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Attaining landmark status: Rumelhart and McClelland's PDP Volumes and the Connectionist Paradigm
Author(s) -
Gibbons Michelle
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/jhbs.21946
Subject(s) - connectionism , rhetorical question , rhetoric , cognitive science , landmark , field (mathematics) , expansive , cognition , linguistics , psychology , epistemology , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy , composite material , compressive strength , mathematics , materials science , neuroscience , pure mathematics
In 1986, David Rumelhart and James McClelland published their two‐volume work, Parallel distributed processing: Explorations in microcognition , Volume 1 : Foundations and Volume 2 : Psychological and biological models . These volumes soon become classic texts in both connectionism, specifically, and in the cognitive science field more generally. Drawing on oral histories, book reviews, translations, citation records, and close textual analysis, this paper analyzes how and why they attained landmark status. It argues that McClelland and Rumelhart's volumes became classics largely as a result of a confluence of rhetorical factors. Specifically, the PDP Volumes appeared at a kairotic moment in the history of connectionism, publishing dynamics that facilitated their circulation played an important role, and the volumes were ambiguous about the relationship between model and brain in a manner that enabled them to address an expansive audience. In so doing, this paper offers insight into both the history of cognitive science and rhetoric's role in establishing classic texts.