Walter Pitts
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Walter Pitts (right) with Jerry Lettvin, co-author of the seminal cognitive science paper "What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain" (1959)
Walter Pitts (23 April 1923 – 14 May 1969) was a
logician who worked in the field of
cognitive psychology.He proposed landmark theoretical formulations of neural activity and emergent processes that influenced diverse fields such as
cognitive sciences and
psychology,
philosophy,
neurosciences,
computer science,
artificial neural networks,
cybernetics and
artificial intelligence, together with what has come to be known as the
generative sciences. He is best remembered for having written along with
Warren McCulloch, a seminal paper entitled "A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" (1943). This paper proposed the first mathematical model of a
neural network. The unit of this model, a simple formalized neuron, is still the standard of reference in the field of neural networks. It is often called a
McCulloch–Pitts neuron.
Early life
Walter Pitts was born in Detroit on April 23, 1923. Pitts
taught himself logic and
mathematics and was able to read a number of languages including
Greek and
Latin. At the age of 12 he spent three days in a library reading
Principia Mathematica and sent a letter to
Bertrand Russell pointing out what he considered serious problems with the first half of the first volume. Russell was appreciative and invited him to study in the
United Kingdom. Although this offer was not taken up, Pitts decided to become a logician.
Academic career
Pitts probably continued to correspond with Betrand Russell; in any case, he ran away from home at the age of 15 to attend Russell's lectures at the
University of Chicago. He stayed there, without registering as a student. He met
Jerome Lettvin, and the two became close friends. Pitts also met the logician
Rudolf Carnap at Chicago by walking into his office during office hours, and presenting him with an annotated version of Carnap's recent book on logic. Since Pitts did not introduce himself, Carnap spent months searching for him, and, when he found him, he obtained for him a menial job at the university. Pitts at the time was homeless and without income.
(1)Later
Warren McCulloch also arrived at the University of Chicago, and in early 1942 invited Pitts, who was still homeless, together with Lettvin to live with his family. In the evenings McCulloch and Pitts collaborated. Pitts was familiar with the work of
Gottfried Leibniz on computing and they considered the question of whether the nervous system could be considered a kind of universal computing device as described by Leibniz. This led to their seminal
neural networks paper
A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity. In 1943 Lettvin introduced Pitts to
Norbert Wiener at
MIT, who had recently lost his "right-hand man". Their first meeting, where they discussed Wiener's proof of the
ergodic theorem, went so well that Pitts moved to Boston to work with Wiener. In 1944 Pitts was hired by
Kellex Corporation, part of the
Atomic Energy Project.In 1951 Wiener convinced
Jerry Wiesner to hire some physiologists of the nervous system. A group was established with Pitts, Lettvin, McCulloch, and Pat Wall. Pitts wrote a large thesis on the properties of neural nets connected in three dimensions. Lettvin described him as "in no uncertain sense the genius of the group … when you asked him a question, you would get back a whole textbook". Pitts was also described as an eccentric, refusing to allow his name to be made publicly available. He refused all offers of advanced degrees or official positions at MIT as he would have to sign his name.
Emotional trauma and decline
Wiener suddenly turned against McCulloch, on account of his wife Margaret Wiener who hated McCulloch, and broke off relations with anyone connected to him including Pitts. This sent Walter Pitts into 'cognitive suicide', a gradual but steep decline into social isolation, from which he never recovered. He burnt the manuscript on three dimensional networks and took little further interest in work. The only exception was a collaboration with
Robert Gesteland which produced a paper on
olfaction. Pitts died in 1969 of bleeding esophageal varices, a condition usually associated with alcoholism.
Publications
- Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts, "A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity", 1943, Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 5:115-133.
- Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts, "On how we know universals: The perception of auditory and visual forms", 1947, Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 9:127-147.
- Howland, R., Jerome Lettvin, Warren McCulloch, Walter Pitts, and P. D. Wall, "Reflex inhibition by dorsal root interaction", 1955, Journal of Neurophysiology 18:1-17.
- Wall, P. D., Warren McCulloch, Jerome Lettvin and Walter Pitts, "Effects of strychnine with special reference to spinal afferent fibres", 1955, Epilepsia Series 3, 4:29-40.
- Jerome Lettvin, Humberto Maturana, Warren McCulloch, and Walter Pitts, "What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain", 1959, Proceedings of the Institute of Radic Engineers 47: 1940-1959
- Humberto Maturana, Jerome Lettvin, Warren McCulloch, and Walter Pitts, "Anatomy and physiology of vision in the frog", 1960, Journal of General Physiology, 43:129—175
- Robert Gesteland, Jerome Lettvin and Walter Pitts, "Chemical Transmission in the Nose of the Frog", 1965, J.Physiol. 181, 525-529.
See also
References
- Talking Nets: An Oral History of Neural Networks, Edited by James A. Anderson and Edward Rosenfeld, 1998. The interview with Jerome Lettvin discusses Walter Pitts.
-
[Website of Professor Charles Wallis, California State University Long Beach, Department of Cognitive Science, accessed 30 Jan. 2009]
External links
{{Cybernetics}}
Walter PittsWalter Pittsウォルター・ピッツWalter Pitts
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