1 min read
| Status | Active — read in full 2026-10-27 (NOTE-1232), from a scan of the published article; worth reading as the classic argument that well-structuredness is relative to a bounded solver and that problems from the world become well structured only by being prepared, and for its model of design as an alternation between local problem solving and retrieval that modifies the problem space. Its conclusion that no new mechanisms are needed is a suggestion, not a result. |
| Version | 2 |
| Tags | cognition, epistemology |
| Cited as “paper” by | NOTE-1232 — Simon — ill structured problems |
| Cited as “source” by | THEORY-1072 — In Simon's analysis, whether a problem is well structured is a relation between the problem and a bounded solver, judged by practicable rather than in-principle computability, so it comes in degrees and has no sharp boundary; on that standard even theorem proving and chess fail some of the conditions, chess is well structured in the small and ill structured in the large, and problems presented by the world become well structured only in being prepared for a solver, THEORY-1084 — Simon proposes that ill structured problems can be handled by an alternation between a solver working on a problem that is well structured at each moment and a recognition and retrieval system that keeps modifying the problem space from memory or the environment, that a serial solver gains nothing by assembling the problem space at the outset, and that nothing but the size of the knowledge base may separate ill from well structured problems, so that no qualitatively new mechanisms are needed, THEORY-1216 — Ill structured problems can be handled by an alternation between a solver working on a problem that is well structured at each moment and a recognition and retrieval system that keeps modifying the problem space from memory or the environment, a serial solver gains nothing by assembling the problem space at the outset, and nothing but the size of the knowledge base may separate ill from well structured problems, so that no qualitatively new mechanisms are needed |
Simon, H. A. (1973). The structure of ill structured problems. Artificial Intelligence, 4(3–4), 181–201. doi:10.1016/0004-3702(73)90011-8.
Read in full on 2026-10-27 (NOTE-1232).
A17 §3 cited it for the owner’s U17: problem formulation is part of computation, so “The representation of the problem is itself part of the work, rather than something handed to the reasoner for free.” It bears on CLAIM-475.