A neuroscience paper founded the field of building mechanical brains

Evidence

But the impact of the paper—of those long conversations into the night at McCulloch’s house—would be enormous, if not entirely in the way that McCulloch and Pitts envisioned. It would be the foundation for a completely new field: the project to actually build mechanisms out of these simplified versions of neurons, and see just what such “mechanical brains” could do. — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 17

Categorization

• XREF: Bridges from pure logic to the actual project of AI construction—setting up the whole alignment problem of the book. — connects to: Newtonian science shaped a mechanical worldview of human reason — Richard A. Posner, What Has Pragmatism to Offer Law?, 22
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 17

Broader Connections

• Newtonian science shaped a mechanical worldview of human reason #expands (0.50) — Richard A. Posner, What Has Pragmatism to Offer Law?, 22