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From: markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Keywords: Synthetic Reasoning
Message-ID: <331@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>
Date: 10 Jan 89 23:18:45 GMT
References: <558@soleil.UUCP> <43472@linus.UUCP>
Sender: news@csd4.milw.wisc.edu
Reply-To: markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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In article <43472@linus.UUCP> bwk@mbunix (Barry Kort) writes:
>Reductionist (analytical) reasoning is easy to describe and
>easy to teach.  But reductionism has a shortcoming.
>
>If I give you a large, assembled jigsaw puzzle, and you examine
>it piece by piece, you will end up with a pile of carefully
>examined pieces.

I don't know about that.  I solve most of my puzzles by classifying pieces
on the basis of their shape and printed color, with little or no regard
for the place where they fit in the "big" picture.

Yet, I also claim that I'm solving the puzzle holistically in the process.
The "big" picture always emerges out of the jumble of pieces near the end.