Classic AI: search, logic & planning· 1976
Computer science as empirical inquiry: symbols and search
On the reading lists
- #277 in the Top 500 (2026 edition)
- #11 in Classic AI: search, logic & planning (2026 edition)
Why it matters
Formulated the physical symbol system hypothesis, shaping classical AI's intellectual foundations.
Condensed from the expert lists' notes.
The record
- First released
- 1976 (from oracle lists)
- Citations
- 2,807 citations, as counted by
Semantic Scholar (non-commercial licence) - Named by
- the chatgpt list only
- Score
- 0.460 · computed rank 277 · consensus 0.46, must-read 0.5, citations percentile 0.778 (1970s · classic-ai), awards 0, existing lists 0. Method
Editor's notes
- Readability check: pass: Newell and Simon's Turing lecture; the physical symbol system hypothesis. (AI draft (Claude), not yet reviewed, 2026-10-29)
Data sources
Catalogue data from OpenAlex (CC0), Crossref (CC0 metadata; no abstracts are shown), arXiv, and Papers With Code (CC BY-SA 4.0), and
Semantic Scholar (used under its non-commercial API licence). Each count names its source. See the method.