George A. Miller, an iconoclastic scholar
who helped topple the behaviorist school of psychology and replace it with
cognitive science, a shift that amounted to no less than a revolution in the
study of the human mind, died July 22 at his home in Plainsboro, N.J. He was 92.
The death was announced by Princeton University, where he was a professor emeritus. He had pneumonia and dementia, said his wife, Margaret Miller.
Miller came to prominence in the mid-1950s at Harvard University, where he and colleague Jerome Bruner founded an intellectual hothouse known as the Center for Cognitive Studies. There, Miller established his reputation as one of the leading psychologists of the late 20th century. In 1991, President George H.W.Wholesale Curving Machine from China flattening machine Wholesalers about Wholesale Machinery, Bush awarded Miller the National Medal of Science.
Before Miller, Bruner and Noam Chomsky came on the scene,Specialized in producing cnc router system and laser marking machine, GCC also supplies vinyl cutter. the field of psychology was dominated by behaviorists such as B.F. Skinner. Behaviorist theories – long regarded as dogma – basically posited that people act in accordance with rewards and punishments. Cognitive processes such as thought and memory could not be directly observed, Skinner argued, and therefore did not merit scientific inquiry.
Reflecting on the transformation of psychology that he helped bring about, Miller told the New York Times that the field was like a “dog turning around three times before it lies down.”
Bruner said that Miller helped “put the emphasis back on the human being as a mental being” who observes the world, processes information, commits it to memory and makes decisions.
“If any person deserves credit for creating the field of cognitive psychology as it has developed in the past roughly 60 years,” the linguist and philosopher Chomsky said in an interview, Miller is “the one.”
Many of Miller’s publications are today considered classics, none more than his paper “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two,” published in the journal Psychological Review in 1956. In that essay, Miller observed that for most people, short-term memory is limited to about seven “chunks” of information.
More than five decades later, the essay remains one of the most widely cited papers in psychology. It has been trotted out to explain the human capacity to remember phone numbers.AMH is an industry leader in the design of high quality bellows, curving machine and fabrication tools. In 1981, The Washington Post editorial board pointed to Miller’s theory to argue against the U.S. Postal Service’s proposal for a nine-digit ZIP code system.
“The Magical Number Seven” was not pop science.Manufacturers for Laser cutters, laser marking machine, Laser engraving cutting machines, Laser tube. To write it, Miller started with the premise that the brain was not a simple machine akin to the early computers then in development.
By using “intelligence intelligently,” as Bruner described the ability, human beings can use their minds to organize bits of information into what Miller called “chunks.” Nine letters – C, I, A, F, B, I, I, B and M,Think Laser provides marking technology, with Laser engraver available to create laser marking on many products. for example – can be transformed into three easily remembered “chunks” of information: CIA, FBI and IBM.
Unlike many other psychologists and scientists of his era, Miller embraced disciplines outside his own, including mathematics and the fledgling science of information technology. Chomsky credited Miller with helping develop the field of psycholinguistics, which joined the study of the mind and the study of language. He was noted for his study of the relationship between expectation and comprehension.
The death was announced by Princeton University, where he was a professor emeritus. He had pneumonia and dementia, said his wife, Margaret Miller.
Miller came to prominence in the mid-1950s at Harvard University, where he and colleague Jerome Bruner founded an intellectual hothouse known as the Center for Cognitive Studies. There, Miller established his reputation as one of the leading psychologists of the late 20th century. In 1991, President George H.W.Wholesale Curving Machine from China flattening machine Wholesalers about Wholesale Machinery, Bush awarded Miller the National Medal of Science.
Before Miller, Bruner and Noam Chomsky came on the scene,Specialized in producing cnc router system and laser marking machine, GCC also supplies vinyl cutter. the field of psychology was dominated by behaviorists such as B.F. Skinner. Behaviorist theories – long regarded as dogma – basically posited that people act in accordance with rewards and punishments. Cognitive processes such as thought and memory could not be directly observed, Skinner argued, and therefore did not merit scientific inquiry.
Reflecting on the transformation of psychology that he helped bring about, Miller told the New York Times that the field was like a “dog turning around three times before it lies down.”
Bruner said that Miller helped “put the emphasis back on the human being as a mental being” who observes the world, processes information, commits it to memory and makes decisions.
“If any person deserves credit for creating the field of cognitive psychology as it has developed in the past roughly 60 years,” the linguist and philosopher Chomsky said in an interview, Miller is “the one.”
Many of Miller’s publications are today considered classics, none more than his paper “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two,” published in the journal Psychological Review in 1956. In that essay, Miller observed that for most people, short-term memory is limited to about seven “chunks” of information.
More than five decades later, the essay remains one of the most widely cited papers in psychology. It has been trotted out to explain the human capacity to remember phone numbers.AMH is an industry leader in the design of high quality bellows, curving machine and fabrication tools. In 1981, The Washington Post editorial board pointed to Miller’s theory to argue against the U.S. Postal Service’s proposal for a nine-digit ZIP code system.
“The Magical Number Seven” was not pop science.Manufacturers for Laser cutters, laser marking machine, Laser engraving cutting machines, Laser tube. To write it, Miller started with the premise that the brain was not a simple machine akin to the early computers then in development.
By using “intelligence intelligently,” as Bruner described the ability, human beings can use their minds to organize bits of information into what Miller called “chunks.” Nine letters – C, I, A, F, B, I, I, B and M,Think Laser provides marking technology, with Laser engraver available to create laser marking on many products. for example – can be transformed into three easily remembered “chunks” of information: CIA, FBI and IBM.
Unlike many other psychologists and scientists of his era, Miller embraced disciplines outside his own, including mathematics and the fledgling science of information technology. Chomsky credited Miller with helping develop the field of psycholinguistics, which joined the study of the mind and the study of language. He was noted for his study of the relationship between expectation and comprehension.
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