, an extended version of his doctoral dissertation in philosophy. Influenced by the works of previous philosophers, including Ramon Llull, Leibniz proposed an alphabet of human thought. All concepts are nothing but combinations of a relatively small number of simple concepts, just as words are combinations of letters, he argued. All truths may be expressed as appropriate combinations of concepts, which in turn can be decomposed into simple ideas.
“Thinking machines” has been the common portrayal in modern times of the new, mechanical, incarnations of these early descriptions of cognitive aids. Already in the 1820s, for example, the Difference Engine—a mechanical calculator—was referred to by Charles Babbage’s contemporaries as his “thinking machine.”...
33, eh?