Also known as cognitive science, this was a hot area and getting hotter. When done properly, it combined the talents of neuroscientists studying the detailed wiring of the brain, cognitive psychologists studying the second-by-second process of high-level thinking and reasoning, artificial intelligence researchers trying to model those thinking processes in a computer—even linguists studying the structure of human languages and anthropologists studying human culture. Now that, Rota and Metropolis told Cowan, was an interdisciplinary topic worthy of his institute.
