1. Problem solving is search.

Herbert Simon and Allen Newell launched the study of problem solving with their landmark book, Human Problem Solving. In it, they argued that people solve problems by searching through a problem space.A problem space is like a maze: you know where you are now, you’d know if you’ve reached the exit, but you don’t know how to get there. One implication of this model is that, without prior knowledge, most problems are really difficult to solve. Learning is the process of acquiring patterns and methods to cut down on brute-force searching.