The computer and the brain

• Authors: John von Neumann
• Venue: The computer and the brain
• Year: 1958

From the Author's IntroductionSince I am neither a neurologist nor a psychiatrist, but amathematician, the work that follows requires some explanation andjustification. It is an approach toward the understanding of thenervous system from the mathematician's point of view. However,this statement must immediately be qualified in both of itsessential parts.First, it is an overstatement to describe what I am attemptinghere as an "approach toward the understanding"; it is merely asomewhat systematized set of speculations as to how such anapproach ought to be made. That is, I am trying to guess which ofthe---mathematically guided--lines of attack seem, from the hazydistance in which we see most of theme a priori promising, andwhich ones have the opposite appearance. I will also offer somerationalizations of these guesses.Second, the "mathematician's point of view," as I would like tohave it understood in this contexts carries a distribution ofemphases that differs from the usual one: apart from the stress onthe general mathematical techniques, the logical and thestatistical aspects will be in the foreground. Furthermore, logicsand statistics should be primarily, although not exclusively,viewed as the basic tools of "information theory." Also, that bodyof experience which has grown up around the planning, evaluating,and coding of complicated logical and mathematical automata will bethe focus of much of this information theory. The most typical, butnot the only, such automata are, of course, the large electroniccomputing machines.Let me note, in passing, that it would be very satisfactory ifone could talk about a "theory" of such automata. Regrettably, whatat this moment exists---and to what I must appeal--can as yet bedescribed only as an imperfectly articulated and hardly formalized"body of experience."Lastly, my main aim is actually to bring out a rather differentaspect of the matter. I suspect that a deeper mathematical study ofthe nervous system --"mathematical" in the sense outlined above---will affect our understanding of the aspects of mathematics itselfthat are involved. In fact, it may alter the way in which we lookon mathematics and logics proper. I will try to explain my reasonsfor this belief later.