http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/2004/03/28#pre-cognitivism <P>This is not an altogether well-defined category in my mind. Roughly, I mean people active in the period 1900--1950 and who I can easily imagine embracing <a href="cognitive-science.html">cognitivism</a>, had it only been available, and in its absence tried to find more or less mechanistic or logical-computatinal approaches to studying thought; those who lit candles during the dual darkness of behaviorism and <a href="freud.html">Freudianism</a>. Of course, this is a whiggish and perhaps even anachronistic way of approaching these thinkers, sometimes a little whiggery is not amiss. And anyway one could ask, counterfactually, <em>why</em> these individuals and their efforts did not succeed in launching a science of human thought, or regard them as pointing out directions in which cognitive science could have, but did not, proceed (perhaps for good reasons!). <ul>See: <li><a href="ashby.html">W. Ross Ashby</a> <li><a href="piaget.html">Jean Piaget</a> <li><a href="richards-i-a.html">I. A. Richards</a> <li><a href="vygotsky.html">L. S. Vygotsky</a> <li><a href="wiener.html">Norbert Wiener</a> [But as an immediate and acknowledged ancestor of cognitive science, he may not count] </ul> <ul>To read: <li>Roberto Cordeschi, <cite>The Discovery of the Artificial: Behavior, Mind and Machines Before and Beyond Cybernetics</cite> <li>Jaan Valsiner and Rene van der Veer, <cite>The Social Mind: Construction of the Idea</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/0521589738">blurb</a>] </ul>