William Grey Walter: Simple

William Grey Walter was American-born British neuroscientist and roboticist. Explore interesting quotes on simple.
William Grey Walter: 24 quotes0 likes

“[E]xperiments with a simple little machine, designed to mimic certain elementary features of animal behavior… Consisting only of two vacuum tubes, two motors, a photoelectric cell and a touch contact, all enclosed in a tortoise-shaped 'shell, the model was a species of artificial creature which could explore its surroundings and seek out favorable conditions. It was named Machine speculatrix.”

William Grey Walter

Source: A machine that learns (1951), p. 60.

“These models are of course so simple that any more detailed comparison between them and living creatures would be purely conjectural.”

William Grey Walter

Source: A machine that learns (1951), p. 63.

“Simon, always a fool for simplicity, accepted. Punch took an envelope out of his pocket and scribbled on the back of it. He said, 'This has a simple arithmetical proof but no rational explanation of the paradox.' He gave it to Simon. Simon read it, looked at Punch with raised eyebrows, hunched his shoulders, shook his head sadly, and got up and left the room without a word.”

William Grey Walter

Source: The Curve of the Snowflake (1956), p. 72.

“The first notion of constructing a free goal-seeking mechanism goes back a wartime talk with the psychologist, Kenneth Craik, whose untimely death was one of the greatest losses Cambridge has suffered in years. When he was engaged on a warjob for the Government, he came to get the help of an automatic analyzer with some very complicated curves he had obtained, curves relating to the aiming errors of air gunners. Goal-seeking missiles were literally much in the air in those days; so, in our minds, were scanning mechanisms. Long before the home study was turned into a workshop, the two ideas, goal-seeking and scanning, had combined as the essential mechanical conception of a working model that would behave like a very simple animal.”

William Grey Walter

Source: The Living Brain (1953), p. 82.