One

ONE - UNDERSTANDING THE NATURAL AND THE ARTIFICIAL WORLDS
  THE ARTIFICIAL
  THE ENVIRONMENT AS MOLD
- The Artifact as "Interface"

p 9
An artifact can be thought of as a meeting point -an "interface"
in today's terms- between an "inner" environment, the substance
and organization of the artifact itself, and an "outer"
environment, the surroundings in which it operates.
...
Notice that this way of viewing artifacts applies equally well
to many things that are not man-made...

p 10
...we should expect to find this separability [...] in *all*
large and complex systems, whether they are artificial or
natural.

- Functional Explanation
- Functional Description and Synthesis
p 12
... a science of the artificial that would depend on the
relative simplicity of the interface as its primary source of
abstraction and generality.

- Limits of Adaptation

  UNDERSTANDING BY SIMULATING
- Techniques of Simulation
p 17
Simulation as a technique for achieving understanding and
predicting the behavior of systems, predates the course of the
digital computer.

- Simulation as a Source of New Knowledge
p 19-20
There are two related ways in which simulation can provide new
knowledge... [the first] is that, even when we have correct
premises, it may be very difficult to discover what they imply.
[The second] Simulation of Poorly Understood Systems
[understanding of an appropriate abstraction].

Note from Bertrand Russel, Preface to "Principia Mathematica", 
p 20-21
...the chief reason in favour of any theory on the principles of
mathematics must always be inductive, i.e., it must lie in the
fact that the theory in question enables us to deduce ordinary
mathematics. In mathematics, the highest degree of self-evidence
is usually not to be found quite at the beginning, but at some
later point; hence the early deductions, until they reach this
point, give reasons rather for believing the premises because
true consequences follow from them, than for believing the
consequences because they follow the premises.

- Simulation of Poorly Understood Systems

  THE COMPUTER AS ARTIFACT
p 22
A computer is an organization of elementary functional
components.

- Computers as Abstract Objects
p 23
Such a microtheory [of the laws that govern the components]
might indeed be simply irrelevant.

- Computers as Empirical Objects
p 24
To understand them, the systems had to be constructed and their
behavior observed.
In a similar vein, computer programs designed to play games or
discover proofs for mathematical theorems spend their lifes in
exceedingly large and complex task environments. Even when the
programs themselves are only moderately large and intricate
[...], too little is known about their task environments to
permit accurate prediction of how well they will perform...
...
In theorem proving, for example, there has been a whole series
of advances in heuristic power based on and guided by empirical
exploration...

- Computers and Thought
p 26
...we shall discover that in large part their behavior is
governed by simple general laws, that what appears as complexity
in the computer program was to a considerable extend complexity
of the environment...
... it opens up an exceedingly important role for computer
simulation as a tool for achieving a deeper understanding of
human behavior.


  SYMBOL SYSTEMS: RATIONAL ARTIFACTS
p 26
The computer is a member of an important family of artifacts
called [...] physical symbol systems. Another [...] member of
the family [...] is the human mind and brain.
It is with this family of artifacts, and particularly the human
version of it, that we will be primarily concerned in this book.

- Basic Capabilities of Symbol Systems
- Intelligence as Computation
p 28
...the hypothesis is that a physical symbol system of the sort I
have just described has the necessary and sufficient means for
general intelligent action.
The hypothesis is clearly an empirical one, to be judged true or
false on the basis of evidence.

- Economics: Abstract Rationality