Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

92 | HOW THE MIND WORKSSimon's argument that modular design in computers and minds is a specialcase of modular, hierarchical design in all complex systems. Bodiescontain tissues made of cells containing organelles; armed forces comprisearmies which contain divisions broken into battalions and eventuallyplatoons; books contain chapters divided into sections, subsections,paragraphs, and sentences; empires are assembled out of countries,provinces, and territories. These "nearly decomposable" systems aredefined by rich interactions among the elements belonging to the samecomponent and few interactions among elements belonging to differentcomponents. Complex systems are hierarchies of modules because onlyelements that hang together in modules can remain stable long enoughto be assembled into larger and larger modules. Simon gives the analogyof two watchmakers, Hora and Tempus:The watches the men made consisted of about 1,000 parts each. Tempushad so constructed his that if he had one partly assembled and had to putit down—to answer the phone, say—it immediately fell to pieces and hadto be reassembled from the elements. . . .The watches that Hora made were no less complex than those ofTempus. But he had designed them so that he could put together subassembliesof about ten elements each. Ten of these subassemblies,again, could be put together into a larger subassembly; and a system often of the latter subassemblies constituted the whole watch. Hence,when Hora had to put down a partly assembled watch in order to answerthe phone, he lost only a small part of his work, and he assembled hiswatches in only a fraction of the man-hours it took Tempus.Our complex mental activity follows the wisdom of Hora. As we live ourlives, we don't have to attend to every squiggle or plan out every muscletwitch. Thanks to word symbols, any typeface can awaken any bit ofknowledge. Thanks to goal symbols, any sign of danger can trigger anymeans of escape.The payoff for the long discussion of mental computation and mentalrepresentation I have led you through is, I hope, an understanding of thecomplexity, subtlety, and flexibility that the human mind is capable ofeven if it is nothing but a machine, nothing but the on-board computer ofa robot made of tissue. We don't need spirits or occult forces to explainintelligence. Nor, in an effort to look scientific, do we have to ignore theevidence of our own eyes and claim that human beings are bunjdles ofconditioned associations, puppets of the genes, or followers of brutish