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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Neural Networks - Pointers to good texts?
Message-ID: <3807@venera.isi.edu>
Date: Thu, 15-Oct-87 10:16:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: venera.3807
Posted: Thu Oct 15 10:16:55 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Oct-87 08:08:41 EDT
References: <230@titn.TITN> <4191@well.UUCP> <1465@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@venera.isi.edu
Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar)
Organization: Information Sciences Institute
Lines: 28
Keywords: neural networks ai
Summary: bickering over terminology
Xref: mnetor comp.ai:912 comp.lang.lisp:499

In article <1465@ssc-vax.UUCP> dickey@ssc-vax.UUCP (Frederick J Dickey) writes:
>In article <4191@well.UUCP>, wcalvin@well.UUCP (William Calvin) writes:
>> 	We brain researchers sure get tired of hearing neural-like networks
>> referred to as "neural networks", an established subject for 25 years since
>> the days of Limulus lateral inhibition.  
>
>I think the above says that "biological" neural nets have been studied as a
>formal discipline for 25 years and that this great ancestry gives biology
>prior claim to the term "neural nets". Assuming that this is a correct
>interpretation, let me make the following observation. In 1943, McCulloch
>and Pitts published a paper entitled "A logical calculus of the ideas
>immanent in neural nets". Minsky and Papert (Perceptrons) state that this
>paper presents the "prototypes of the linear threshold functions". This paper
>stikes me as clearly being in the "neural net-like" tradition. Now
>1987-1943 = 44. Also note that 44 > 25. Therefore, it apears that the
>"neural net-like" guys have prior claim to the term "neural net". :-).


Well . . . this is all rather silly.  The PUBLISHED title of the classic
paper by McCullogh and Pitts is "A Logigal Calculus of the Ideas Immanent
in Nervous Activity."  They NEVER use "neural net" as a technical term
(or in any other capacity) in the paper.  They ARE, however, concerned
with a net model based on the interconnection of elements which they call
neurons--appealing to properties of neurons which were known at the time
they wrote the paper.  Personally, I think Calvin has a point.  Investigators
who are searching the literature will probably benefit from cues which
distinguish papers about actual physiological properties from those about
computational models of those properties.