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Above is the cover image, and below, in chronological order, are reprints of parts of the cover. You can get a really-big version of some of the images by clicking on them.


A planning algorithm from Aristotle's De Motu Animalium (c. 400 B.C.):

Rough translation:

But how does it happen that thinking is sometimes accompanied by action and sometimes not, sometimes by motion, and sometimes not? It looks as if almost the same thing happens as in the case of reasoning and making inferences about unchanging objects. But in that case the end is a speculative proposition ... whereas here the conclusion which results from the two premises is an action. ... I need covering; a cloak is a covering. I need a cloak. What I need, I have to make; I need a cloak. I have to make a cloak. And the conclusion, the ``I have to make a cloak,'' is an action.


A diagram of a concept generator from Ramon Lull's Ars Magna (c. 1300):


Charles Babbage's difference engine (1848):


Gottlob Frege's notation for first-order logic (1879):


Lewis Carroll's diagrams for logical reasoning (1886):


Sewall Wright's probabilistic network notation (1921):


Alan Turing (1912-1954):


Shakey the Robot (1969-1973):


Part of the CPSC medical diagnostic expert system (1993):

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