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theorem; and that most psychological theories would take the form
of computer programs. The last prediction in particular demon-
strates the degree to which AI was beginning to influence and affect
the understanding of mental processes.
At the same time, though in a different context, Structuralism,
which emerged in France in the
s, presented a power-
ful framework, developed ultimately out of the work of linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure, in which different phenomena could be
formalized and presented in abstract terms. Among Saussure's
important moves was a turn away from the 'diachronic' study of a
language in terms of its historical development, which had character-
ized linguistics in the nineteenth century, towards the 'synchronic'
study of a language at a particular moment in time.
12
Saussure also
separated the sign into two components, the signifier, which is
acoustic, and the signified, which is conceptual.
13
For Saussure
the sign itself is arbitrary,
14
and meaning is found in language in the
differences between signs, not in any positive terms.
15
Saussure's
ideas came to be considered under the title 'structural linguistics'.
Saussure separated the signifier from the signified, and showed
how the sound of the signified bears no innate relation to what it
signifies, but he did not pursue this idea to more radical conclusions,
insisting on the connectedness of the signifier and the signified.
16
Nevertheless he showed that language cannot claim any one-to-one
relation to what it represents, and must, instead, be considered
a code. Saussure suggested that his principles could be applied to a
general theory of signs, which he called 'semiology'.
The beginning of modern Structuralism resulted from the
meeting of the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and the
Russian linguist and literary theorist Roman Jakobson, while both
were in exile in New York during the Second World War. Before
the War Jakobson and the so-called Prague School had applied
Saussure's ideas to literary theory. Lévi-Strauss attended lectures
given by Jakobson in
1940
s and '
50
1942
on sound and meaning, and Jakobson in
