HERBERT SIMON: BIOGRAPHY, CONTRIBUTIONS AND WORKS - ARTE - 2025

Herbert Simon (1916-2001) was an American social science scientist recognized for his work in fields such as psychology, economics, mathematics, statistics, and operational research.

He was awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics for his important work on corporate decision making, as well as his basic contributions to artificial intelligence, the psychology of human cognition, and list processing, among other contributions.

Simon was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978. Photo: Richard Rappaport He developed a theory for solving human problems with the aim of understanding and simplifying decisions. Together with the researcher Allen Newell, he considered that the correct way to study problem solving was to simulate it through computer software, introducing in this medium the characteristics of human cognition.

Biography

Early years

Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 - February 9, 2001) was born in Wisconsin, United States, the son of an electrical engineer, inventor and equipment designer who would later become a patent attorney.

His mother was an accomplished pianist of European descent who instilled in him knowledge of music, science and culture from an early age through reading.

His childhood and adolescence were spent between the elementary and middle schools of Milwaukee, where he had a school life that he found simple. She complemented her studies by spending much of her time at the local public library, where she read a good number of books that she had a great fondness for.

He discovered his vocation for psychology and the social sciences thanks to the family admiration they had at home for Harold Merkel, his maternal uncle, who had studied economics at the University of Wisconsin. In turn, Merkel had been under the tutelage of the legendary American economist John R. Commons.

University and work stage

Herbert Simon graduated from the University of Chicago in 1936 and his constant studies led him later to obtain a doctorate in political science in 1943. After holding various positions in the area of ​​political science, in 1949 he served as a professor of psychology and administration at Carnegie Mellon University.

He was also a professor of informatics, computer science, and psychology at the Richard King Mellon Institute of Science.

His theoretical approach was based on considering that the social sciences needed the same level of rigor and mathematical foundations characteristic of the "hard" sciences (mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology) in order to be successful.

This is how he prepared himself to be a mathematical social scientist, a degree he reached in the 1940s, dazzling with his skills in advanced mathematics, symbolic logic, and statistics.

Simon always cited as his mentors the mathematician and economist Henry Schultz, Rudolf Carnap in logic, Nicholas Rashevsky in biophysical mathematics, and Harold Lasswell and Charles Merriam in political science.

Decision-making theory

Herbert Simon sought to replace the classic and simplified approach to economic models with his book Administrative Behavior, published in 1947, in which he exposes what is considered his most valuable contribution: the theory of decision-making.

In his work he argued a concept that defines the figure of the businessman with an individual, unique character, who makes decisions based on increasing the profits and benefits of his company through an approach based on the consideration of multiple factors to choose what is best..

This in order to prevent incorrect decisions from having a considerable influence on the economy, since it showed that they directly affected aspects such as the increase in prices in the market and the quality of products.

What is the theory about?

The theory consists of choosing an option among several alternatives. How to do it the right way? What are the variables that must be considered to be successful?

Starting from human rationality, it justifies different ways to be able to reach all the angles of a problem, which begins to appear from the moment in which decision-making comes into play.

He approached this field from the psychological, sociological and philosophical, introducing a methodology that shaped the ways in which people decide in real situations, such as in society and the economy.

Therefore, he defined the essential elements that must be taken into account in order to make rational decisions, always pursuing success through an efficient projection and in accordance with the specific objectives of each case.

The two streams

Herbert Simon drew mainly on two streams: descriptive and prescriptive, or how you decide and how you should decide.

To make it effective in the first case, he explained decision-making from a reflection on the factors and possibilities that are available, always considering projecting the general and specific objectives of an action plan in the short, medium and long term.

Similarly, in the second case, it raises the ways to determine which is the most rational alternative that can be chosen from among several options, emphasizing what is the best and most appropriate, what is more convenient.

These and other approaches to Simon's work have been applied historically to the present in areas such as the economy, signifying great advances that validated his work in different generations.

The approach of the theory of decision making is directed towards satisfying the needs of the market in the case of economics, documentation and other of the many fields where it is used, since it is defined as a limited rationality.

Purpose

In this model of limited rationality, it shows that the people in charge of deciding, in general, are carried away by emotional impulses without taking into account the variables necessary to make the best decision.

In such a way that it includes three essential steps in its model. First, to quantify the amount of alternatives that would really, rationally, be useful to achieve the stated ends.

Second, assume the expenses and time necessary for the processing and compilation of the information that will allow the success of the project.

Third, also assume the mathematical order to determine the really useful information, beyond the sensible or current appreciation of human capital.

This implies that in the end, the theory of decision making is inclined to comply with the procedures focusing on rationality and not specifically on the results.

Other contributions

Theory of satisfactory behavior

Simon contributed to the stability of the world economy with his theory of satisfactory behavior, which he contrasted at the time with the model based exclusively on the excessive increase in profits of a company, without taking into account the risks and complications.

The work of the economist represented a great advance in terms of minimizing these risks and complications that commonly rigged small, medium and large companies, so that its positive impact was global.

Pioneer of Artificial Intelligence

In the mid-1950s, Herbert Simon demonstrated with a group of colleagues that the possibility existed for machines to have a life of their own and to think for themselves through different techniques, scientific and engineering disciplines.

This is how the concept of Artificial Intelligence was born. Thanks to the contributions, ideas, theories and concepts of Simon and his colleagues, who were visionaries and took the risk of going beyond the limits of the human mind.

And they not only created the foundations of this area of ​​computer science, but also carried out the first experiments and obtained the first results that set a new course for today's society.

Together with Allen Newell he produced the first Artificial Intelligence program, The Logic Theorist, in which he achieved and founded computer information processing.

This great advance caused symbolic artificial intelligence to come into action shortly thereafter, created from the hypothesis of the physical symbol system, also devised and established by Simon and Newell.

Not surprisingly, they both won the Turing Prize in 1975, considered the highest honor in computer science.

Setting the new course for psychology

Their contributions in Artificial Intelligence provided the basis for the next computational models inspired by human thought, which independently executed the mental processes that were programmed to them.

This represented a momentous advance, as it changed the role of human interpretation with its analysis of verbal protocol. A computational model based on the verbal description of processes such as attention and memory retrieval.

These human processes were replaced by computational models that carried out coding, searching, retrieval and focusing, obtaining results that were considered fully reliable, since their programming reduced and even eliminated any margin of error.

In this way psychology obtained a means of systematically investigating mental operations.

Herbert Simon's contributions were a very important and significant boost for psychology. With this, it managed to turn it into the main scientific current of the United States in the post-World War II stage, to such an extent that its theories and contributions continue to be an indisputable reference today.

Plays

-Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organization (1947).

-Models of Man (1957).

- Organizations, (1958). co-authored with James G. March and Harold Guetzkow.

-The Sciences of the Artificial (1969).

-Human Problem Solving, co-authored with Allen Newell (1972).

-Models of Discovery: and other topics in the methods of science (1977).

-Models of Thought, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (1979).

-Models of Bounded Rationality, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (1982). Vol. 3 published it in 1997.

-Reason in Human Affairs (1983).

-Scientific Discovery: computational explorations of the creative processes, with P. Langley, G. Bradshaw, and J. Zytkow (1987).

-Models of My Life (1991).

-An Empirically Based Microeconomics (1997).

-Economics, Bounded Rationality and the Cognitive Revolution (posthumous book published in 2008).

References

1. Theories of decision-making in economics and behavioral science, Herbert A. Simon, 1959.
2. Augier, M, "Models of Herbert A. Simon", Perspectives on Science (2000).
3. Dasgupta, S, "Multidisciplinary Creativity: the Case of Herbert A. Simon", Cognitive Science (2003).
4. Guerra-Hernández, Alejandro, The Sciences of the Artificial by Herbert A. Simon. Komputer Sapiens (2009).
5. The shape of automation for men and management, Herbert A. Simon, (1965).