Herbert A. Simon

Economist and psychologist

One of the founders of the discipline of artificial intelligence, Simon created the interdisciplinary framework from which modern computer science grew. He demonstrated how economics could be used as a tool for understanding how decisions are made by human beings in institutions.

Early Life

Herbert Alexander Simon was born on June 15, 1916, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to parents of German ancestry. His father, Arthur Carl Simon, was an engineer and inventor, and his mother, Edna Marguerite Merkel, was the daughter of immigrants. The family (including Herbert Simon’s older brother) lived in a section of Milwaukee where German culture was pervasive. Simon early picked up a variety of languages, and he had a goal of learning the language of any country he visited. He was a student of remarkable industry, and he pursued any number of hobbies, including stamp collecting, chess, and the study of beetles, with zest. His color blindness was all that kept him from pursuing a career in biology.

Simon went to public schools in Milwaukee, in preparation for attending the University of Chicago. At that time the University of Chicago was loose in its formal requirements, and Simon took courses in a variety of disciplines, from economics and political science to philosophy and psychology. He was tempted to major in economics, but he decided in favor of political science to avoid having to take an accounting class. Throughout his life he sidestepped work that he saw as tedious, and his intelligence enabled him to succeed without spending time on the basics. The University of Chicago also provided a liberal political environment that appealed to Simon, who described himself as a New Deal Democrat. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1936, and, on December 25, 1937, he married Dorothea Pye, with whom he had three children.

Even before leaving Chicago, Simon was involved in the study of organizations and decision making. In 1939, he received funding to direct administrative management studies at the University of California, Berkeley, a position he held from 1939 to 1942. In 1942, he came back to Chicago to take a position as assistant professor of political science at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), where he remained for seven years, rising to full professor in 1947.

Life’s Work

Simon claimed that the inspiration for his academic career came from experiences in Milwaukee, where he saw how decisions were made in the distribution of funds. Classical economics would predict that all those involved would use rational calculation to determine how best to allocate the funds. He saw that nothing like that went on; he interpreted what he saw as “bounded rationality.” Instead of looking for the best possible solution, those contributing to the decision had a range of possibilities with which they would be happy. So long as the result was good enough for all those concerned, the institution kept running.

As a result, Simon was especially interested in how these decisions were made in practice. In 1949, he left IIT for the Carnegie Institute of Technology (later Carnegie Mellon University), where funds had been donated to create a new kind of business school. This involved the detailed examination of empirical data, from which Simon hoped to be able to generate conclusions. While he was interested in how scientists made their decisions, he felt that understanding practical decision making was crucial for policy making. He spent a sabbatical at RAND and met there Allen Newell, who shared his interests. They recognized that computers not only could solve problems but also could provide models for how human beings solved problems. This combination of interests gave rise to the discipline known as artificial intelligence, and Newell and Simon’s joint book, Human Problem Solving, published in 1972, gave shape to the field for many years.

Simon’s work in the application of computers across disciplines, such as economics and psychology, was recognized with honorary degrees around the world. He became a professor of computer science and psychology at Carnegie Mellon, and he remained there until his retirement in 1988. He received (together with Newell) the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. After receiving the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978, he received the National Medal of Science in 1986. He remained active in academic discussions of the implications of his ideas until his death on February 9, 2001, from complications after surgery.

Simon was an intellectual virtuoso who enjoyed argument for its own sake, although he would not argue with those whom he felt were less than worthy of his steel. Early in life he wrote an article on behalf of atheism and never felt tempted to recant, although he was a member of a Unitarian congregation in Pittsburgh. Those who worked with him paid tribute to his ability to bring out the best in colleagues and students.

Significance

Simon revolutionized several academic endeavors and created the field of artificial intelligence as applied to human problem solving. Although computers could be used to solve problems, whether the computer displayed intelligence in the process was debatable. Simon was convinced that computers did display intelligence. He raised the discussion to a different level by asking how, with the help of computers, human decision making could be better understood. His use of formal techniques altered social sciences forever.

Bibliography

Augier, Mie, and James G. March, eds. Models of a Man. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004. Print.

Gabor, Andrea. The Capitalist Philosophers. New York: Random House, 2000. Print.

“Herbert Simon.” Economist. Economist Newspaper, 22 Feb. 2001. Web. 27 June, 2016.

Klahr, David, and Kenneth Kotovsky, eds. Complex Information Processing: The Impact of Herbert A. Simon. Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 1989. Print.

Simon, Herbert A. Models of My Life. 2d ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996. Print.