Problem Solving: The Most Human of Activities

Why is it important that creation is sufficiently ordered? The answer given last week is that creation has to have enough order to it so that human beings can solve problems and make decisions. One must immediately expand this, however, to include all living things because without sufficient order to creation, life, at least in the forms we know it, would not be able to survive and even thrive. Human beings are not the exception. It is just that humans have taken this problem solving ability to the highest level of any species that is known.

If creation were chaotic so that nothing followed from anything else, even the simplest forms of life, whose whole existence is nothing more than a reaction to stimuli, could not survive because there could be no necessary consistency to their reactions. Living and surviving is based on developing responses to repeated patterns in the environment. Without being able to find patterns living things could not survive, let alone evolve into more advanced species. Order is needed so that living creatures can survive and grow, can have offspring and evolve.

This skill evolved many years ago and the ability to solve more and more difficult problems resulted in a species that was better able than others to survive and prosper. The Hominid species, in its present form, survived and has survived spectacularly. Investigators have identified about 20 hominid species that lived at various times and they have estimated that the total number of Hominid species peaked about 2 million years ago. Modern humans are the sole surviving representative of the hominid linage. (pages 52-3) [All references are to J. Wentzel Van Huyssteen, “Alone in the World: Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology,” The Gifford Lectures (Spring 2004), published b. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 2006.]

To survive a species must possess some talent(s) or skill(s) that help to account for its survival. The specific talent that seems to have contributed the most to this success of the human species is the ability it has to solve problems. This skill has allowed human beings to become self reflective in that they are the only species to be able to experience guilt, shame, and pride. They are able to anticipate events far into the future. They can invent metaphors and analogies. They speak a language with a grammar. And, they reason about hypothetical circumstances. These are talents that make humans unique among all species. (page 36)

Furthermore, human communities formed and transmitted these talents through cultural evolution that brought more complex and sophisticated cultures into being. Change was always occurring and new structures constantly emerged. (page 38) Special attention is given to the period ranging from 45,000 to 35,000 years ago. It seems that during this time period, human consciousness and intelligence emerged, and along with it, creative, artistic, and religious imaginations. This is referred to as the Upper Paleolithic revolution, the cultural ‘big bang’. From this period the rest, as they say, is history. (pages 64 and 66)

But, what is problem solving? Let’s take the very simple example of a man walking in the woods after there has been a fresh snowfall. The man sees an area of snow where it appears as if someone or something has been walking. The tracks in the snow, however, do not appear to be made by a human being because the pattern is not one of a two-footed mammal walking upright, but of a four-footed beast ambling through the snow with the stomach dragging in the snow from time-to-time. Could it have been a deer? No, the man concludes that the tracks have been made by a bear. He removes himself from the area.

The process here is that the human being observes something…the snow has been disturbed. Furthermore, the disturbance seems to be in the pattern of tracks that a living thing might have caused. The man instinctively finds a model that could apply to this situation. The model must be able to make some predictions as to what kind of living thing would have created the specific tracks that are observed. The tracks could have been made by a human being. The tracks could have been made by a deer. The tracks could have been made by a bear. Focusing on the specific tracks that he observes, he assigns probabilities as to the likelihood of each of the possible causes. He decides that the most likely creature that could have produced these tracks is a bear and bears attack human beings…so…he makes the decision to leave the area.

Arguably, this example describes the problem solving process, one that results in a decision. Simplifying the process, the man observed some information (the disturbance of the snow), he selects a model that seemed to be appropriate to the situation, he made some forecasts, he applied probabilities to the possible outcomes, and then he made a decision based on the likelihood of each possible action he could take given the expected outcomes.

What are the crucial elements in this process that are specifically tied to human problem solving and decision making? Humans can invent ‘metaphors and analogies’ or models, they can deal with ‘hypothetical circumstances’ like the existence of different types of causes and different possible actions that can be taken, and they ‘anticipate’ or predict the future. Furthermore, human beings can do this without complete knowledge of the specific situation they face! That is, creation is sufficiently ordered so that they can make relatively adequate decisions without knowing the whole story. They can act even though they know that ‘something is missing’. (See posting of February 1, 2008, “What is Missing?”)

For now, two comments need to be made about the models that a problem solver uses. Since the problem solver uses models to make forecasts of outcomes upon which his/her decisions are based, the models must be grounded in their ability to perform. That is, a model must help an individual make good decisions. David Tracy writes that, for a given situation, a model must be relatively adequate which means that it must be logically consistent and must be able to forecast as least as well as any other logically consistent model used in a situation like the one being considered. Problem solving/decision making is not just an intellectual exercise. Actions are taken and actions have consequences. The objective is to make better and better decisions and solve more and more difficult problems.

The second comment relates to the structure of the model that the problem solver uses. When we use the term model we most often think of logically formal models or mathematical models. But, formal or mathematical models are adequate only for a limited number of situations, usually situations where only a few causative factors are relevant and the relationship between the relevant factors is fairly clear. But, the vast majority of situations faced by human beings are not of this kind. Many of them contain far too many potentially causative factors for the individual to mentally process and use and the relationships between the relative factors tend to be very complex and uncertain. Human beings have developed many different ways to model relationships given these vague and ambiguous situations. They use stories and narratives, fables and proverbs, rules of thumb and superstitions, to just name a few. In using their abilities to abstract from reality, humans build models of all sorts to assist them to solve the problems they face from those pertaining to daily life, to building organizational structures, to science, to discussing mysteries, to religion…to everything that concerns them.