CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

Problem solving permeates every comer of human activity and is a common denominator of widely disparate fields such as the sciences; law; education; business; sports; medicine, industry; literature ; and as if there weren’t enough problem solving activity in our professional and vocational lives, many form of recreation. Human, apes, and many other mammals are curious types who, for reason seemingly related to survive, seek stimulation and resolve conflict through a lifetime of creative, intelligent problem solving. A problem is a situation which is experienced by an agent as different from the situation which the agent ideally would like to be in. A problem is solved by a sequence of actions that reduce the different between the initial situation and the goal (F. Heylighen, 1998).