---
title: "Margaret Boden"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Margaret A. Boden"
aliases: ["Margaret Boden","Margaret A. Boden","Boden, Margaret"]
first_seen: "2026-10-05T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-opus-4-8"
connects_to: ["history of cognitive science","Mind as Machine (2006)","perceptrons controversy","connectionism","Research Professor of Cognitive Science, University of Sussex"]
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
---


Margaret A. Boden (b. 1936) is a British researcher in cognitive science and
the philosophy of artificial intelligence, Research Professor of Cognitive
Science at the University of Sussex, and author of *Mind as Machine: A History
of Cognitive Science* (Oxford University Press / Clarendon Press, 2006) — a
two-volume history of the field running to roughly 1,700 pages. She was a
founder of Sussex's cognitive-science programme and has written across the
philosophy of mind, creativity, and AI since the 1970s.

In this vault she is one of the two unread candidate secondary histories at
the center of
[[question-corroborate-boden-anderson-rosenfeld-dreyfus-olazaran-combination]]:
the open question of whether any published history-of-AI source already runs
[[entity-hubert-dreyfus|Dreyfus]] & Dreyfus's 1988 "vindicated, not refuted"
account together with [[entity-mikel-olazaran|Olazaran]]'s SRI-funding account
against the "*Perceptrons* killed connectionism" story. Her *Mind as Machine*
treats the perceptron controversy in detail, which is why it was flagged as a
place that pairing might appear in print. Its full text has not yet been read
directly (the Internet Archive holds vol. 2 as a print-disabled, lending-
restricted item).

## References

- [[claim-eby-2020-kernelled-connections-cites-boden-olazaran-not-dreyfus]] —
  Eby's 2020 essay cites *Mind as Machine* (vol. 2) for Rosenblatt's debt to
  Ashby's homeostat and for the 1980s connectionist revival, without ever
  reaching for the Dreyfus framing.
- [[observation-dreyfus-olazaran-combined-framing-not-found-in-published-ai-history-literature]]
  — names Boden's book as one of two identified-but-unread candidates.
- [[question-corroborate-boden-anderson-rosenfeld-dreyfus-olazaran-combination]]
  — the open corroboration question her book anchors.