"Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." - Gertrude Stein ("Sacred Emily"- 1913, Collected in Geography and Plays - 1922)
Identity. Words identify. Proper identification clarifies. Clarity provides necessary information. Processing information leads to understanding.
However, understanding what something is not is often as important as knowing what something is. That distinction clarifies and often simplifies. Knowing what a tool can do is important; understanding what a tool can’t do, or what it isn’t capable of, provides a framework for using that tool properly.
This will be a newsletter to discuss, differentiate, and describe the formal study of problem solving as an independent subject of study from other disciplines (for instance, the formal study of decision making) that may be related to, interconnected with, or dependent on problem solving.
Mathematics, a field where the formal study and use of problem-solving techniques originated, often depends on advanced problem-solving techniques, but they are separate subjects nonetheless. One can study mathematics with no knowledge of how to solve mathematical problems.
“We always hope for the easy fix: the one simple change that will erase a problem in a stroke. But few things in life work this way. Instead, success requires making a hundred small steps go right - one after the other, no slipups, no goofs, everyone pitching in.”
― Atul Gawande, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
As an analogy, the study of modern medicine includes the study of surgery, and the teaching of surgical techniques as a possible treatment for medical conditions. However, knowing, understanding, and practicing medicine is not dependent on knowing surgical techniques. Surgery is an important subset of medicine but does not encompass it. Medicine uses surgery as a tool. Of course, surgical techniques are mostly studied in relation to medicine, as part of medical training, but anyone so interested could study surgery as a separate subject and relate it later to the overall goal of its parent, medicine. But surgery has its own identity.
The above analogies may seem obvious but serve a larger purpose: to clarify the premise that often there is confusion about what problem solving really is, what is is related to (either as a parent, child, or sibling), how and where is it used, and why the distinction matters.
The conclusion: Problem solving exists as a independent subject of study.
The techniques and formal study of the disciplines mentioned below in “The List” are often lumped together with problem solving. Problem solving is a very broad general subject with applications to many different fields. The skills of being a great problem solver also rely on a lot of other different skills. But these other skills are not one in the same with problem solving skills, that is to say, identical. Therefore, the “is not just” in the “List” is a way to signify that, though they may be related and dependent, they are not exactly the same skill (or subject).
This distinction is important, for to be able to study and understand both the nature and limits of problem solving and its methods, we must know what problem solving is not (as a subject of inquiry), what problem solving encompasses in practice, and how problem solving is differentiated from related topics.
Often, people will inadvertently see problem solving as some offshoot of certain other fields of study that either benefit from, define, or limit what problem solving can accomplish.
The List:
1. Problem solving is not just about making good decisions or decision making in general.
You can still solve problems well, but make poor decisions related to those problems. It is true that being a great decision maker will often help you become a better problem solver. Making good decisions about which problem-solving methods to use is often critical in moving forward towards a solution. But these skills exist separately, and mostly work independently. Being good at one does not guarantee you that you will be good at the other.
The academic study of decision-making (for instance, as it relates to business), like many of the subjects listed below, has entire books written about it and is itself the subject of study in college and university courses.
2. Problem solving is not just mathematics or logic.
Having great general or specific problem-solving skills makes solving difficult mathematics problems easier, but one can still be a great general problem solver without knowing anything about math.
Being a logical thinker is, of course, also important to problem solving, but so is being creative and taking risks, jumping ahead to ideas that may not have a straight logical connection. Making deductions and using inductive reasoning are skills developed in books and courses on logic. All the clever use of logic in the world may not permit a solution to a problem. Non-logical solutions to problems exists, especially in the realm of personal problems.
3. Problem solving is not just algorithmic thinking or (computer machine) learning.
Problem solving is not the blind application of a group of techniques or algorithms. You can most definitely teach computers to solve chess problems, for instance, by training them on a large set of data, or by programming them based on how experts play, but they (computers) are not really problem solving; instead, they are detecting patterns and making associations.
Computer machine learning is just that, comparable in many ways to how humans learn. Learning how to learn best is often a problem, in and of itself. The way humans (or machines) learn is often by trial and error, pruning bad choices while selecting good choices to pursue further. But the pattern matching, association, mimicking, and absorption typical in human (or computer) learning is not strictly problem solving.
4. Problem solving is not just psychology or cognitive science.
Knowing everything there is to know about psychology, the psychology of problem solving, or being a great psychologist or cognitive scientist, is not alone going to make anyone a great problem solver.
These subjects (both psychology and cognitive science) investigate problem solving, attempting to understand its role in human activity. Both illuminate many of the psychological and cognitive processes of individuals while they problem solve. But again, problem solving has an identity separate from these fields of study.
5. Problem solving is not just creative or critical thinking.
Being creative or employing critical thinking skills will make problem solving easier and are often two of the main components necessary to successful problem solving.
Creative thinking will often lead to ingenious solutions; critical thinking will often eliminate errors; however, studying critical thinking or creativity (by the way, a great book on the subject was written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention 1996) is not alone sufficient to understand problem solving, or to become a great problem solver.
6. Problem solving is not just the application of strategy or strategic planning.
Understanding the benefits of having a strategy in approaching problems is extremely important. But often a strategy runs up against certain barriers or facts that can't be overcome. Being a great planner will also not necessarily make you a great problem solver, though it may help.
Both the fields of strategy and planning have an enormous amount of literature written about them. Understanding these subjects will inform you of potential approaches to use in solving problems, but they are also not sufficient to understand problem solving.
In summary, this list of what problem solving is not is not exhaustive, or in any way complete. Problem solving is comprised of many different skills: the mastery of any can improve problem-solving skills in general.
Finally, there have been hundreds of books and thousands of articles written about problem solving, so it is a vast subject of great importance in many areas. The application of problem-solving methods in subjects as wide as science, technology, engineering, math, among many others, makes it worthy of a separate field of study, and distinguishes it from many other related subjects (the is not).
Once these distinctions are made, a much better understanding of problem solving becomes possible!
Happy Problem Solving!
Evan
Very thoughtful content. I am learning new things. Thank you!