Associative Search Methods

Abstract

As the digital computers have become indispensable tools in various tasks involving intelligent operations, one would have expected that their basic functional principles had acquired features from natural information processing. But although computers are extremely effective in numerical and Boolean computing and inference on the basis of deterministic set relations, their efficiency is severely impaired if the data are incomplete or ill-defined; biological systems, however, are well-trained to deal with incomplete information. The primary reason for the inferiority of computers in this respect lies in the discrete representation of information. In most cases the computing operations cannot be executed effectively by means of machine instructions unless the variables are identifiable on the basis of unique names or codes; even minor errors in the representations may break down the computing processes.

“Names, to name effectively, must stand still, and so must the entities they name.” (Aristotle)