“Heuristic Search Hypothesis. The solutions to problems are represented as symbol structures. A physical symbol system exercises its intelligence in problem solving by search—that is, by generating and progressively modifying symbol structures until it produces a solution structure.”

—  Allen Newell

Source: Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search (1975), p. 120.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Heuristic Search Hypothesis. The solutions to problems are represented as symbol structures. A physical symbol system e…" by Allen Newell?
Allen Newell photo
Allen Newell 7
American cognitive scientist 1927–1992

Related quotes

“The Physical Symbol System Hypothesis. A physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficient means for general intelligent action.”

Allen Newell (1927–1992) American cognitive scientist

Source: Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search (1975), p. 116. This is also called the Church–Turing thesis.

“A system represents someone's solution to a problem. The system doesn't solve the problem.”

John Gall (1925–2014) American physician

Source: General systemantics, an essay on how systems work, and especially how they fail..., 1975, p. 74 Cited in: Roger Kaufman and Fenwick W. English (1979) Needs Assessment: Concept and Application, p. 94

“[The] amount of search is not a measure of the amount of intelligence being exhibited. What makes a problem a problem is not that a large amount of search is required for its solution, but that a large amount would be required if a requisite level of intelligence were not applied.”

Allen Newell (1927–1992) American cognitive scientist

Source: Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search (1975), p. 122.

“Sometimes… Diophantus solves a problem wholly or in part by synthesis…. Although… Diophantus does not treat his problems generally and is usually content with finding any particular numbers which happen to satisfy the conditions of his problems,… he does occasionally attempt such general solutions as were possible to him. But these solutions are not often exhaustive because he had no symbol for a general coefficient.”

James Gow (scholar) (1854–1923) scholar

p, 125
A Short History of Greek Mathematics (1884)

“The representation of knowledge in symbolic form is a matter that has pre-occupied the world of documentation since its origin. The problem is now relevant in many situations other than documents and indexes. The structure of records and files in databases: data structures in computer programming; the syntactic and semantic structure of natural language; knowledge representation in artificial intelligence; models of human memory: in all these fields it is necessary to decide how knowledge may be represented so that the representations may be manipulated.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

As cited in: Lyn Robinson and David Bawden (2011).
Concepts of documentation (1978)

“Belief has its structures, and its symbols change. Its tradition changes. All the relationships within these forms are inter-dependent.”

Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) poet and political activist

Source: The Life of Poetry (1949), p. 96
Context: Belief has its structures, and its symbols change. Its tradition changes. All the relationships within these forms are inter-dependent. We look at the symbols, we hope to read them, we hope for sharing and communication. Sometimes it is there at once, we find it before the words arrive, as in the gesture of John Brown, or the communication of a great actor-dancer, whose gesture and attitude will tell us before his speech adds meaning from another source. Sometimes it rises in us sleeping, evoked by the images of dream, recognized in the blood. The buried voices carry a ground music; they have indeed lived the life of our people. In times of perversity and stress and sundering, it may be a life inverted, the poet who leaps from the ship into the sea; on the level of open belief, it will be the life of the tribe. In subjugated peoples, the poet emerges as prophet.

P. D. Ouspensky photo

“Hints towards the solution of the problem of Eternity can be found in the various symbols and allegories of ancient religions and in some of the modern as well as ancient philosophies.”

P. D. Ouspensky (1878–1947) Russian esotericist

A New Model of the Universe (1932)

John McCarthy photo

“[This] is or should be our main scientific activity — studying the structure of information and the structure of problem solving processes independently of applications and independently of its realization in animals or humans.”

John McCarthy (1927–2011) American computer scientist and cognitive scientist

John McCarthy (1974), quoted in: Joscha Bach (2009) Principles of Synthetic Intelligence PSI, p. 233
1970s

“Shared cultural meaning, as it is institutionalised in public policies and state structures, influences the pragmatic solutions groups envision to such instrumental problems as economic growth.”

Frank Dobbin (1956) American sociologist

Frank Dobbin (1993), "The Social Construction of the Great Depression: Industrial Policy during the 1930s in the United States, Britain and France," in: Theory and Society 22, p. 49; As cited in: Kieran Healy (1998)

Maya Angelou photo

“Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.”

Maya Angelou book Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Source: Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Related topics