Introduction

Abstract

The goal of this research is to develop a model for problem solving that integrates general rules with specific examples. Developing such a model is important because neither rules nor examples, standing alone, are sufficient for problem solving in many important domains. Few areas of human expertise are so well understood that problem solving is reducible to deduction from general principles. Similarly, there are few domains in which experience is so extensive that every new problem precisely matches a previous problem whose solution is known. When neither rules nor examples are individually sufficient, problem-solving expertise depends on integrating both.

A rule qua rule is detached, it stands as it were alone in its glory; although what gives it importance is the facts of daily experience.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein, 1958).

General propositions do not decide concrete cases.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes (Holmes, 1906).