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In-Depth Information
What can we say about the tortoise as brain science? First, that it modelled
a certain form of adaptive behavior. The tortoise explored its environment and
reacted to what it found there, just as all sorts of organisms do—the title of
Walter's first publication on the tortoises was “An Imitation of Life” (1950a).
The suggestion was thus that the organic brain might contain similar struc-
tures to the tortoise's—not valves and relays, of course, but something func-
tionally equivalent. Perhaps, therefore, it might not be necessary to descend
to the level of individual neurons to understand the aggregate properties of
the brain. This is the sense in which Jerome Lettvin (once a collaborator of
Warren McCulloch) could write in 1988 that “a working golem is . . . prefer-
able to total ignorance” (1988, vi). But the tortoises also had another signifi-
cance for Walter.
The tortoise's method of finding its targets—the continual swiveling of the
photocell through 360 degrees—was novel. Walter referred to this as
scanning
,
and scanning was, in fact, a topic of great cybernetic interest at the time. The
Figure 3.4.
The tortoise in
action. Source: de latil 1956,
facing p. 275.
