Concept
Herbert A. Simon
Overview
Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was an American scholar whose work influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary research interest was decision-making within organizations and he is best known for the theories of "bounded rationality" and "satisficing". He and Allen Newell received the ACM Turing Award in 1975, and he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1978.
His research was noted for its interdisciplinary nature, spanning the fields of cognitive science, computer science, public administration, management, and political science. He was at Carnegie Mellon University for most of his career, from 1949 to 2001, where he helped found the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science, one of the first such departments in the world.
Notably, Simon was among the pioneers of several modern-day scientific domains such as artificial intelligence, information processing, decision-making, problem-solving, organization theory, and complex systems. He was among the earliest to analyze the architecture of complexity and to propose a preferential attachment mechanism to explain power law distributions.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
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Yet those who know the habits of the continent of Europe are aware how apparently small a motive often outweighs the desire of money getting, even in the operations which have money getting for their direct object. The more highly the science of ethology is cultivated, and the better the diversities of individual and national character are understood, the smaller, probably, will the number of propositions become…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Herbert A. Simon is.
For it is every man's own special feeling of pleasure and pain that decides in what he is to place his happiness, and even in the same subject this will vary with the difference of his wants according as this feeling changes, and thus a law which is subjectively necessary (as a law of nature) is objectively a very contingent practical principle, which can and must be very different in different subjects and…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason
States what Herbert A. Simon is.
Here we have in the most express terms the recognition of a final and permanent standard with reference to which the nature of happiness is determined, and the standard is one of social relationships. To be sure it is claimed that the standard is one which results in greatest happiness, but every ethical theory has always claimed that the ideal moral condition would be accompanied by the maximum possible happiness…
John Dewey, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics
States what Herbert A. Simon is.
Philosophers who discussed Herbert A. Simon
Related ideas
- Cognition
- French Revolution
- Artificial intelligence
- Germany
- World Scientific
- Problem solving
- Behavioral economics
- Learning
- Harvard University
- Management
- Psychology
- University of Wisconsin–Madison
- Prague
- Political science
- Jews
- American Philosophical Society
- Allen Newell
- Theory
- Information processing (psychology)
- University of California, Berkeley
- University of Chicago
- Computer simulation
- American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Operations research
Place in the tradition
Part of Behaviorism.