Can You Play 20 Questions with Nature and Win?

This article responds to supporters of unification of the modern cognitive sci­ences who have raised concerns that the pluralistic development of cognitive re­search can lead to their fragmentation, duplication of effort, and lack of under­standing. In response to these concerns, it is argued that the diversity of theoretical perspectives in the cognitive sciences has been a beneficial factor for their deve­lopment. It is shown that since Allen Newell’s landmark papers, in which he ex­pressed dissatisfaction with the fragmentation of cognitive research, the prolife­ration of cognitive models and theories has intensified. In the cognitive sciences, there emerged such fundamentally new large-scale theoretical movements as connectionism and embodied cognition, while the computational models that dominated in the 1970s and 1980s have faded in importance. The author reviews the major outcomes of the evolution of these movements and argues that they have helped scientists to better estimate the real complexity of cognitive pro­cesses compared to how they were theorized in early cognitive models, when a number of factors, such as the role of sociocultural surroundings, were not taken into account. The author notes that the complexity of the brain, nervous system and body of cognitive agents, their interaction with the environment and sociocultural surroundings make it highly unlikely that they can be explained on the basis of a single set of principles in a unified theory.