The so‑called magical number is a direct reference to the work of George A. Miller. By chance, a recent comment recalled the death of this fundamental psychologist, a pioneer in the fields of cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics.

Miller’s contributions were decisive for the evolution of modern psychology. His studies on the limits of human capacity to process information opened the door to multiple disciplines and marked the beginning of what is known as the cognitive revolution. This shift also meant the gradual abandonment of behaviorist psychology, which Miller himself described as an exciting adventure for experimental psychology, but one doomed to reveal its limitations by the mid‑20th century.

The magical number and the limits of the mind

His most cited article, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information, became an essential reference for understanding how human memory works and what its limits are. Although this work represents only part of his legacy, it clearly illustrates the kind of questions that guided his research.

Throughout his career, Miller wrote extensively about language, perception, memory, and communication. These areas, which we now consider interconnected, were approached by him from an integrative perspective that broke with the reductionist models dominant at the time.

Language, computation, and WordNet

During his later years as a researcher and professor at Princeton University, Miller advanced the WordNet project. This lexical database of the English language became a key tool for computational linguistics and natural language processing, and it is still used today in multiple applications.

WordNet reflects Miller’s view of language and knowledge very clearly, understood not as closed lists of definitions but as networks of interrelated meanings. An idea that once again anticipated approaches that would later consolidate in artificial intelligence and information system design.

A vision ahead of its time

At one of the conferences organized by the Association for Computational Linguistics, George A. Miller showed not only his rigor as a researcher, but also his ability to anticipate future problems and opportunities. In his talk he emphasized the cognitive complexity involved in something as seemingly simple as consulting a dictionary, especially when we observe how children learn to use it.

A dictionary is an extremely valuable reference book, but its familiarity tends to blind adults to the high level of intelligence required to read it. This aspect becomes apparent, however, when school children are observed learning dictionary skills.

Children do not respect syntactic category and often wander into the wrong lexical entry, apparently in search of something they can understand. They also find it difficult to match the sense of a polysemous word to the context of a particular passage.

The lexical information that children need can be provided better by a computer than by a book, but that remedy will not be realized if automated dictionaries are merely machine-readable versions of the standard printed dictionaries.

These reflections, formulated decades ago, remain surprisingly current. They remind us that designing tools for access to knowledge requires a deep understanding of the cognitive processes of the people who use them.

A legacy that remains relevant

George Armitage Miller died on July 22, 2012, at the age of 92, in New Jersey. His legacy, however, continues to influence fields as diverse as psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and experience design.

The cognitive revolution he helped to ignite not only transformed the way we understand the human mind, but also laid the foundations for designing systems more aligned with our capacities, limitations, and ways of thinking.