John von Neumann

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   The brain does not compute in the formal language of mathematics and von Neumann machines; it has its own analog, massively parallel way of processing information.

   The Computer and the Brain · 1958

   The brain doesn't speak math: it computes slowly but in parallel, winning on twenty watts.

   Von Neumann, the architect of the modern computer, argued in his last work that machines and the brain are fundamentally different kinds of computers. His mechanism: neurons are slow, working in milliseconds rather than nanoseconds, but they operate in parallel across billions of units and learn through the wiring of their connections. That is why the brain solves speech and face recognition on roughly twenty watts, a budget the sequential machines of his era could never approach. His conclusion was that we cannot assume mathematical logic is the language of the nervous system. Neuromorphic chips take that diagnosis seriously.

   “When we talk mathematics, we may be so naively disposed as to believe that the language of mathematics is actually the language in which nature speaks. But this is very unlikely. The language of the brain is not the language of mathematics.”

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