Henry Sloane Coffin (January 5, 1877, in New York City – November 25, 1954, in Lakeville, Connecticut) was president of the Union Theological Seminary, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, and one of the mo ...

, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Herman Karl Wilhelm Kumm and Julian F. Hecker. He was also mentored by the

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...

, Rufus Jones. He attended

Haverford College Haverford College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Haverford, Pennsylvania. It was founded as a men's college in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), began accepting non-Quakers in 1849, and became coeducationa ...

and studied philosophy and psychology at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

, where he received an A.B. degree in 1921. He continued to study psychology at

Columbia Columbia may refer to: * Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America Places North America Natural features * Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region i ...

and received a M.A. degree in 1923. Receiving his MD in 1927 from the

Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S) is the graduate medical school of Columbia University, located at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. Founded ...

in New York, he undertook an internship at

Bellevue Hospital Bellevue Hospital (officially NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue and formerly known as Bellevue Hospital Center) is a hospital in New York City and the oldest public hospital in the United States. One of the largest hospitals in the United States ...

, New York. Then he worked under Eilhard von Domarus at the Rockland State Hospital for the Insane. He returned to academia in 1934. He worked at the Laboratory for Neurophysiology at Yale University from 1934 to 1941. In 1941 he moved to Chicago and joined the Department of Psychiatry at the

University of Illinois at Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the University of Illinois ...

, where he was a professor of psychiatry, as well as the director of the Illinois Neuropsychiatric Institute until 1951. From 1952 he worked at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

with

Norbert Wiener Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American mathematician and philosopher. He was a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher ...

. He was a founding member of the

American Society for Cybernetics The American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) is an American non-profit scholastic organization for the advancement of cybernetics as a science , a discipline, a meta-discipline and the promotion of cybernetics as basis for an interdisciplinary di ...

and its second president during 1967–1968. He was a mentor to the British

operations research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve decis ...

pioneer

Stafford Beer Anthony Stafford Beer (25 September 1926 – 23 August 2002) was a British theorist, consultant and professor at the Manchester Business School. He is best known for his work in the fields of operational research and management cybernetics. ...

. McCulloch had a range of interests and talents. In addition to his scientific contributions he wrote poetry (

sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's inventio ...

s), and he designed and engineered buildings and a dam at his farm in Old Lyme, Connecticut. McCulloch married Ruth Metzger, known as 'Rook', in 1924 and they had three children. He died in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

in 1969.

Work

He is remembered for his work with Joannes Gregorius Dusser de Barenne from Yale and later with Walter Pitts from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. He provided the foundation for certain brain theories in a number of classic papers, including "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" (1943) and "How We Know Universals: The Perception of Auditory and Visual Forms" (1947), both published in the ''Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics''. The former is "widely credited with being a seminal contribution to neural network theory, the theory of automata, the theory of computation, and cybernetics". McCulloch was the chair of the set of Macy conferences dedicated to Cybernetics. These, greatly due to the diversity of the background of the participants McCulloch brought in, became the foundation for the field.

Neural network modelling

In the 1943 paper McCulloch and Pitts attempted to demonstrate that a

Turing machine A Turing machine is a mathematical model of computation describing an abstract machine that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite the model's simplicity, it is capable of implementing any computer alg ...

program could be implemented in a finite network of ''formal''

neuron A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa ...

s (in the event, the Turing Machine contains their model of the brain, but the converse is not true), that the neuron was the base logic unit of the brain. In the 1947 paper they offered approaches to designing "nervous nets" to recognize visual inputs despite changes in orientation or size. From 1952 McCulloch worked at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT, working primarily on

neural network A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...

modelling. His team examined the visual system of the

frog A frog is any member of a diverse and largely Carnivore, carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order (biology), order Anura (ανοὐρά, literally ''without tail'' in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-f ...

in consideration of McCulloch's 1947 paper, discovering that the eye provides the brain with information that is already, to a degree, organized and interpreted, instead of simply transmitting an image.

Reticular formation

McCulloch also posited the concept of "poker chip"

reticular formation The reticular formation is a set of interconnected nuclei that are located throughout the brainstem. It is not anatomically well defined, because it includes neurons located in different parts of the brain. The neurons of the reticular formatio ...

s as to how the brain deals with contradictory information in a democratic, somatotopical neural network. His principle of "Redundancy of Potential Command" was developed by von Foerster and Pask in their study of

self-organization Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when suffic ...

and by Pask in his

Conversation Theory Conversation theory is a cybernetic and dialectic framework that offers a scientific theory to explain how interactions lead to "construction of knowledge", or "knowing": wishing to preserve both the dynamic/kinetic quality, and the necessity for th ...

and Interactions of Actors Theory.Gordon Pask (1996). ''Heinz von Foerster's Self-Organisation, the Progenitor of Conversation and Interaction Theories''

Publications

McCulloch wrote a book and several articles:His papers now reside in the manuscripts collection of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

. * 1965, ''Embodiments of Mind''. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. * 1993, ''The Complete Works of Warren S. McCulloch''. Intersystems Publications: Salinas, CA. Articles, a selection: * 1943
"A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity"
With Walter Pitts. In: ''Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics'' Vol 5, pp 115–133. * 1945, "A Heterarchy of Values Determined by the Topology of Nervous Nets". In: ''Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics'', 7, 1945, 89–93. * 1959
"What The Frog's Eye Tells The Frog's Brain"
With Jerome Lettvin, H.R. Maturana and W.H. Pitts t is widely known that the actual authors of this work were only Lettvin and Maturana.In: ''Proc. of the I. R. E.'' Vol 47 (11). * 1969
"Recollections of the Many Sources of Cybernetics"
published in: ASC FORUM Volume VI, Number 2 -Summer 1974. Papers published by the Chicago Literary Club: * 1945
"One Word After Another"
* 1959
"The Past of a Delusion"
* 1959
"The Natural Fit"

Biography

Work

Neural network modelling

Reticular formation

Publications

See also

References

Further reading