Relation To Philosophy and Human Intelligence
This conflict goes much deeper than programming practices, (though it clearly has parallels in software engineering). For philosophical or possibly scientific reasons, some people believe that intelligence is fundamentally rational, and can best be represented by logical systems incorporating truth maintenance. Others believe that intelligence is best implemented as a mass of learned or evolved hacks, not necessarily having internal consistency or any unifying organizational framework.
Ironically, the apparently scruffy philosophy may also turn out to be provably (under typical assumptions) optimal for many applications. Intelligence is often seen as a form of search, and as such not believed to be perfectly solvable in a reasonable amount of time (see also NP and Simple Heuristics, commonsense reasoning, memetics, reactive planning).
It is an open question whether human intelligence is inherently scruffy or neat. Some claim that the question itself is unimportant: the famous neat John McCarthy has said publicly he has no interest in how human intelligence works, while famous scruffy Rodney Brooks is openly obsessed with creating humanoid intelligence. (See Subsumption architecture, Cog project (Brooks 2001)).
Read more about this topic: Neats Vs. Scruffies
Famous quotes containing the words relation to, relation, philosophy, human and/or intelligence:
“Science is the language of the temporal world; love is that of the spiritual world. Man, indeed, describes more than he explains; while the angelic spirit sees and understands. Science saddens man; love enraptures the angel; science is still seeking, love has found. Man judges of nature in relation to itself; the angelic spirit judges of it in relation to heaven. In short to the spirits everything speaks.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one’s own.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“At the very moment when someone is beginning to take philosophy seriously, the whole world believes the opposite.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In his very rejection of art Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by certain means and he succeeded.... He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)