— Ch. 1 · The Boy Who Read Principia —
Walter Pitts.
~3 min read · Ch. 1 of 6
Walter Harry Pitts Jr. was born in Detroit, Michigan, on the 23rd of April 1923. He taught himself logic and mathematics as a child without formal schooling. At age twelve he spent three days inside a library reading Principia Mathematica. The text was dense and difficult for most adults to understand. Pitts found serious problems with the first half of the first volume. He wrote a letter to Bertrand Russell pointing out these errors. Russell appreciated the young man's insight and invited him to study at Cambridge University. Pitts turned down the offer but decided to become a logician anyway. He left home at fifteen to pursue his studies alone.
The Homeless Logician And Warren McCulloch
Warren McCulloch took a position as professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1941. He invited Walter Pitts and Jerome Lettvin to live with his family in early 1942. Pitts had been homeless and without income until that point. They collaborated every evening while living under McCulloch's roof. Pitts knew the work of Gottfried Leibniz on computing devices. They considered whether the nervous system could function like a universal computing device described by Leibniz. This collaboration led to their seminal paper A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity published in 1943. The University of Chicago awarded Pitts an Associate of Arts degree five years later for this work. It remains his only earned academic credential.Macy Conferences And Cybernetics Foundations
Walter Pitts moved to Greater Boston to work with Norbert Wiener after meeting him in 1943. Their first discussion about Wiener's proof of the ergodic theorem went well enough for Pitts to relocate. He became an unofficial student under Wiener at MIT until they parted ways acrimoniously in 1952. From 1946 onward he served as a core member of the Macy conferences. These meetings aimed to establish foundations for a general science of human mind workings. Pitts also worked for Kellex Corporation in New York City starting in 1944. That company was part of the Atomic Energy Project before being acquired by Vitro Corporation in 1950. His participation helped shape early cybernetics theory through these collaborative efforts.