Models of My Life Book

"As much as any one person, Herbert A. Simon has shaped the intellectual agenda of the human and social sciences in the second half of the 20th century .... For many readers, Mr. Simon's view of human endeavor, of love and of work, will seem emblematic not of the pre-Freudian rationalism-that-was but a new, sleeker, rationalism-to-be -- a rationalism purged of utopian excess, committed to empirical studies, and wedded to the most modern technology." -- Sherry Turkle, New York Times Book Review In this candid and witty autobiography, Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon looks at his distinguished and varied career, continually asking himself whether (and how) what he learned as a scientist helps to explain other aspects of his life. A brilliant polymath in an age of increasing specialization, Simon is one of those rare scholars whose work defines fields of inquiry. Crossing disciplinary lines in half a dozen fields, Simon's story encompasses an explosion in the information sciences, the transformation of psychology by the information-processing paradigm, and the use of computer simulation for modeling the behavior of highly complex systems. Simon's theory of bounded rationality led to a Nobel Prize in economics, and his work on building machines that think -- based on the notion that human intelligence is the rule-governed manipulation of symbols -- laid conceptual foundations for the new cognitive science. Subsequently, contrasting metaphors of the maze (Simon's view) and of the mind (neural nets) have dominated the artificial intelligence debate. There is also a warm account of his successful marriage and of an unconsummated love affair, letters to his children, columns, a short story, and political and personal intrigue in academe.Read More