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- The Problem of Learning
- Problemistics Courseware
- Corso su Problemistica
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Problemistics - Problémistique - Problemistica
The Art & Craft of Problem Dealing
Exploring
Exploring: exploring as questioning (John Dewey)
Exploring: questioning for data (Abraham Kaplan)
Exploring: exploring as reflecting (John Dewey)
Exploring: exploring as searching (Russell L. Ackoff and Fred E. Emery)
Exploring as questioning
[1903] John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic
“The presumption is that the function of questioning is one which has continually grown in intensity and range, that doubt is continually chased back, and being cornered, fights more desperately, and thus clears the ground more thoroughly.”
"Or, to change the metaphor, just in the degree that what has been accepted as fact ... loses stable equilibrium, the tension involved in the questioning attitude increases, until a readjustment gives a new and less easily shaken equilibrium." (Chapter VI, pp. 183-184)
Questioning for data
[1964] Abraham Kaplan, The conduct of inquiry, Chandler Publishing Company, Scranton, Pennsylvania
“Data come to us only in answer to questions, and it is we who decide not only whether to ask but also how the question is to be put.”
“How we put the question reflects our values on one hand, and on the other hand helps determine the answer we get.” (Chapter X, p. 385)
Exploring as reflecting
[1903] John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic
“... reflection ... arises because of the appearance of incompatible factors within the empirical situation ...: incompatible not in a mere structural or static sense, but in an active and progressive sense.” (pp. 9-10)
“In other words, reflection appears as the dominant trait of a situation when there is something seriously the matter, some trouble, due to active discordance, dissentience, conflict among the factors of a prior non-intellectual experience; when ... a situation becomes tensional.” (p. 11)
“Reflection involves running over various ideas, sorting them out, comparing one with another, trying to get one which will unite in itself the strength of two, searching for new points of view, developing new suggestions; guessing, suggesting, selecting, and rejecting.” (p. 197)
Exploring as searching
[1972] Russell L. Ackoff and Fred E. Emery, On Purposeful Systems, Tavistock Publications, London.
“Search: one or more observations whose intended outcome is awareness of a course of action that the observer was not aware of before making the observations.” (p. 115)
“A search is always conditioned by the searcher’s model of the situation; the model affects what kind of possibilities he looks for. How best to conduct a search may itself be a problem - a methodological problem because its goal is to produce a better solution to another problem.” (p. 115)