Newell and Simon had concluded that problem-solving always involves a step-by-step mental search through a vast “problem space” of possibilities, with each step guided by a heuristic rule of thumb: “If this is the situation, then that step is worth taking.” By building their theory into a program known as General Problem Solver, and by putting that program to work on those same puzzles and games, Newell and Simon had shown that the problem-space approach could reproduce human-style reasoning remarkably well. Indeed, their concept of heuristic search was already well on its way to becoming the
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