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The ‘Logic Theorist’ and ‘Principia Mathematica’
How the first AI Program carried out Bertrand Russell’s vision
In 1910, 1912, and 1913, mathematician-philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell published a three-volume work, the Principia Mathematica, with the ambitious aim to establish a solid base for Mathematics by reducing it to basic principles, creating a seminal work that defined the course of mathematical logic and the philosophy of mathematics for the next decades.
In 1955, John McCarthy, an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth College, decided to organize a group to discuss what was called at that time ‘Thinking Machines’ — machines that would have the capacity to replicate human thought processes, using the name ‘Artificial Intelligence’ for this emerging field.
He contacted the Rockefeller Foundation requesting financial support for a summer seminar at Dartmouth and on August 31, 1955, together with Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Shannon, he submitted a proposal for a research project that “would discuss the following aspects of the Artificial Intelligence problem: Automatic Computers, How Can a Computer be Programmed to Use a Language, Neuron Nets, Theory of the Size of a Calculation, Self-improvement, Abstractions, Randomness and Creativity” (…
