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Problem Solving Cognitive Mechanisms

and Formal Models Zygmunt Pizlo


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PROBLEM SOLVING

Intelligent mental representations of physical, cognitive, and social environments


allow humans to navigate enormous search spaces, whose sizes vastly exceed the
number of neurons in the human brain. This allows us to solve a wide range of
problems, such as the Traveling Salesperson Problem, insight problems, as well as
mathematics and physics problems. As an area of research, problem solving has
steadily grown over time. Researchers in artificial intelligence have been formulating
theories of problem solving for the last seventy years. Psychologists, on the other
hand, have focused their efforts on documenting the observed behavior of subjects
solving problems. This book represents the first effort to merge the behavioral results
of human subjects with formal models of the causative cognitive mechanisms. The
first coursebook to deal exclusively with the topic, it provides a main text for elective
courses and a supplementary text for courses such as cognitive psychology and
neuroscience.
  is Professor and Falmagne Endowed Chair in Mathematical
Psychology in the Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California at
Irvine. He is the author of D Shape: Its Unique Place in Visual Perception () and
co-author of Making a Machine that Sees Like Us ().

Published online by Cambridge University Press


Published online by Cambridge University Press
PROBLEM SOLVING
Cognitive Mechanisms and Formal Models

ZYGMUNT PIZLO
University of California, Irvine

Published online by Cambridge University Press


University Printing House, Cambridge  , United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, th Floor, New York,  , USA
 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne,  , Australia
–, rd Floor, Plot , Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – , India

 Penang Road, #-/, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 


Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.
It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/
: ./
© Zygmunt Pizlo 
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
 ---- Hardback
 ---- Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.

Published online by Cambridge University Press


PROBLEM SOLVING

Intelligent mental representations of physical, cognitive, and social environments


allow humans to navigate enormous search spaces, whose sizes vastly exceed the
number of neurons in the human brain. This allows us to solve a wide range of
problems, such as the Traveling Salesperson Problem, insight problems, as well as
mathematics and physics problems. As an area of research, problem solving has
steadily grown over time. Researchers in artificial intelligence have been formulating
theories of problem solving for the last seventy years. Psychologists, on the other
hand, have focused their efforts on documenting the observed behavior of subjects
solving problems. This book represents the first effort to merge the behavioral results
of human subjects with formal models of the causative cognitive mechanisms. The
first coursebook to deal exclusively with the topic, it provides a main text for elective
courses and a supplementary text for courses such as cognitive psychology and
neuroscience.
  is Professor and Falmagne Endowed Chair in Mathematical
Psychology in the Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California at
Irvine. He is the author of D Shape: Its Unique Place in Visual Perception () and
co-author of Making a Machine that Sees Like Us ().

Published online by Cambridge University Press


Published online by Cambridge University Press
PROBLEM SOLVING
Cognitive Mechanisms and Formal Models

ZYGMUNT PIZLO
University of California, Irvine

Published online by Cambridge University Press


University Printing House, Cambridge  , United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, th Floor, New York,  , USA
 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne,  , Australia
–, rd Floor, Plot , Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – , India

 Penang Road, #-/, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 


Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.
It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/
: ./
© Zygmunt Pizlo 
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
 ---- Hardback
 ---- Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.

Published online by Cambridge University Press


PROBLEM SOLVING

Intelligent mental representations of physical, cognitive, and social environments


allow humans to navigate enormous search spaces, whose sizes vastly exceed the
number of neurons in the human brain. This allows us to solve a wide range of
problems, such as the Traveling Salesperson Problem, insight problems, as well as
mathematics and physics problems. As an area of research, problem solving has
steadily grown over time. Researchers in artificial intelligence have been formulating
theories of problem solving for the last seventy years. Psychologists, on the other
hand, have focused their efforts on documenting the observed behavior of subjects
solving problems. This book represents the first effort to merge the behavioral results
of human subjects with formal models of the causative cognitive mechanisms. The
first coursebook to deal exclusively with the topic, it provides a main text for elective
courses and a supplementary text for courses such as cognitive psychology and
neuroscience.
  is Professor and Falmagne Endowed Chair in Mathematical
Psychology in the Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California at
Irvine. He is the author of D Shape: Its Unique Place in Visual Perception () and
co-author of Making a Machine that Sees Like Us ().

Published online by Cambridge University Press


Published online by Cambridge University Press
PROBLEM SOLVING
Cognitive Mechanisms and Formal Models

ZYGMUNT PIZLO
University of California, Irvine

Published online by Cambridge University Press


University Printing House, Cambridge  , United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, th Floor, New York,  , USA
 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne,  , Australia
–, rd Floor, Plot , Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – , India

 Penang Road, #-/, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 


Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.
It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/
: ./
© Zygmunt Pizlo 
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
 ---- Hardback
 ---- Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.

Published online by Cambridge University Press


I dedicate this book to my wife Irmina Agnieszka

Published online by Cambridge University Press


Published online by Cambridge University Press
Contents

List of Figures page ix


List of Tables xiv
Preface xv

 Problem Solving: Definition of the Main Concepts 


. Gestalt Influence 
. Insight Problems: The Status of the “Aha!” Criterion 
. Search Problems 
. The Scientific Status of Goal-Directed Behavior 
. Forming Mental Representations 
. Problems to Solve 

 Animal Problem Solving: Innovative Use of Tools 


. Early Research with Chimpanzees 
. The Role of Brain Size: How Carnivores Solve the Puzzle Box Problem 
. Self-Recognition in a Mirror 
. Chimpanzees’ Visuomotor Coordination Using Camera Images 
. Innovative Problem Solving in Crows, Parrots, and Hyenas 
. Visual Navigation: Chimps and Monkeys Solve the Traveling Salesman Problem 
. Problems to Solve 

 Modern Research on the Human Ability to Solve Problems that Have Large
Search Spaces 
. Permutations and Combinations; Polynomial and Exponential Numbers
of Computations 
. Nearest Neighbor Algorithm for the TSP 
. Something Was In the Air: How the Cognitive Science Community Actually
Discovered the TSP 
. Problems to Solve 

 The Exponential Pyramid Representation that Compensates


for Exponentially Large Problem Spaces 
. Classification of Computational Complexity: P, NP, NP-Hard, NP-Complete 
. The Exponential Pyramid as a Model of the Human Visual System 
. Pyramid Model for the TSP 
. Solving the D and D TSP in Real and Virtual Environments: Perception Meets
Problem Solving 
. Problems to Solve 

vii

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viii Contents
 Heuristic Function, Distance, and Direction in Solving Problems 
. Heuristic Function and an A* Algorithm 
. Human Performance: The Concept of Direction 
. Continuous and Discrete Geometry of Direction and Distance 
. Pyramid Model for Solving the -Puzzle 
. Problems to Solve 

 Insight and Creative Thinking 


. Scientific Discovery 
. A Few More Brain Teasers Called Insight Problems 
. Broader Context for Insight 
. Problems to Solve 

 Inference in Perception. Perceptual Representation: A Rejoinder to Insight 


. Gestalt Ttradition: Solving Ill-Posed Problems and Their Relationship to Insight 
. Figure–Ground Organization and Curve Integration: Examples of Visual Inferences 
. Formalism of Forward and Inverse Problems 
. More on Implicit and Explicit Constraints in D Shape Recovery 
. Physics Connection: The Least-Action Principle 
. Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery 
. Problems to solve 

 Cognitive Inferences, Mental Representations 


. Multidimensional Scaling as a Tool for Data Visualization 
. Clustering Methods 
. Using Clusters to Explain Memory Organization 
. TSP with Obstacles 
. Problems to Solve 

 Theory of Mind 


. Visual Perspective Taking 
. Strategic Reasoning in Matrix Games 
. Problems to Solve 

 Solving Problems in Physics and Mathematics 


. Physics Education 
. Intuitive Physics and Causal Reasoning 
. Solving Problems in Mathematics: Polya’s Contributions 
. Problems to Solve 

 Summary and Conclusions 


. Mental Representations 
. Scientific Discovery as Creative (Insightful) Problem Solving 
. Optimization Problems 
. Intuitive Physics 
. The Concept of Direction 
. Problems to Solve 

References 
Index 

Published online by Cambridge University Press


Figures

. Inscribing a square into a triangle (from Polya, ). page 


. A start state (A) and a goal state (B) (from Pizlo & Li, ). 
. Mazes used by Tolman (). 
. Equilateral triangle formed by closely packed pennies. 
. Left: the relation between the brain volume and the body mass.
Right: the relation between problem-solving success that mass-corrected
brain volume. (From Benson-Amram et al., , with permission
from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.) 
. (a) reflection in a mirror; (b) rotation around Y-axis; (c) rotation around
X-axis. 
. Schematic diagram of Menzel et al.’s test for their chimpanzees. 
. Performance of two chimpanzees on their first  trials (Menzel et al., ). 
. Apparatus used in the experiment with crows (von Bayern et al., ). 
. The Multi-Access-Box (MAB). Dimensions in cm (Auersperg et al., ). 
. The diversity score shown on the vertical axis was used to arrange
the individual animals from low score (on the left) to high score
(on the right) (Benson-Amram et al., ). 
. An example of an easy TSP problem (a) and the shortest tour (b). 
. (a) -city TSP; (b) the tour produced by the NN algorithm that
starts at city A; (c) the shortest tour for this TSP problem. 
. (a) convex polygon; (b) concave polygon. 
. -city TSP with  cities on the convex hull. 
. Removing tour intersection makes the tour shorter. 
. Average errors of the three groups of subjects in Kong and Shunn (). 
. Illustration of Kong and Shunn’s model (Kong and Shunn, ). 
. Proportion of optimal solutions by two groups of subjects and
five algorithms (Graham et al., ). 
. Error of the TSP tour for two groups of subjects and five algorithms
(Graham et al., ). 
. Illustration of how Graham et al.’s model produces a sequence of TSP
approximations (Graham et al., ). 
. Proportion of optimal solutions for the two groups of subjects and the
pyramid model (Graham et al., ). 
. Errors of the two groups of subjects and the pyramid model (Graham et al.,
). 
ix

Published online by Cambridge University Press


x List of Figures
. The average time as a function of the problem size in Dry et al. (). 
. The quality of fit and the likelihood of the models compared
to the likelihood of the best model (Dry et al., ). 
. Proportion of optimal tours (left) and average error (right) for three
age groups (van Rooij et al., ). 
. -city TSP with varying degree of clustering and regularity
(Dry et al., ). 
. Average error and mean solution time as a function
of clustering/regularity of cities (Dry et al., ). 
. Perfectly regular TSP with multiple optimal tours (Dry et al., ). 
. The simplest version of a multiscale pyramid, called a “quad-pyramid”
(from Pizlo & Stefanov, ). 
. A one-dimensional exponential pyramid with  layers.
The bottom layer has  processors. 
. Mental size transformation. 
. Mean reaction time increments for correct and incorrect responses
when the size ratio varied from  to  or from  to 
(from Larsen & Bundesen, ). 
. A graph in (a) is used to form clusters shown in (b). Large clusters
are used first to decide about the global direction (c). The global
information is projected to higher resolutions (d–e). The solution path
is shown in f (from Pizlo & Li, ). 
. Left: the optimal order for visiting France, Germany, Hungary
and Italy. Right: a non-optimal order for visiting these four countries
(from Pizlo & Stefanov, ). 
. A -city TSP within a maze. 
. Collecting tennis balls effectively is equivalent to solving a TSP. 
. The convex hull is a square in both panels. 
. Orthographic transformations of the five cities shown in Figure .. 
. Forming a graph pyramid of the cities in (a) is illustrated in (b);
(c) shows a few steps where a TSP tour is recursively refined;
(d) the resulting TSP tour, which is a good approximation
of the shortest tour (Haxhimusa et al., ). 
. A start state (A) and a goal state (B) (from Pizlo & Li, ). 
. (a) Korf’s problem ; (b) the goal state in Korf’s formulation. 
. Results from solving the -, -, -, and -puzzles in Experiment .
(A) Time versus solution length. (B) Time versus problem size (Pizlo and Li,
). 
. There are infinitely many paths between a pair of points on a plane. 
. The task is to find the shortest path visiting all cities starting at
A and finishing at B. 
. (a) A TSP with obstacles. (b) D MDS approximation. 
. Gauss formed  pairs of numbers, shown here as columns,
each pair adding up to . 

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List of Figures xi
. The area of the triangle on the left represents the sum of
the numbers from  to . The small triangle contains the numbers
from  to  and the trapezoid contains the numbers from  to . 
. A photograph of a snow crystal taken by Wilson Bentley
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake). 
. Can you cover this mutilated checkerboard with  domino pieces? 
. A thought experiment that can be used to derive the law of the lever
(Shepard, ). 
. Cheap Necklace Problem and its solution
(from Chu & MacGregor, ). 
. (a) The -dot problem in its original presentation; (b) a  rotated
version. 
. (a) the lines are symmetrical with respect to the vertical axis
of symmetry of the square; (b) the lines are symmetrical with respect
to the vertical axis of symmetry of the diamond; (c) the correct solution,
which conforms to the symmetry in (b). 
. Each edge of the cube is a resistor with resistance R. 
. An image of a chair. The chair is a D symmetrical object,
but this image is neither symmetrical nor D. 
. Cheese cube puzzle. 
. Bookworm puzzle. 
. Light bulb problem. 
. Series continuation problem. 
. Despite the geometrical ambiguity about what happens
at the intersections of the curves, the symmetry (redundancy)
of the curves disambiguates the interpretation
(after Wertheimer, ). 
. The D image of a D symmetrical chair. The chair is D and
symmetrical. The image is neither D nor symmetrical. 
. An example of a figure–ground organization. 
. Contour integration in a noisy image (Kwon et al., ). 
. Detecting a closed curve in the image by solving the shortest path
problem in a log-polar representation (Kwon et al., ). 
. The subject’s task in Stavrianos’s experiment was to adjust the
aspect ratio of a rectangle presented in a frontal plane to match
the aspect ratio of a slanted rectangle (from Teller & Palmer, ). 
. The data points represent veridical shape perception in Stavrianos’s
experiment. The dashed line shows where the data would have
been if subject matched the retinal aspect ratios. Matching retinal
images would represent failure of shape constancy.
(From Teller & Palmer, .) 
. Two members of a one-parameter family of D symmetrical shapes
produced from a single D orthographic image (from Li et al., ). 

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xii List of Figures
. The horizontal lines are the projecting lines forming an orthographic
image. Vertical lines mark the depths of individual vertices.
(From http://shapebook.psych.purdue.edu/.) 
. Probability distributions representing the prior, likelihood and posterior
(Li et al., ). 
. Light refraction. 
. Spherical concave mirror. 
. Stimuli used in a shape constancy experiment. 
. A diagram illustrating the concept of perceptual constancy as
a cognitive invariant (from Pizlo & de Barros, ). 
. Exploring children’s face-space with the Method of Triads
(from Nishimura et al., ). 
. Stress as a function of the dimensionality of the MDS approximation
(from Nishimura et al., ). 
. An illustration of the five dimensions inherent in human
face representation (from Nishimura et al., ). 
. Optimal two-cluster partitions for three criteria, namely,
maximum partition split (top panel), minimum partition diameter
(middle panel), and minimum within-cluster sum of squares
(bottom panel) (Brusco, ). 
. These points represent the geographical positions of  cities
in Germany (Brusco, ). 
. Optimal -cluster partitions for  German cities (Brusco, ). 
. The word lists used by Romney et al. (). 
. (a, c, e) regular array of points with obstacles; (b, d, f ) MDS
approximation in a D Euclidean space. 
. A -city TSP with obstacles: (a) a tour produced by a subject;
(b) an MDS approximation without obstacles in the TSP in
(a) solved by the same subject; (c) the order in which cities were
visited in (b) superimposed on the problem with obstacles. 
. This figure illustrates the effect of using an incorrect D
viewing-point (from De Vries, –). 
. The four cells of the matrix are labeled on the bottom. On top,
there is an example of the payoffs for the two players (Hedden and Zhang,
). 
. Results obtained in Block  (Hedden and Zhang, ). 
. Predictions scores when the opponent does not switch the strategy
(a) and when the opponent does switch the strategy (b)
(Hedden and Zhang, ). 
. A diagram illustrating the symmetry/invariance of a natural law N
in the presence of transformation Θ (from Pizlo & de Barros, ). 
. (a) Orthographic image of a cube that looks like a cube;
(b) perspective image of a cube that does not look like a cube because
of an unknown and extreme position of the center of perspective
projection (from Pizlo,  with permission of the MIT Press). 

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List of Figures xiii
. This box does not look like a polyhedron: the top face looks twisted
(from Sugihara, Machine Interpretation of Line Drawings, ,
©  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by permission
of The MIT Press). 
. The altitude of a right triangle ABC, divides the triangle into
two similar triangles. 
. A triangle representing Example  in Polya (). 
. Three possible drawings for Example  in Polya (: ). 
. Maximizing angle AXB: (a) statement of the problem: (b) circles
passing through A and B (Polya, ). 
. Triangle of maximum area (Polya, ). 
. Level lines can be used to solve a light reflection problem (Polya, ). 
. Two beakers, one containing a quart of coffee and the other containing
a quart of cream. 
. A solution of the two beakers problem based on symmetry. 
. After coffee and cream are separated in the cup in step (ii) of the
original scenario, the amount of milk in the cup is the same as the
amount in cup in Figure .. At the same time, the amount
of coffee that remained in B is equal to the amount of coffee
in cup in Figure .. 

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Tables

. Examples of tool use in wild chimpanzees (Povinelli, ). page 


. Solution lengths of four subjects in the -puzzle (Pizlo and Li, ). 

xiv

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Preface

This book is intended for undergraduate and graduate courses on Human Problem
Solving. Note that such a course has rarely been offered at American universities despite
the fact that it is as important as such traditional and widely offered courses as Sensation
and Perception and Cognitive Psychology. This book covers insight problem solving, the
role of symmetry and invariance in scientific discovery, combinatorial optimization
problems, and the contribution of gestalt psychology, especially its emphasis on mental
representations. In fact, the mental representation of problems turns out to be the
underlying theme of the entire book. The first chapter explains why mental representa-
tions are necessary in problem solving and the rest of the book describes a wide range of
possible representations and their use across all, or almost all, types of problems. The
book also includes perceptual and cognitive inferences, which are treated as solutions of
constrained optimization problems, the Theory of Mind, mathematics problems, as well
as intuitive physics and causal reasoning.
This textbook emphasizes understanding the mathematical and computational mech-
anisms underlying problem solving. I want the students to learn what is computed and
how it is computed when problems are solved. The topics, listed above, allow me to
explain the theoretical concepts inherent in solving problems. My preferred emphasis on
theory proves to be fruitful because it provides a relatively coherent, intelligible story. The
book also describes many empirical studies, but they only play a supportive role.
Structuring the class this way will prepare cognitive psychology students to explore the
related area called artificial intelligence, and it will make it easy for computer science and
engineering students to venture into the science of the mind.
Keeping this book to a manageable length required me to leave out some material,
such as the neuroscience of problem solving, reinforcement learning and decision
making. These as well as other topics can easily be added by Instructors when they use
this textbook in their classes on problem solving.
The book provides problems to solve and projects to do after each chapter. Some
problems are easy, while others are difficult or even very difficult. Each instructor may
decide which problems to use. The text throughout the entire book provides many other
problems that are solved partially or completely, as well as references to other sources that
have additional problems. The book is accompanied by a software library, written in
Python, and hosted on GitHub at the following link: https://github.com/jackvandrunen/
tsp. This software was developed by Jacob VanDrunen and it provides tools for solving
the Traveling Salesman Problem. The reader can find instructions in this link on how to
download and install the library by using Python’s package manager, as well as links to
xv

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xvi Preface
documentation and examples of programs. The library is open source, and technically
inclined readers, who find the code useful for their work, are also welcome to “open
issues” and “pull requests.”
I would like to thank Robert M. Steinman, who read the entire book and provided me
with many suggestions. I would also like to acknowledge the late William H. Batchelder,
who insisted that I develop a course at UC Irvine on human problem solving. Finally,
I would like to thank Stephen Acerra, the editor at the Cambridge University Press who
encouraged me to write and publish this book.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009205603.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press


 

Problem Solving
Definition of the Main Concepts

. Gestalt Influence


It is almost universally acknowledged that problem solving is one of the most, if not the
most fundamental cognitive ability. We solve problems, both small and large, easy and
difficult, all of the time. Problem solving includes planning your way home, planning a
tour of several cities or countries for a vacation, playing chess, solving physics and math
problems, as well as proving math theorems. It also includes creative problem solving,
such as formulating scientific theories. The field called computer science (CS) has always
concentrated on problem solving. A subfield of CS called artificial intelligence (AI)
started, in the middle of the last century, by asking whether a computer could solve
problems.
Now, consider the toy problem of constructing four equilateral triangles by using six
identical matchsticks. This problem appears, at first, impossible because after you
construct the first triangle by using three matchsticks and use the next two matchsticks
to produce the second triangle simply by sharing one edge with the first triangle, you are
left with only one matchstick to construct two more triangles. The solution becomes
obvious once you realize that this problem should be solved in a three-dimensional (D)
space, rather than on the two-dimensional (D) flat table on which you surely decided to
work when you began to solve this problem. It is also important to note that the D
solution (a regular tetrahedron) is highly symmetrical. This is not a coincidence because
the task was to construct four identical triangles. As a result, the tetrahedron can be
transformed (mapped) to itself by applying multiple D rotations and reflections. The
problem of constructing four equilateral triangles using six matchsticks is usually cate-
gorized as a member of the class called “insight problems.” Insight problems were used by
the gestalt psychologists in the beginning of the twentieth century when they brought the
attention of psychologists to problem solving as a mental function. These gestalt
psychologists were convinced that insight problems are special because they are usually
solved by changing the mental representation of the problem, rather than by learning and
experience. The gestalt psychologists claimed that everyone who solves this four triangles
problem begins with the D representation, and that the problem will not be solved until
the problem solver changes their representation to D. Recall that the “gestalt revolu-
tion” was launched as a reaction to the empiristic approach in psychology, which claimed
that our mental abilities were the result of learning by accumulating sensory experience
starting at birth. John Locke’s name is usually mentioned here as a clear example of
empiristic thinking because he claimed that the mind of a newborn baby is a tabula rasa

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 Problem Solving: Definition of the Main Concepts
(a blank slate) upon which one’s life experiences will be written. The gestalt psychologists
were nativists because they held that the mind of a newborn baby already has some innate
knowledge of the external world, and that this knowledge includes some abstract
characteristics such as the concept of causality, the three-dimensionality of our physical
world, some basic concepts contained in Euclidean geometry, such as the straight line
and symmetry, as well as the concept of motion. Note that this is by no means an
exhaustive list of the innate concepts that were postulated by the gestalt psychologists.
For our purposes, the most important assumptions the gestalt psychologists made were
that innate intuitions exist and that learning accumulated during one’s lifetime is not the
only source of knowledge about our external world. This nativistic view is no longer
considered to be either extreme or exotic as it was a century ago. Thanks to the constant
progress made in genetic science since Watson and Crick published their model of the
structure of DNA in Nature in  after “borrowing” some of Rosalind Franklin’s data,
it is reasonable to assume nowadays that considerable learning occurred during the course
of our evolution and that this evolutionary experience is now coded in our genes.
Consider three examples used by Hochberg () to illustrate nativism in visual
perception, the second area, besides problem solving, where the gestalt psychologists
provided fundamental and long-lasting contributions. Thorndike () showed that a
newly hatched chick would jump off a low stand, but it refused to jump from a tall one,
demonstrating that depth perception, an essential aspect of D vision, is innate in chickens.
In fact, it also suggests that the chick not only perceives depth, but also has some intuitions
about both gravity and mass. We humans are smarter than chickens, so it is reasonable to
assume that we have at least as many useful innate intuitions as chicks do. This was
demonstrated by Gibson and Walk () who showed that a toddler systematically
refused to crawl off a deep cliff. The cliff was actually covered by a strong sheet of glass
that eliminated all possibility of the toddler falling off the cliff if it could not perceive depth
and crawled onto the deep side. Also note that the toddler’s perception of depth was aided
by covering the table and the region around and below it with a highly structured
checkerboard pattern. The toddler showed that he trusted his D vision by avoiding the
“visually deep” region beyond the table’s edge. When the cliff was shallow, the toddler had
no problem crawling over it. In the third example, Michael Wertheimer () showed
that a newborn infant turned her head in order to look in the direction from which a sound
was coming, demonstrating that she was born with concepts of auditory, visual, and motor
spaces, and that all of these three spaces were already coordinated when she was born.
Before we introduce some new concepts used to define problem solving, consider
another insight problem, in which a solution becomes obvious when you change the
original representation. Assume that at   you started walking uphill on a mountain
trail. It took you several hours to get to the top of the mountain. To make things more
complex, your speed of walking was not constant. You stayed overnight at a hotel on the
top of the mountain and the next morning, at  , you started walking down the hill
using exactly the same trail. Walking downhill was easier and faster. But you wondered
whether there was a place on the trail that you passed today at exactly the same time as
yesterday when you started by walking uphill. For most people it is hard to wrap their
head around this problem. Some people are inclined to say yes, others think that there
was no such place. Regardless of the proposed answer, it is difficult to come up with an

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Insight Problems 
intuitive justification of the answer chosen. The only way to make the answer obvious to
everyone is to provide a different representation of the same problem. Specifically, you
should consider two people walking on the same trail on the same day in opposite
directions, one from the bottom of the hill and the other from the top. If they started at
the same time (or more generally, if one person started before the other finished), they
had to meet each other somewhere on the trail and the place where they met is the place
you passed at the same time on both days. It does not matter for solving the problem
where they met. In fact, there is not enough information to compute where they met.
The important thing for solving this problem is to realize that they had to meet because
they walked in opposite directions on the same trail. In this case, instead of thinking
about one person walking up and then down the trail on two consecutive days, one
should think about two people, one walking up and the other down, on the same day on
the same trail. So, again, changing the representation of the problem does the trick.
We will discuss insight problem solving in detail in Chapter , but at this point, I owe
the reader a more constructive and more rational criterion that allows for classifying a
problem as an insight problem. The observation that one’s mental representation needs
to change before an insight problem is solved is interesting, but before the mental
representation actually changes, we have no criterion for knowing whether such a change
will actually ever happen. Furthermore, even if the representation does change, we can
never see or directly measure someone else’s mental representations. This means that the
“changing representation” criterion will remain both elusive and subjective until we
know more about how it works.

. Insight Problems: The Status of the “Aha!” Criterion


Gestalt psychologists emphasized the role of changing the representation of a problem,
but they did not have a theory of how any mental representation, correct or incorrect, is
produced in the first place. In the remainder of this chapter, we will develop the
argument that a mental representation is the sine qua non of problem solving, that is a
necessary condition, without which problem solving cannot occur. This elaboration allows
us to include a large class of problems that are not insight problems in our discussion.
Furthermore, it will build a bridge to AI research, a specialty that has concentrated its
efforts on non-insight problems.
If someone has not been influenced by the gestalt psychologists, including their
conjecture about the significance or importance of changing the representation in insight
problem solving, they are likely to use an alternative criterion for deciding whether the
problem is an insight problem. It is called the “aha!” experience. If you exclaim “aha!” at
the moment the solution suddenly occurs to you, you had an insight. It is not difficult to
see that this criterion is as catchy as it is useless. Its claim to fame seems to be based
exclusively on being an English version of the Greek “Eureka” (“I found it”) that
Archimedes shouted when he discovered a method for measuring the volume of an
irregularly shaped object in his bathtub. The problem Archimedes was trying to solve was
verifying whether a crown was made of pure gold, or whether some gold was replaced by
silver. Silver is less dense than gold, so a mixture of silver and gold would have a slightly
greater volume than a piece of pure gold of the same weight. Archimedes solved this

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 Problem Solving: Definition of the Main Concepts
problem by examining the invariance of a balance with the crown suspended from one
arm of the balance and a piece of pure gold suspended from the other arm, when this
system was translated from one physical medium (air) to another (water). If the balance is
maintained after the two arms are simultaneously submerged in the water, one can
conclude that the goldsmith did not cheat by reducing the purity of the gold. Could
Archimedes have solved his problem by simply collecting and comparing the volumes of
the displaced water for the crown and for the piece of pure gold? Historians claim that in
Archimedes’ day, there were no methods for precise measurement of the volume of water.
He surely could and did verify the invariance of his balance, as described here. It took
physicists more than  centuries to fully appreciate the fundamental importance of
invariance. The idea here is that if you get a bright idea and say “aha!,” your experience
was similar to Archimedes’s, even if your discovery is not as creative as his. Everyone in
cognitive psychology seems to agree that insight problems are special, so the question
becomes whether we can offer less elusive criteria than either the “aha!” experience or the
change in mental representation. Here is my insight about insight: most problems that
people classify as insight are difficult to solve, but their solutions, once guessed, are easy
to explain and verify. This is, in fact, an informal definition of one of the most important
concepts in computational complexity theory, namely NP-completeness, a concept that
was introduced into computer science  years ago (see Garey & Johnson, ). This
observation shows that the gestalt psychologists were actually ahead of their time when
they insisted on the special role of insight problems in problem solving. Is every NP-
complete problem an insight problem? Probably not. But NP-completeness offers a fresh
look at the concept of insight and it provides an objective criterion for the classification of
problems. This idea will be elaborated later in this book, when invariance and symmetry
are discussed in greater detail.
Before we move to problems that are not insight problems, consider one more
illustration of how an insight problem is solved. This problem comes from Polya’s
() classic book titled How to Solve It. The task is to inscribe a square into an
arbitrary triangle. By “inscribe,” we mean that two corners of the square are located on
one of the three sides of the triangle, and the other two corners touch the two remaining
sides of the triangle, as shown in Figure .a. The problem boils down to deciding the
size of the square that will fit into the particular triangle. If the square is too small, or too
large, it will not satisfy this requirement (Figure .b). But, if we start “inscribing”
arbitrary squares, either too small or too large, as is shown on Figure .b, we actually
have the solution at hand. Do you see it? The top-right corners of all these squares are
collinear. If the top-left corner of the square with an arbitrary size touches the left side of
the triangle (as it does in Figure .b), the line connecting the bottom-left vertex of the
triangle with the top-right corner of the arbitrary square intersects the right side of the
triangle at the point that is at the top-right corner of the inscribed square. This solves our
problem (Figure .c). It is easy to see that this is an application of the intercept theorem
attributed to Thales (c.–c. ), which is based on the similarity of triangles. It is
this similarity of triangles that leads to the invariant ratios that are needed here.
According to some historical sources, Thales used this theorem to estimate the height
of Cheops’s Pyramid by using its shadow. Aha! Note this use of Thales’s insight in a new
context. This is insight, too.

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Search Problems 

(a) (b)

(c)

Figure . Inscribing a square into a triangle (from Polya, ). (a) inscribed square. (b) squares whose
sizes are not correct. (c) the dashed line intersects the right side of the triangle at the point that is the top-
right corner of the inscribed square.

. Search Problems


This book will also discuss search problems, which are different from insight problems.
Search problems did not attract the attention of the gestalt psychologists, but they became
the center of interest of the two fathers of AI, Newell and Simon, when they started to
write computer algorithms to solve logic problems near the middle of the twentieth
century. Search problems have remained the focus of much AI research ever since. Take
the -puzzle problem as an example (see Figure .). This puzzle is a one-person game
whose history is at least as long as the history of gestalt psychology. This game is, in fact, a
member of another class of problems in computational complexity theory, namely a class
called NP-hard. Informally, NP-hard problems are (i) difficult to solve, and (ii) it is difficult
to verify whether a solution is actually a solution. So, what is this game about? Think about
this game as a physical board with  movable tiles and one empty space. Legal moves are
those that move a tile horizontally or vertically to an empty space.
Figure . shows a possible start state and a goal state. The task is to rearrange the tiles
from a start state to the goal state with the fewest number of moves. The number of
different states in the -puzzle is one half of the number of permutations of  elements.
Recall that the number of permutations of N elements is represented by the symbol N!
(N factorial) and it is a product of all natural numbers between  and N: N!=N(N-)
(N-). . .. It is easy to see why permutations represent different states of the -
puzzle. But why divide ! by ? The reason is that legal moves can produce only one
half of all possible permutations. The other half of the permutations are not accessible.
In other words, the -puzzle consists of two disjoint sets of states and one cannot jump
from one set to another by making legal moves. This fact can be proved mathematically
by considering the invariance aspect of permutations (you will hear a great deal about


Here is an example of a virtual -puzzle: www.artbylogic.com/puzzles/numSlider/numberShuffle.htm?rows=&cols=
&sqr=.

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 Problem Solving: Definition of the Main Concepts

Figure . A start state (a) and a goal state (b) (from Pizlo & Li, ).

invariants and symmetries in this book). The existence of these two disjoint sets was used
 years ago to popularize this puzzle. The start state was produced by swapping
(physically) tiles  and . A big monetary prize was offered for a solution that would
produce the goal state shown in Figure .b by any sequence of legal moves. We now
know that this is impossible. In fact, swapping any pair of tiles physically brings the -
puzzle to the other half of the permutations. All of this will be explained in Chapter . At
this point, the -puzzle is important for us because it is a good way to illustrate the fact
that problem solving can be thought of as a goal-directed activity. Indeed, the very
definition of how the -puzzle is played includes the concept of the start state and
the goal state, and the task (problem) is to get to the goal.
The early stages of AI research did use the -puzzle, as well as other sizes of the same
type of puzzle, namely, the -, -, and -puzzle, as examples for formulating theories of
problem solving. The number of states in these puzzles is (N+)!/. Here N is the
number of tiles and (N+) is the size of the board (  ,   , and    in the
examples just mentioned). The fact that these puzzles are members of the class of NP-
hard problems means that finding the shortest number of moves to the goal state may
require a brute-force search through most or all of the states. This kind of search is
impractical because N! is a large number and it grows very quickly with N. For the -
puzzle, the number of states that can be produced by legal moves is !/  . This is
 times more than the number of neurons in your brain. Another way to illustrate how
big this number is, is to realize that if you started at the time of the Big Bang, that is,
about  billion years ago, and kept producing  states a day, you would have just
finished looking through all of the states in the -puzzle. And, if you produced half a
billion states per second and started at the Big Bang, you would have just finished looking
through all states of a -puzzle. Do people solving such problems actually examine a
large or a small fraction of all possible states, and if they examine only a small fraction,
how small is this fraction? You will surely be surprised by the answers when you get them.

. The Scientific Status of Goal-Directed Behavior


Interestingly, but not terribly surprisingly, all examples of problem solving, not only the
-puzzle, can be viewed as a “goal-directed activity” (e.g., Newell & Simon, ;
Anderson, ; Russell & Norvig, ). Planning a tour that visits several countries in
Europe, following the shortest path to reach a goal in a maze, playing a game of chess,
proving the Pythagorean theorem in geometry, designing an experiment to test a new
theory in the natural sciences, formulating a new theory in science, or deciding about

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The Scientific Status of Goal-Directed Behavior 
one’s career path are all examples that make it clear that problem solving is a goal-directed
behavior. Here, I will explain the nature of a goal-directed behavior by emphasizing how
it is different from behavior as it was conceived in the now outdated stimulus–response
approach, introduced and favored by the Watson/Hull behaviorist tradition and rejected
by Tolman and Lashley working in the cognitive tradition.
The stimulus–response tradition, labeled by its originators behaviorism, assumed that
all behavioral actions of an animal are a direct consequence of the physical stimuli
impinging on the animal. This view of behavior might have looked scientific back in
the day because it did not violate the prevailing view of our physical world, according to
which an effect always follows a cause. When one moving billiard ball hits another, the
resulting movement of the second ball is the effect that follows the impact, the cause,
produced by the movement of the first ball. It would obviously be counterintuitive to
think that the movement of the first ball, before the impact, was caused by the movement
of the second ball after the impact, as if the first ball initiated its movement in order to
make the second ball move. A future event cannot be the cause of an event occurring
now. This has been the accepted view everywhere in science during the modern era that
started in the seventeenth century. Recall that ancient Greek philosophers such as
Aristotle , years ago, did allow a reversed order of a cause and its effect. According
to Aristotle, when you drop a stone, it falls down because it wants to be as close as
possible to its natural place, which for a heavy object like a stone is the center of the
Earth. So, being close to the center of the Earth in the next few seconds or minutes is
actually what causes the movement of the stone, now. This kind of explanation, which is
called teleological, has been discredited in science for a long time, but recently we were
faced with a need to revive it, somehow, in order to fit goal-directed behavior into the
realm of modern cognitive science. How can this be done? Consider the following
everyday life example. I turn on my coffee maker now in order to drink coffee five
minutes later. Did my drinking coffee five minutes in the future cause me to turn on the
coffee maker, now? A contemporary physicist would say that this is impossible. And s/he
would be right. So, what is going on?
Howard Warren () provided the first satisfying conceptual explanation of
causality in the nature of goal-directed (purposive) behavior. He said that “A human
act is said to be purposive when it is preceded by an idea representing the situation which
the act itself brings about” (). The essence of what Warren is saying is that although a
future goal cannot cause (control) the present action, a model or representation of the
future goal can control the present action. If the model is accurate (the coffee maker
works), the goal will most likely be achieved. But, if the model is not accurate (the coffee
maker is broken), the goal will not be attained. There is nothing mysterious here; no laws
of physics are contradicted, but there cannot be any goal-directed (purposive, intelligent)
behavior without accurate mental representations of the environment. This observation
was the cornerstone needed to launch what we now call the Cognitive Revolution
(Miller, Pribram & Galanter, ; Neisser, ).
Mental representations of quite a few animals were studied in the twentieth century,
including, rats, dogs, monkeys, and chimpanzees, as well as humans. As pointed out
earlier, the gestalt psychologists assigned a central role to mental representations when
they called attention to the fact that solving an insight problem requires changing its

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 Problem Solving: Definition of the Main Concepts
10 9
11 8
12
7

Block
F G 6 H
H

5
D 4
E 13 2
14
15 3
C 16
1
17 2
18
1

A A
Apparatus used in preliminary training Apparatus used in the test trial

Figure . Mazes used by Tolman ().

representation. But now we can see that the concept of mental representation is even
more fundamental than the gestalt psychologists claimed because mental representation
is a necessary condition for any goal-directed action, including solving problems that are
not insight problems. Without mental representations, goal-directed actions would
remain outside of modern science, and even more importantly, we humans would be
unable to plan and carry on goal-directed actions if we did not have mental representa-
tions. Without goal-directed actions, we humans could not be “intelligent.” Edward
Tolman, who worked in the first half of the twentieth century, was one of the first to use
the concept of goal-directed (purposive) behavior in his theories and experiments. Look
at Figure . taken from his  paper. The rat was trained in the simple maze shown
on the left. The entrance is marked as A and the goal (food) is on top-right rendered with
an H within a circle. After the training was completed, the rat was presented with the
maze shown on the right, whose entrance was identical to the entrance of the training
maze, but the rest of the maze was changed. Faced with a blocked alley that used to go to
the goal, the rat came back to the circular chamber, and almost immediately ran along the
alley marked as  which led directly to the position where the food had been located
during the training trials. The rat chose an available shortcut, when the familiar path was
blocked. This choice could not be a result of training. It was the result of the rat creating
and using an accurate spatial mental map of the maze.
Dogs and chimpanzees also can use spatial maps when they go around an obstacle.
Wolfgang Köhler used the configuration in which a dog or a chimp stands on one side of
a transparent fence, and food is placed on the other side of the fence. The animal quickly
realizes that the fence cannot be penetrated, looks around and runs around the fence.
This behavior is not trivial because the animal must, at first, face away, putting the food
out of sight as it turns and runs away from the food. But once we assume that the animal
has a spatial map of its environment, this behavior seems natural. The chicken, whose
“intelligence” I praised when I discussed its innate depth perception earlier in this
chapter, fails this “obstacle test.”

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The Scientific Status of Goal-Directed Behavior 
Humans can obviously pass this kind of “obstacle test,” and they do it in exactly the
same way, by using a mental representation of their environment. This mental repre-
sentation consists of both physical and geometrical characteristics. Geometry is repre-
sented by Euclidean lines and points on a plane, and physics is represented by the
assumption that the fence is impenetrable. Physics and geometry were also used in
planning and executing our solution to the -puzzle. All of our physical behaviors are
based on geometrical/physical representations.
To summarize this discussion of goal-directed actions and mental representations:
what I am saying is that mental events, namely mental representations of future goals and
future actions, are essential for explaining goal-directed behavior, specifically, it is my
plan to drink coffee, not drinking the coffee itself, that causes me to turn on the coffee
maker. This view of goal-directed behavior brings mental events into the forefront of
natural science because this view implies that mental events, in the form of abstract
representations and plans, can cause physical events such as behavioral actions. Note
that this claim is almost never made explicit or emphasized in cognitive science despite
the fact that without this claim, there would be no reason to talk about a Cognitive
Revolution because cognitive science would not be bringing anything new to the natural
sciences. Note that I am not proposing what Gilbert Ryle criticized in his  book as a
Cartesian “ghost in a machine.” Abstract representations and plans never exist without
physiological “hardware” in the form of neuronal circuits in a biological brain or without
physical hardware in the form of electronic circuits in a computer. But keep in mind that
despite the fact that hardware is necessary for abstract representations to be formed and
used, hardware alone is not sufficient to actually explain these representations.
Consider the following example. When I tell you to move tile “” from its current
place, e.g., the state in Figure .a, to the top-left corner, you can execute this plan fairly
easily. Also, if I tell you to move tile “” from its current place to the top-right corner,
you can execute this plan, as well. The movements of your fingers can be traced back to
the activity of neurons in the motor cortex in your brain that sent the motor signals to
your fingers, and the activity of these motor neurons was, in turn, caused by the activity
of the neurons in your visual cortex when you looked at the -puzzle. In fact, this would
have to be a recursive (repetitive) sequence of neural events in the visual and motor
cortices because there would have to be several moves of individual tiles performed under
visual control, and the whole sequence would stop after tile “” ends up in the goal
position. I could also say that the entire sequence of activities of visual and motor neurons
would stop after a signal from some other neurons caused a pause of all the motor acts.
The actual sequence of motor acts, including the command to stop, would be controlled
by the neural signals in your brain that represent my verbal charge for you to move “” to
the top-left (or the top-right) corner. But my verbal charge can also be viewed as an
acoustic wave generated by my vocal chords that was caused by neuronal firing in the
“language” part of my brain. This causal chain of events (neurons in my brain, acoustic
wave, neurons in your brain and then movements of your fingers) looks like a reasonable
way to describe what happened during solution of the -puzzle, except that there is no
way to use this description as an explanation of what happened. The only sensible way to
explain what happened is to say that you were told to move tile “” to the top-left (or
right) corner of the puzzle. That’s all that’s needed here. Neurons and acoustic waves is

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 Problem Solving: Definition of the Main Concepts
the wrong level of analysis, despite the fact that all of these events were involved. The
real, albeit abstract action, happened on a higher level that included a representation of
the physical environment (the -puzzle), as well as the goals and the plans required to
achieve them. This makes sense considering the fact that you were actually interacting
with the physical tiles that you moved mechanically from one place to another. In other
words, the goal-directed behavior was defined by the -puzzle, not by the neurons in
your brain: when you were making progress with moving title  to its intended position,
it was tile  itself that was moving closer to the goal position. Saying that it was the
neuronal response representing tile  that was becoming more similar to the neuronal
response representing the goal position, seems, at best, a very awkward “translation” of
what really happened in the physical environment. The abstract representation of the
geometrical and physical characteristics of the game, and of its rules, as well as of your
actions, is the only “common denominator” in the system that includes both us and the
physical array of tiles. After all, the only criterion for deciding whether your goal-directed
action was successful is the situation in the physical world, not in your brain. Finally,
note that the brain is quite complex: it has billions of neurons and even more connections
among its neurons. We may never be able to figure out which neurons and which
connections correspond to a particular mental and physical event. So, our explanation,
based on mental representations of the physical and geometrical environment, is simpler
(more economical). Finally, note that this explanation satisfies the long-prized scientific
principle called Occam’s razor.
The observation that mental events – such as representations of goals, representations
of the environment, reasoning about the goals, goal-directed (purposive) actions, infor-
mation processing, memory, learning, inferences, concept formation, thinking (including
creative thinking), and language – cannot be reduced to the laws of physics (although
they do not violate these laws), led to a revolution in psychology. We call this the
“Cognitive Revolution.” It also marked the beginning of artificial intelligence (AI), which
is the quest for emulating the human mind with a machine. More generally, AI has
the goal of creating thinking machines. Finally, note that the main push behind AI
actually came from the attempt to make mechanistic versions of teleological systems
(Rosenblueth et al., ).
It was computer scientists and engineers such as Wiener (), Shannon (), and
Turing () whose theories and technological inventions in the areas of information
theory, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence, demonstrated to the students of cognitive
science how they can put their ideas of goal-directed behavior on solid grounds. Wiener’s
() theory of control systems was critical in this context. He pointed out that control
systems can behave in a goal-directed way, providing a technical explanation of Warren’s
() concept of purposive behavior. Control systems of the sort described by Wiener


This description of two levels of analysis, one representing the physiological and the other representing the mental level,
is completely analogous to the double-aspect view in the mind/body problem, which is a characteristic of a neutral
monism. One of the best illustrations of the double-aspect view comes from William James (: ) who compared
(i) a physical description of a painting, like Raphael’s The School of Athens, where the description characterizes the
chemical composition of the paint at each point in the fresco, to (ii) a mental description, in which one would simply say
that the painting depicts a number of students, all involved in conversations. Both of these two descriptions are valid, but
one cannot be easily translated into the other.

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Forming Mental Representations 
had been used by engineers for centuries (see Bennett, ,  for an historical
review). The main three elements of a control system are the sensors, which measure the
current state of the system and its environment, the desired set-point (representation of a
goal) for the state of the system, and the negative feedback loop that uses the difference
(error) between the current and desired states to correct the current state. The control of
temperature in a house is one of the simplest examples of an engineering control system.
Maintaining body temperature, blood sugar level, and blood CO level are examples of
biological control systems that serve to achieve and maintain homeostasis (Bernard, ;
Cannon, ). Engineering and biological control systems emphasize the nature of the
negative feedback and the stability of the control. In a goal-directed behavior, such as
problem solving, it is the representation (model) of the environment, produced from
sensory data, that takes center stage. The feedback correction and the stability of control
are also important, but it is the representation itself that seems to be absolutely
fundamental in problem solving.

. Forming Mental Representations


How are mental representations of the environment formed? Mental representations are
produced from sensory data, but the data are never sufficient, so mental representations
are always based on inferences. Consider the well-understood case of visual representa-
tions. Our physical world is three-dimensional (D), but the visual data, which are
available on the retina of the human eye, are two-dimensional (D). But, despite the fact
that the retinal image is D, our visual representations of the environment are D.
Furthermore, we actually see things “veridically,” which simply means that we see D
objects and D scenes the way they are “out there.” Using technical jargon, the problem
of recovering a D visual representation from D retinal data is ill-posed. This means that
there are always infinitely many D interpretations that are consistent with any D
retinal image. The only way to choose a unique and veridical interpretation is to impose a
priori constraints on the family of possible interpretations (Pizlo, ). Combining
visual data and constraints leads to solving a constrained optimization problem, that is,
finding a D interpretation that is as close to the visual data as possible, and, at the same
time, as close to the a priori constraints as possible. The constraints could be either innate
(hardwired into the brain and present at birth), or learned after birth. The symmetry of
objects is the most fundamental visual constraint (Pizlo, ). Although we do not have
direct empirical evidence, it seems pretty certain that the symmetry constraint is innate.
This is why all humans see D objects and scenes in the same way. Note that symmetry is
a mathematical concept that does not have to be learned. Symmetry refers to the intrinsic
geometrical characteristics of an object. In the case of mirror-symmetry, which is the
most common type of symmetry in nature, the left half of an object is identical or similar
to its right half. One does not need to see many examples of mirror-symmetrical objects
in order to form the concept of mirror-symmetry. Mirror-symmetry can be defined
mathematically. Symmetry is also fundamental in physics – physicists claim that sym-
metry existed in the universe starting right after the Big Bang, which happened about
 billion years ago. It follows that when life emerged on Earth about  billion years ago,
symmetry had already been present in the environment for millennia. Symmetry

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 Problem Solving: Definition of the Main Concepts
surrounded the first life forms as the first animals evolved. In fact, the bodies of most
animals have always been mirror-symmetrical because of the animal’s locomotion.
Clearly, there was more than enough time for the evolutionary process to acquire and
make good use of the concept of symmetry. Note that not only animal bodies are
symmetrical – their brains are symmetrical, too: the two hemispheres are anatomically
very similar. So, if the genetic code determining the anatomy of our body and our brain
has symmetry built into it, why shouldn’t a symmetry constraint be built into the part of
the genetic code that determines visual mechanisms (algorithms)? The issue of nature vs.
nurture has always been fascinating. It will surely remain a topic for debate for a long
time. From time to time in this book, we will consider claims about the innateness of
proposed inferential mechanisms, but this endeavor will always be of only secondary
importance. It is the mental inferences, themselves, not their origin, that are of primary
importance when we discuss problem solving.
Now that we know how the human mind produces veridical visual representations of
the environment, we can emulate this ability in robots (Pizlo et al., ). This is an
ongoing project but some preliminary results show that a robot can produce the same
visual representations we humans do. This sets the stage for building bridges between
cognitive science and AI. Once a D visual representation of the environment is available
to a human observer, he can plan visual navigation in, and interact with, the surrounding
environment. For example, an observer can choose the shortest path to a goal such as the
exit of a room. If the room is empty, a straight line is the shortest path. In the presence of
obstacles, the shortest path will be a curve that goes around the obstacles. It is important
to realize that the problem of reaching a goal in a D environment requires solving an
optimization problem in the presence of constraints. It is an optimization problem
because there are multiple paths from the start to the goal, and only one of them can
be the best. So, solving the shortest path problem resembles the visual inferences
discussed in the previous paragraph. In both cases, (i) producing a visual representation
of the environment, and (ii) planning the shortest path to the goal in this environment,
the human mind solves the constrained optimization problem. So, solving a problem is
like making a second-order inference: one inference is built from another inference. In
technical parlance, two constrained optimization problems are solved, one after the other.
We will see throughout this book that many cases of what we call problem solving can be
viewed as tasks involving inferences, and we will often deal with a sequence of two or
more inferences.

. Problems to Solve

 When you stand in front of a mirror, and you move your right hand, your reflected
copy moves her left hand. How does the mirror know to reflect left and right, but not
top and bottom? (The answer is in Chapter .)
 There are three rooms. One of them contains an expensive item (e.g., a car), whereas
the other two rooms contain objects with very low value. You don’t know which
room contains which item. You are asked to point to one of the rooms. After that, the
host, who knows which room contains the car, opens the door of one of the other

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Problems to Solve 

Figure . Equilateral triangle formed by closely packed pennies.

rooms without the car. Now you are told to make your final pick: either you can stay
with your original choice, or you can switch to the other room. Should you switch in
order to increase your chances of getting the car? (After Burkholder, .)
 You start at a point and walk one mile south. Then you turn and walk one mile west.
Finally, you turn and walk one mile North. Is it possible that you ended up at your
starting point?
 Glove Selection: There are  gloves in a drawer:  pairs of black gloves,  pairs of
brown, and  pairs of gray. You select the gloves in the dark and can check them only
after a selection has been made. What is the smallest number of gloves you need to
select to guarantee getting the following: (a) at least one matching pair; (b) at least
one matching pair of each color? (From Levitin & Levitin, , with permission
from Oxford Publishing Limited.)
 Ferrying Soldiers: A detachment of  soldiers must cross a wide and deep river with
no bridge in sight. They notice two -year-old boys playing in a rowboat by the
shore. The boat is so tiny, however, that it can only hold two boys or one soldier.
How can the soldiers get across the river and leave the boys in joint possession of the
boat? How many times does the boat pass from shore to shore in your algorithm?
(From Levitin & Levitin, , with permission from Oxford Publishing Limited.)
 Inverting a Coin Triangle: Consider an equilateral triangle formed by closely packed
pennies or other identical coins like the one shown in Figure .. (The centers of the
coins are assumed to be at the points of the equilateral triangular lattice.) Flip the
triangle upside down in the minimum number of moves if on each move you can
slide one coin at a time to its new position. (From Levitin & Levitin, , with
permission from Oxford Publishing Limited.)
 Sorting  in : There are five items of different weights and a two-pan balance scale
with no weights. Order the items in increasing order of their weights, making no
more than seven weighings. (From Levitin & Levitin, , with permission from
Oxford Publishing Limited.)

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 

Animal Problem Solving


Innovative Use of Tools

. Early Research with Chimpanzees


Wolfgang Köhler is credited with initiating modern research on problem solving. Köhler
received his Ph.D. degree under Carl Stumpf’s direction in  at the Humboldt
University in Berlin. He also took some courses in physics with Max Planck while he
attended the university. After receiving his degree, he spent three years in Frankfurt as
Schumann’s assistant and as a collaborator of Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka. The
triumvirate consisting of Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka founded
and led the gestalt school of psychology that was mentioned several times in Chapter .
This gestalt school of psychology is widely considered to be an important precursor of
cognitive psychology because it emphasized perceptual and mental representations of the
environment and the goal-directed actions that are based on these representations. In
, Stumpf offered Köhler the Directorship of the Anthropoid Station on Tenerife
Island that was set up in  by Eugen Teuber. Köhler stayed there for seven years that
included the First World War. During this time, Köhler studied how a small group of
resident chimpanzees, many of whom had grown up in the wild, solved a variety of
problems, including stacking boxes to reach a banana hanging high above. Köhler
described this research in a book he titled The Mentality of Apes, whose first edition
was published by the Royal Prussian Society of Sciences in  in German. An English
translation of the second edition was published in . Köhler studied what he referred
to as “insight” in problem solving. His experiments were rather informal, entirely
observational rather than experimental and quantitative, but they shed light on a number
of important aspects of problem solving. What is at least equally important, Köhler also
recognized what is now a new topic in psychology called “intuitive physics.”
In Chapter , we briefly discussed the ability of dogs and chimps to go around
obstacles, an ability studied by Köhler in Tenerife. Not all animals are capable of solving
this rather simple problem. A chicken cannot do it. Going around obstacles is considered
a simple problem because it only requires realizing that the shortest path from the start to
the goal may not be a straight line if obstacles are present. In other words, an attempt to
move toward the goal along the line-of-sight, the line that light travels between a goal and
the observer’s eye, will not do. The animal must be able to use a spatial map of its
environment. This map represents the observer, the goal, and the obstacles and paths
among them. Note that in such tasks, the role of the memory of the spatial relations is
minimal because the goal and the obstacles are, and remain, clearly visible. The fact that a
spatial map can actually be stored in an animal’s memory and then used to plan actions,



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Early Research with Chimpanzees 
was demonstrated in anther task that Köhler used at the Station in Tenerife. The animal
was familiar with the room inside the building and the corridors between the room and
the playground outside. The experimenter and an animal (a dog or chimp) were placed
next to the window. The experimenter then showed the animal its favorite food and then
threw it out of the window. The animal saw the food disappear from its view, but to get
to this food, it must realize that the food did not actually disappear completely. It did not
evaporate. Note that this seemingly simple problem is an example of a problem in
intuitive physics, specifically, physical objects are characterized by permanence, which is
a form of invariance. Objects usually do not change their shape, size, or weight. They can
be broken or distorted, but they do not usually evaporate. Animals, including human
beings, know this intuitively. A piece of meat can “disappear” from sight if eaten, but if
no one ate it, it must be possible to find it. The animal, in Köhler’s experiment, knew
exactly what needed to be done. It knew which window is the same window when it is
viewed from both inside and outside the building. It also knew how to get to the food by
using the shortest path because jumping out of the window was blocked by covering it
with a shutter. In this case, the animal had to rely on its memory of the mental
representation (map) it had constructed of its environment. This is similar to the mental
maps studied by Tolman with rats (see his experiment, published in , that was
described in Chapter ). The main difference is that in Tolman’s experiment, the rat used
a straight-line shortcut after a more complex training maze had been simplified. Köhler’s
experiment asked his animal subject to use a complex path around obstacles, when the
straight-line path corresponding to its line-of-sight could not be used. Considerable,
currently available, empirical evidence suggests that such mental maps are Euclidean repre-
sentations of our Euclidean environment. When we say a representation is Euclidean, we
imply that the angles between the lines are represented accurately, as are the aspect ratios
of the objects and their shapes and sizes, as well as the distances among the objects. There
is no reason to assume that the perceived angles, distances, and aspect ratios are always
absolutely accurate. There will always be some systematic and random errors, but these
errors in perceptual accuracy and precision do not interfere with the animal’s problem-
solving performance. This conclusion will generalize to the other spatial problems that
will be described in the next chapter.
Now, consider two other types of tasks that chimps manage to solve very well. These
tasks require the animal to get a reward, a piece of fruit, that can be seen easily, but is well
above the ground at a height much greater than the height of the chimp. When objects
such as boxes are available in the room, the chimp will use one or more boxes, and it will
stack them on top of one another until this scaffold is high enough to allow it to reach the
fruit. If stackable boxes are not present, the chimp is likely to drag the experimenter into
the place directly beneath the hanging fruit, climb on his back, and get the fruit. If a
human is not available, the chimp will try to use another chimp to climb up. This
obviously requires that the chimp being studied has some intuitions about physics.
Köhler also reported that he had observed that when one box is put on top of another,
the chimp does not have a full grasp of the stability of such stacked boxes and that chimps
have only a limited understanding of gravity in particular, and of physics in general. They
may know how to act in our physical world, but they do not understand how this
physical world actually works. This should not be surprising because these animals do not

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009205603.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press


 Animal Problem Solving: Innovative Use of Tools
have the cognitive tools needed to represent and manipulate abstract concepts, but note
that the fact that chimps are able to stack two or more boxes suggests that they correctly
intuit that the total height of two boxes will be greater than the height of either one
because rigid objects do not penetrate each other (assuming the box on top will not
collapse inside the box on the bottom). Chimps also demonstrate both perceptual shape
and size constancy with objects such as boxes. All of this amounts to a great deal more
than just a simple behavioral success. One should not be surprised, then, that Köhler’s
work and his observations stimulated a substantial amount of research on intuitive
physics. This research will be described in later sections of this book.
In another version of Köhler’s task a basket with fruits hangs from the branch of a tree.
In this case, the chimp will climb the tree and then pull on the rope until the fruit falls
out of the basket or until the rope breaks. This means that chimps, just by looking, are
able recognize the physical relationship between the tree, the rope, and the basket. They
also seem to intuit that a freed fruit will fall from a tree. Köhler used quite a few similar
tasks and the outcomes of all of these tasks were similar, too. Shortly after Köhler
described and disseminated the results of his experiments by publishing his book, a
number of other researchers started studying problem solving. This included Duncker in
Germany who studied humans, Yerkes in the United States who studied chimpanzees,
and Tolman, also in the United States, who studied Harvard-bred brown rats. This early
work on problem solving did not lead to any formal theories, so this early research
(–) effectively stopped when information theory and cognitive psychology came
into play. Research cannot be sustained without theories that summarize existing
experimental results, explain the underlying cognitive mechanisms, and provide guidance
for subsequent experiments. Formal theories are the main driving force behind research
in the natural sciences. This fact has often been overlooked in cognitive psychology.
Theories of problem solving could not be formulated in the early period simply because
computers and computer simulations were not available until after the Second World
War. We now know that explaining problem-solving ability requires theories of mental
representations and theories of goal-directed behavior: both of these mental abilities are
sufficiently complex so that theories expressed in plain English, or even in mathematical
equations, will not suffice. Sophisticated computer models that can explain these mental
abilities started to appear during the Cognitive Revolution in the s. It was during
this period that problem solving became a widely recognized specialty within the new
field called artificial intelligence (AI).

. The Role of Brain Size: How Carnivores Solve the Puzzle Box Problem
Is a bigger brain better? It is tempting to answer “yes,” but, surprisingly, there is only very
weak experimental support for this answer. If our brain is compared to a computer’s
hardware, it is obvious that the larger the CPU and RAM, the greater the potential for
solving problems. This is true because a computer that has more elaborate hardware in
the form of the number of its transistors, is capable of handling more sophisticated and
smarter software. But, even if a computer is very elaborate, it will not be smart if it does
not have sophisticated computer programs. If sophisticated software is not installed, the
hardware, all by itself, cannot be smart. This is true with all computers. Now, what’s the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009205603.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press


The Role of Brain Size 
story with our brains? In Chapter , we touched on the distinction between (i) a
computer’s and a brain’s hardware, and (ii) mental representations. Forming abstract
mental representations and using them to solve problems is very similar to what
computer scientists call “software.” But, note that most neuroscientists are reluctant to
use this hardware–software dichotomy to represent the relationship between our brain
and mind. Their reluctance is at least partially justified because the brain consists of
neurons not transistors, and mental representations are not the same as programs written
in Python or in Matlab. In fact, neuroscientists tend to think that the software is built
into the hardware, so this distinction cannot apply. According to them, cognitive
computations are performed by a network of connections among neurons after the
weights of these connections have been adjusted through learning. From this approach,
mental representations, such as the mental maps described by Tolman, are equivalent to
a network of neurons. By doing this, they do not need to invoke mental maps in their
theories. Neural networks, alone, are sufficient. But, currently, it is widely accepted that
computational theories that explain how computers solve problems are, or at least can be,
identical to the computational theories that explain how human beings and other animals
solve the same problems. This view of computational theories of problem solving, which
was advocated by all early AI researchers starting with Craik (), Newell and Simon
() and including Marr (), has had a tremendous effect on modern cognitive
science. It is this similarity between the computational theories of problem solving used
by both humans and computers, that encouraged me to use (i) the analogy between
mental functions and computer software, and (ii) the analogy between brain structure
and computer hardware. This explains why this book focuses on mental functions that
are described, and hopefully explained, by computational models. My ultimate goal is to
emulate human problem solving on a computer. Achieving this goal is equivalent to what
has been called “strong or full AI.”
Look at the Wikipedia article titled “Brain-to-body mass ratio.” Look at the figure
which plots the mass (weight) of the mammal’s brain as a function of the mass of its
body. The elephant and the whale have the largest brains, weighing close to  kg (
lbs). The human brain weighs about . kg (. lbs), but we are smarter than elephants
and whales. So, larger hardware (brain) does not guarantee a smarter animal. This graph
shows that bigger animals do have bigger brains. This is not surprising. Bigger animals
also have more skin that has many mechanical sensors whose output is processed in the
brain, as well as more muscle, once again controlled by the brain. Note that the
regression line in this figure does not have a slope of  in these log-log coordinates.
The body weight spans  orders of magnitude (from . to , kg) while the
brain weight spans only  orders of magnitude (from . to , g). As a result, the
ratio of the brain and body weight is higher for humans ( percent) than for elephants
and whales (less than . percent). This observation has made it tempting to assume that
it is the ratio of brain and body weight that determines the intelligence. In other words,
humans have “extra” brain hardware that can perform functions that elephants or whales
cannot perform, such as abstract thinking and language. But if you look at the data points


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009205603.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press


 Animal Problem Solving: Innovative Use of Tools

Prop. Trials Successful Opening Puzzle Box

1.0
F C
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PM

0.8
M
F
M

0.6
V U
U

F C

0.4
F
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A

0.2
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F UU
F PF

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H F FCV PCF CC
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–0.5 0.0 0.5

Mass-corrected Brain Volume

Figure . Left: the relation between the brain volume and the body mass. Right: the relation between
problem-solving success that mass-corrected brain volume. (From Benson-Amram et al., , with
permission from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.)

in the left-hand corner of this graph, you see that shrews, which have neither language
nor abstract thinking, have a brain to body weight ratio of almost  percent – five times
a human’s. So, the ratio of brain and body weight will not do, either.
The graph in Figure . (left panel) is similar to the graph just described. One
difference is that instead of brain weight it plots brain volume in milliliters (mL) on the
vertical axis. The second difference is that it shows data points for only mammalian
carnivores, rather than for all mammals. This particular study (Benson-Amram et al.,
) tried to correlate brain size with problem-solving ability. The authors tested
 animals from  species in  families of zoo-housed animals. The axes in
Figure . (left panel) are again logarithmic, more precisely they use the natural
logarithm, whose base is e  .. The weight of the smallest animal was . kg (ln
(.) = .), and the weight of the largest animal was  kg (ln() = .). The brain
volume of the smallest brain was . mL (ln(.) = .), and the brain volume of the
largest brain was  mL (ln() = .). The data points represent averages for indi-
vidual species. Once again, their data points are not far from the regression line which
means that the larger animals do have larger brains.
All animals were tested with a puzzle box. Their task was to move the latch and open
the door of the box. There was a favorite food bait inside. The most successful animals
were the bears, who opened the box on  percent of the trials, raccoons ( percent),
and wolverines ( percent). Meerkats were least successful: they never solved the puzzle
box problem. Now look at Figure ., right panel. It shows the relationship between the
proportion correct in solving the puzzle box problem and the brain’s volume corrected
for the body mass. This corresponds to how far the brain volume is above the regression
line in the left panel of Figure .. The regression line in the right panel has a positive


http://movie-usa.glencoesoftware.com/video/./pnas./video-.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009205603.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press


Self-Recognition in a Mirror 
slope which means that “mass-corrected brain volume” has a positive effect on problem
solving. But the slope of the regression line is rather shallow (it spans the proportion
correct only between . and .) and the variability of the data points is rather large.
The authors did not report their correlation coefficient; they only noted that it was
significant. To summarize, animals are generally able to solve problems that require
opening a box. We will see later that some animals are quite sophisticated when it comes
to solving novel problems, but their brain size expressed in terms of its volume or its
weight accounts for only a minuscule portion of their problem-solving ability. When it
comes to problems solving, it is the software residing in the mind of the animal, not its
hardware, that counts the most.

. Self-Recognition in a Mirror

.. A New Test for the Presence of Consciousness


We all look at our reflection in a mirror on a regular basis, and when we see ourselves in
the mirror, we know that there is no physical person on the other side. We seem to
understand this intuitively. What is going on? This is another example of what cognitive
psychologists call “intuitive physics.” Children demonstrate this intuition around the age
of two years. Some animals demonstrate this intuition, as well. Povinelli and Cant ()
included several photographs which showed how a chimpanzee reacts to its own reflec-
tion in a mirror after it has been looking at itself for a period of time.
When first presented with a mirror, chimps react as if there were another animal out
there and they try to socialize. After anywhere from several minutes to several days, the
frequency of these reactions goes down to zero, when these reactions are replaced by self-
exploratory behaviors. The first systematic report of this kind of behavior was published
by Gallup (). He tested two male and two female pre-adolescent chimpanzees with
little, if any, prior experience with mirror-like surfaces. Their self-exploratory behaviors
included grooming parts of the body that are not visually accessible without the mirror,
cleaning their teeth, and making faces at the mirror. In order to provide a more
compelling verification of these informal observations, a now-famous “mark test” was
performed. The animals were anesthetized, and the uppermost potion of the ridge above
an eyebrow and the top half of the opposite ear were marked with a red dye. A mirror was
placed next to the animal’s cage a few hours after it woke up. All of the chimps tested
recognized that they had marks on their face and they tried to remove them by using the
mirror to look at their face. Rhesus monkeys, unlike chimpanzees, never recognized
themselves in the mirror. Many other kinds of animals were tested and only orangutans
also demonstrated this capacity.
It is tempting to speculate about what is going on in the mind of a chimp when she
looks at herself in a mirror. The chimp behaves as though she recognizes herself. Does
this mean that chimps have consciousness and self-awareness, and if they do, how does
their consciousness compare to ours? In our current state of knowledge, this discussion
would be pointless because we do not have a formal definition of “consciousness” and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009205603.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press


 Animal Problem Solving: Innovative Use of Tools
“self-awareness.” We have neither time nor interest in doing this here. Instead, we will
consider what is important about self-awareness in chimps. We have known since Köhler
that chimps are particularly good problem solvers, so their passing the mark test, while
other animals failed this test, is not surprising. What makes the mark test special?
Reflection in a mirror is actually a transformation of the observer. Reflection is not a
mere copy of oneself. Reflection is not simply a copy in the sense that you cannot touch
it, but you can look at it, and you can control the movement of your reflection. One
intriguing aspect of reflection is that the mirror seems to reflect left with right. Look at
your own reflection in a mirror. When you move your left hand up, the mirror image
moved its right hand up. How does the mirror know that the left and right should be
reflected, but not the top and bottom? What is going on will be clarified in the next
section. This clarification will be useful for several reasons. First, it will solve the problem
presented by the mirror’s reflection. Second, we will be able to understand why there are
confusions in prior papers. Finally, we will understand, formally, the concept called a
“D transformation” and the concept called “invariants of a transformation.” Physicists,
starting with Einstein, realized that without understanding transformations and invari-
ants, the modern science of physics could not exist. I have a reason to believe that the
same will prove to be true with a modern science of the human mind.

.. Why Does the Mirror Reflect Left and Right But Not Top and Bottom?
Look at Figure .a where I can be seen standing in front of a large mirror. I took this
photo of myself while I was holding a piece of paper on which I used a red marker to
draw X and Y axes, as well as a point V in the first quadrant of its coordinate system. You
can see the axes and the point in the mirror clearly because my drawing faces the mirror.
Note that you can also see what was drawn because the red marker shows through the
paper. This allows you to compare the reflected image with the drawing. First, it should
be obvious that the mirror is not reflecting left and right, or top and bottom. Both the Y-
axis on the paper and the Y-axis in the mirror image of the paper point up. So, the mirror
does not reflect the top and bottom. We have known this since philosophers looked at
mirrors in ancient Greece. More importantly, the X-axis on the paper and the X-axis in
the mirror image point in the same direction, specifically, toward the right edge of the
mirror, where “right” is defined in the coordinate system attached to my body. Clearly,
the mirror did not reflect (swap) left and right. Now, consider the third axis, the Z-axis
that represents the third dimension in this scene. Here, you have to use your imagination
because I did not draw this axis in the scene I am showing you. Let the Z-axis in the scene
be horizontal and orthogonal ( degrees) to the surface of the mirror. Furthermore, let
the Z-axis’s direction project from my torso toward the piece of paper that I am holding
in front of me. Now, imagine how the reflection of this axis would look in the mirror. It
will point from the image of my torso toward the image of the piece of paper. Clearly, the
direction of the Z-axis has been reflected (flipped) from front to back. This is what a
mirror does: it reflects the depth axis that is orthogonal to the mirror and preserves the axes
that are parallel to the mirror. If you need additional cues to this problem, consider an
explanation involving motion: imagine that I move the piece of paper to the right. The
piece of paper reflected in the mirror will move in the same direction, namely to the right

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009205603.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press


Self-Recognition in a Mirror 

Figure .. (a) reflection in a mirror; (b) rotation around Y-axis; and (c) rotation around X-axis.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009205603.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press


Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Vinzi gazed after him, and when he passed out of sight
felt he had lost the last home tie; the unknown lay before
him. He walked past the chapel to the house that stood
beyond. The small stone building near it must be the barn.
On the other side of the house was a shed, roofed with
shingles and stones, evidently the hayrick, for fodder was
stored within.

As the house door was closed and the door of the shed
stood open, Vinzi went to the hayrick. That no steps led up
to the little door was not surprising to Vinzi; he knew the
arrangement. The little shed did not rest on the ground but
stood firmly on four blocks, to keep the hay dry and
ventilated. As Vinzi knew, it was a case of clambering up to
the open door, which was so low a full-grown man had to
stoop to enter. Vinzi climbed up nimbly, and found a tall
man working inside.

"Good evening!" he called out. "Does this hayrick


belong to Lorenz Lesa?"

"It does. What do you wish of him?"

"He is our cousin. I belong to Vinzenz Lesa of Leuk, and


my father sends greetings to you. You know why I have
come," Vinzi informed him confidently, for he hoped this
man was the cousin himself.

Sticking his wooden pitchfork into the hay, the man


stepped forward to hear the lad better.

"Well, so you are Vinzi!" he said, giving him his hand


and looking him straight in the eyes. "It is good that you
have come up to your relatives. Did you make the journey
all alone?"
Vinzi's heart went out to the friendly speaker. He no
longer gazed at the ground, but looked into the kindly eyes
and told about his trip and how glad he was to find his
cousin so quickly, for he had been frightened at the thought
of coming among strangers.

"There is nothing to be afraid of here," said the man


good-naturedly. "The boys aren't exactly tame, but you will
get along with them. You must be hungry," he continued,
"so we will go to my wife, who will attend to that."

With a spring Vinzi landed on the ground and the cousin


followed.

Just then a stout woman opened the door of the house


and looked calmly around. "I have to let some of the smoke
out through the door," she said to her husband, but she
looked inquiringly at the boy at his side.

"I am bringing our young cousin from Leuk," he


explained. "He is a bit afraid, so you must see to it his fear
doesn't grow," and chuckled.

"You are welcome, young cousin," she said, offered her


hand and inspected him from head to foot until her husband
said:

"I think it might be just as well to continue your


examination indoors. The youngster still carries his
knapsack, and if he should happen to get something to eat
soon, he would not take it amiss. He has put a stiff march
behind him."

"He can eat right away," said she. "Supper is just ready;
the smoke drove me from the hearth. I will serve it at once,
for we need not wait for the boys; they will soon be
coming."
Stepping into the house, she took off Vinzi's knapsack,
and the lad was soon comfortably seated at the table. As
they ate, all timidity vanished. He was ravenously hungry
for he had scarcely eaten on the journey. Somehow his
cousin must have guessed this, and long before his plate
was empty, had heaped it again. Vinzi thought he had never
eaten anything better than the steaming potatoes and the
lovely yellow cheese.

Now and again the wife would say, "Pour out some more
milk for the boy. He must be thirsty after all the wind and
dust on that long trip."

Suddenly there arose a great hubbub, with loud huzzas


and much whip cracking.

"It is the boys," explained his Cousin Lorenz; "they have


brought the cattle. I must go out and help them. But
perhaps you would like to come out and see the cattle and
the stable?"

"Let him rest tonight," said Josepha. "Tomorrow, he can


start the day with the boys."

"I only asked because boys always like to be around


when there is something going on," her husband replied.
"But Vinzi is free to do as he likes."

"Then I'd like to stay here," chose Vinzi.

It pleased her that Vinzi was glad to stay indoors, and


first of all, he must have another cup of milk for she
declared it was needed to lay the last dust of the journey.

Then she seated herself comfortably in her chair,


saying, "Now tell me about your people and how things are
going at home."
Vinzi needed no second invitation for he had been
thinking about what his mother would be doing then,
wondering how Stefeli was faring alone in the pasture, and
how everything was getting along without him.

Now there was a great tramping outside, the door was


thrown open and a youngster about Vinzi's age came
rushing in. A little chap hurried behind him, and then a
taller boy followed who evidently did not wish to be last, for
giving a quick spring, he tried to vault over the smallest boy
by lifting himself on the little fellow's shoulders. But the sly
youngster ducked down and the bigger fellow fell headlong
with a thud.

"You shouldn't come in, in such an unmannerly way,


Faz," said the mother calmly.

"Good evening, cousin!" exclaimed the eldest boy,


holding out his hand to Vinzi.

"Good evening, cousin!" called out the second boy also,


and "Good evening, cousin!" greeted the youngest, pressing
up to Vinzi.

While Vinzi was shaking the proffered hands, the father


had come in, and as he sat down he said, "Well, now you
must learn one another's names, boys. Your cousin is called
Vinzi. That is for Vinzenz. My three are Joseph, Boniface
and Maurus. Those are their calendar names, but here at
home we call them Jos, Faz and Russli. Now I think you had
better take your places at the table."

Now that quiet had been restored so that she could be


heard, the mother said, "As our cousins did not inform us
they were sending their son to us, we did not make ready
for him. I have been thinking if he is to sleep in the house,
the storeroom will have to be emptied of the rye and corn
and all sorts of stuff. But the squeaking and scratching of
the mice might scare him. Wouldn't it be better, if I made
up a comfortable bed in the hayrick for him?"

"I will be glad to sleep in the hayrick," answered Vinzi.

"Just what I thought!" said the wife, greatly pleased


that everything upstairs could remain as it was. "You will
have to have a little table, a bench and a chest of drawers
to be comfortable," she added, "and when you have finished
eating, boys, you can carry them out for him."

She bustled off, and her three sons soon followed, and
as Vinzi thought perhaps he could help, he would have gone
too. But his cousin beckoned him back, declaring his
knapsack had been enough of a load for that day; it was
none too light, and hanging it on his arm, they went out to
the hayrick.

They had scarcely reached it when the three boys came


hurrying along. Jos carried the chest on his back, Faz the
little table with a quilt on top of it, Russli a bench, and the
mother followed with pillow and sheets. With an agility that
clearly showed she was used to climbing into the hayrick,
she was in at the little door, ready to take one thing after
another as her husband lifted them up.

When the last had been put in, his cousin said, "Now
we'll say good-night. Inside the door is a wooden bolt, just
like the one outside. With it fastened, you are sole master
of your castle."

And now his wife came down, saying, "There,


everything is ready for you. See, young cousin, down there
is the brook, and that will be your washroom. No one will
disturb you. You will find a towel on your bench. Sleep
soundly!"
The three boys also wished him good-night, but Jos
turned around again to say, "Are you coming with us early
in the morning, when we drive the cows out, Vinzi? And will
you stay with us all day while we are herding?"

"Why, of course," answered Vinzi, "but you must tell me


which cows I have to watch most carefully. Will you wake
me so I am not late?"

"Yes, I'll call good and loud through the round air hole,"
promised Jos.

Now Vinzi was alone. He climbed up to his little door


and looked into the hayrick. There in one corner on a high
soft pile of hay, his bed was made. Beside it, the hay had
been pushed away to make room for the little table and
bench, and the chest stood against the wall. It was a most
comfortable little room. But he could not go to sleep yet, for
he was quite excited with all the experiences of the day.
Sitting on the beam which formed the sill of his door, he
looked outside. The heavens were studded with brilliant
stars. Then the moon rose from behind the mountains,
lighting up the dark trees and meadows. The little church
beyond gleamed white and the snow-capped mountains
towering above the rocky cliffs became clearer and brighter
every minute. Vinzi's eyes grew bigger and bigger. In his
great fear of what lay ahead of him, he had seen little else
than the gray stone house on his journey. But how different
was this scene from anything he had pictured!

There was no wilderness of stones about him. The


moonlight fell on a green earth and turned the tips of the
larch trees yonder to silver. The ripple of the brook alone
broke the deep silence. Vinzi listened to the beautiful tune
and the notes became fuller and fuller; he heard whole
melodies. He must have sat there a long time listening
when a sudden gust of wind blew the door against his knee
and startled him out of his dreaming.

He had never seen the stars so brilliant. The words of


his mother, how the Lord was always above him, looked
down on him and heard him, reached his heart as never
before. Surely he was near Heaven there, and he was filled
with gratitude to the God who had let him find good where
he had feared only evil. His cousins had received him as a
friend and he was already quite at home with them. He
wished he might sing a loud hymn of praise out into the
night, but it was too late for that; not a candle gleamed in
any of the cottages.

So he closed his little door, bolted it, and sought his


bed. It was soft and comfortable. Not a straw could prick
him through the heavy linen sheets. He gazed at the
brilliant star that shone through the air hole opposite his
bed. Even when his eyelids tried to close, he opened them
to gaze again. Yes, the star still shone on him, and when he
fell asleep, it was with a wonderful melody resounding in his
ears. The star was singing to Vinzi, and he heard it in his
dreams.

The next morning he was awakened by a dreadful


hubbub, for his name was being shouted by numerous
voices. Stefeli, thought Vinzi, had never made such a noise
when she came to wake him. But then he suddenly saw
where he was and knew the voices that kept shouting
louder and louder. Perhaps they had been calling for a long
time. Hastily stepping into his clothes, he threw his door
open and leaped down among his noisy cousins.

"Hurry up! Come along!" they chorused.

Vinzi replied that he had not washed yet so they should


go along and he would follow. The two elder boys ran off,
but Russli went to the stream with him, saying
confidentially, "You don't need to wash; no one will ever
notice it."

"No, Russli," objected Vinzi. "One must wash every


morning. Besides, it makes one feel better. Oh, the lovely
cool water!" And Vinzi knelt down by the brook and
splashed the clear water over his face time and time again,
and then drank one handful after the other.

Now he looked so fresh and happy that Russli, full of


the pleasure of imitation, said, "I'll wash with you tomorrow
morning, and drink too. I'll do it every day."

When they reached the house, the cousin and his wife
were still at the breakfast table. Both gave Vinzi a friendly
greeting, and Josepha set a large cup of coffee before him,
suggesting that he eat plenty of bread with it, for the fresh
mountain breeze would soon make him hungry.

When his Cousin Lorenz rose from the table, Vinzi


followed him out to the stable where Jos and Faz were
cracking their whips as a sign they were ready. Their father
now released the cows one after the other and the
procession started off to the pasture which lay a
considerable distance beyond the chapel. Russli walked
beside Vinzi and held him firmly by the hand, trying to hold
him back as much as he could.

Jos and Faz had all they could do to keep the cows on
the roadway and to urge them along, for fresh grass
tempted them now to one side, now to the other.

"Let me go, Russli," said Vinzi, pressing forward. "Can't


you see I must help your brothers with the cows?"

"You had better keep Russli in order," called out Faz.


"That will be helping us most. The little chap is always
tickling the cows with his switch so they scatter in all
directions and we can scarcely control them. He is a
mischievous little mite, and you'd better hang on to him,"
and as the obstinate cow with which he had been struggling
decided to move on, Faz ran ahead to the herd.

"Vinzi," said Russli, quite happy that he could have his


cousin all to himself, "have you a knife?"

"Why, yes, of course. I need one."

"Then I'll show you a great bush that makes fine


switches. Strong ones, you know; not brittle. Will you cut
me a few?"
"What do you want a switch for?" asked Vinzi. "I hope
you do not want to whip the cows. You heard what Faz told
me about you."

"Oh, I only tease them a little," said Russli. "Then they


jump up in the air and are awfully funny."

"But it's not funny for them," answered Vinzi. "They


jump from fright. Those thin switches hurt, and I'll cut none
for you. But I will make something else if the wood is the
right kind. Show me the bush."

Russli ran eagerly ahead and soon turned off the road
across a pasture, until he reached a large bush whose
branches grew straight up into the air.

"Here!" he called to Vinzi.

Highly pleased with the bush, Vinzi began to cut the


branches he liked best, and when he had a bunch of them,
he said, "Now, come along, we must go over to your
brothers. Do you know where they are? I can't see them
any more. Then I will do the cutting for you."

Russli ran along, followed by Vinzi, who suddenly


paused to exclaim, "Oh, how lovely it is here! But when do
we get to the pasture?"

"We are in the pasture now," said Russli.

Vinzi looked around him. Here and there stood tall, dark
larches, through whose delicate branches one could glimpse
the blue of the heavens above. Beneath their feet stretched
the lovely green of the mountain pasture land, brightened
by the fiery red alpine roses which grew amongst the moss-
covered stones. A full mountain stream rushed along its
course, and the rocks that hindered its passage tossed it
high into snow white foam. So this was the pasture!

Vinzi saw the cows a short distance away peacefully


browsing beneath the trees. The sunlight fell through the
trees on the glowing flowers and sparkled on the stream's
clear waters. The mountain breeze started the shadows
playing under the larches, and called forth a soft singing in
their branches.

The tuneful rustling seemed to swell, then to die away


in the distance. Vinzi stood motionless, gazing and listening.

"When will you begin cutting what you promised?"


asked Russli at last when his patience was entirely
exhausted.

"Yes, I'm coming," said Vinzi, as though waking out of a


dream.

Vinzi now ran off to where the cows grazed and looked
about for his cousins. Across the road was a very large
treeless pasture in which browsed many cattle. A small
group of young herders were bending over a smoking spot
on the ground. Jos and Faz were among them, Vinzi saw
that. He called out to Jos with all his might, but in vain for
some time, but as soon as Jos heard him he came over to
him.

"Come over to us, Vinzi," he called as he ran up. "We


are making a fire, or rather a smoke. One of the boys has
found a hole, and there is an animal in it, perhaps a
marmot. We think we can smoke it out. Come along, it is
real fun."

"No, I would rather not," replied Vinzi who found no


pleasure in seeing a frightened little animal jump out of its
hole, with boys to chase it and frighten it more.

"Besides, I have promised Russli to go back


immediately. I want to ask you something. Do you think
your father would mind if I cut a pipe for Russli?"

"Mind? What are you thinking about? I don't see any


reason why he should!" exclaimed Jos. "You can be sure
father will not be displeased and we will be only too glad if
you keep the little mischief away. He makes the cows so
wild we are kept busy running after them."

"But ought I not to help you with the herding?" asked


Vinzi. "May I just sit and cut pipes?"

"You will help us that way more than any other,"


declared Jos.

Vinzi was highly pleased over this division of labor, and


hurried back to Russli. Seating himself on a mossy stone
where the reddish-purple violets perfumed the air, he
selected a branch, and cut it off where it started to grow
more slender, and began to work on the thicker piece.

"What is it going to be when it is finished?" asked


Russli, who looked on with deep interest.

"It will be a pipe," answered Vinzi.

In happy astonishment, Russli pressed closer to the


carver so as to lose nothing of the process of this marvelous
work. He knew the little reed pipes that broke so quickly,
but he had never seen such a long, thick wooden pipe.

Vinzi had discovered much since he made his first pipe.


Now he cut several small holes, for that way he could get
several notes. But it took much time, for it was not easy to
bore the little round holes, and Vinzi was very exact in his
work. Several hours were spent on it, for between times
Vinzi stopped to listen to the way the wind sang through the
tall trees and to the murmur of the stream, sometimes one
of joy, sometimes one of gentle complaint. Then too, he
paused to breathe in the perfume of the violets. But at last
he closed his knife and said, "There, Russli, take it; your
pipe is ready."

With flashing eyes the happy boy put the pipe to his
mouth and blew a high, piercing shriek. Russli himself was
frightened at it.

Handing over the instrument to Vinzi, he said, "Now you


play on it," but at that moment there resounded a shrill
whistle and then another. Clearly it was a call.

"It is time to eat," explained Russli. "That's the way


they always whistle when we are to gather for lunch. Come
along!"

"A pipe! Look at my pipe!" he called out to his brothers


as he drew near where they were already sitting on the
grass eating. When Russli saw this, he looked searchingly
around, then ran to where his lunch-bag lay, and quickly
pulling out what was meant for him, held it out to Vinzi.

"Here, take it," said he. "This is yours; the others have
already taken theirs."

As soon as Jos had finished eating, he called out from


where he sat, "Here, Russli, give me the pipe, I want to try
it."

"Come and get it then," said Russli drily.


Vinzi had jumped up to take it over to Jos, but evidently
he had a feeling that if he wanted it, it was for him to fetch
it, and he quickly came up, as did Faz also, who called out,
"Show it to me too." But Jos was already holding it to his
mouth and warded Faz off. Jos knew something about how
the fingers had to be placed on the holes in order to
produce different notes, and he succeeded, though they
were very discordant and harsh.

"You do not know how! Just give it to me!" cried Faz,


grabbing the pipe, but in his hands it shrilled and
screeched.

"It looks so pretty," said Jos with regret. "We have


never been able to make so nice a one, but it does not
sound well."

Taking the pipe from Faz, Vinzi said, "I will give it a trial
myself," and began to play a little tune.

The notes followed one another so clearly, so


beautifully, they all stood spellbound, and when Vinzi
stopped, Jos exclaimed eagerly, "Oh, you play it well. Teach
me!"

"Me too," added Faz.

"And me too," shouted little Russli.

"Give me the pipe," urged Jos.

"No, give it to me," demanded Faz.

But Russli had grabbed his property and ran away,


fearing the stronger boys would rob him of it.
"Let him have it," said Vinzi, "and I will make each of
you one."

The promise quieted the brothers but no amount of


calling could bring Russli back, and finally Vinzi had to run
after him, to persuade him he would not lose his valuable
property. Now the boys seated themselves in a close circle
for all wanted to see how Vinzi did it. He was kept playing
on and on, everything he knew, and when he had no more
tunes, he made up melodies from the sound of the bells and
the song of the birds he had heard.

As he played on, his audience had grown, for the boys


from the other pastures had waited in vain for Faz and Jos
and one after another had come seeking them. Once there,
they tarried, for the music pleased them all, and the
afternoon slipped away unnoticed.

Suddenly one of the crowd called out, "It's six o'clock! I


hear the horn!"

They quickly scattered, but one after another called


back to Vinzi, "Bring it tomorrow! Bring it with you
tomorrow!"
WHEN VINZI STOPPED, JOS EXCLAIMED, "TEACH ME!"

It was now necessary for Jos and Faz to hurry to drive


their cows together and set off on the homeward journey,
and as Jos was in full run for his cattle, he called:

"Vinzi, keep the little chap with you on the way home;
that will be helping us."

When they approached the house, they saw the father


standing in the doorway waiting to receive them. When they
came near, he called out, "Well, how did you get along the
first day, young cousin? How do you like our pasture?"
"A pipe, look at my pipe!" lustily shouted Russli. "Here,
take it, father, it sounds lovely."

"Look there, the boys are coming with the cattle," said
the father before whose eyes Russli held the pipe. "Go and
show it to your mother. I'll soon come in."

"I love it in the pasture," Vinzi was able to say at last.


"It is so lovely up there under the trees, the day was gone
before we knew it."

"Yes, and Vinzi helped us a lot," added Jos, who had


joined them. "We got on the move with the cows ten times
quicker than we usually do, and they have been so quiet all
day, and grazed as they have not done for a long while. I
wish Vinzi could stay with us all the time!"

"I am glad to hear that!" exclaimed his father. "That's a


good start. Let us hope you will always get along well
together."

He went to the stable with his boys and Vinzi followed,


thinking his cousin would be pleased if he wished to help.

"What can I do?" he asked him from the stable door.

"We'll be through soon," replied his cousin, busily


milking. "But if you would like to look around the barn and
stable, you may do so."

Vinzi stepped out into the twilight and watched the


setting sun tip the mountain cliffs and dark spruces with
gold. Then the chapel bell sounded so sweetly that it filled
him with delight and he stood motionless long after the
glow had paled and the sound of the bell had died away.
"Hello!" cried a voice behind him, while he received a
resounding slap on the back and was dragged over to the
pump where there was a great washing and splashing every
evening before the boys went into the house.

"Are you awake again?" asked Faz who had done the
tugging, fully believing that Vinzi had fallen asleep in the
path.

"Yes, and your fists woke him up before he reached the


water," said Jos. "Isn't that so, Vinzi?"

"Indeed yes," answered Vinzi, "but I had much rather


he should seize hold of me than that he should tell your
father I fell asleep in the path. I really was not asleep."

"Faz doesn't carry tales; he just strikes a blow," said Jos


comfortingly.

And now to the house, with Faz in the lead. The mother
was waiting for them at the table, patiently enduring the
noise Russli was making with his pipe.

"That sounds like a dying cat," remarked Faz as he


entered.

"Don't laugh at him the first time he tries," said his


mother. "He is playing quite cleverly for a little boy. He has
just been praising you, he says you have not cuffed him
once today."

"He only gets a cuff when he deserves it," remarked


Faz. "He was good today because Vinzi held the reins. I
hope he stays with us."

The other three now came in and Russli darted to his


father with the cry, "Now for the pipe!"
"No, no, Russli, first supper and then the pipe," said his
father, seating himself. "You see, when I was a boy I cut
pipes too and had great times playing on them. So I must
have a look at your pipe and see if I can still play."

Russli was satisfied with this, for he smelled the hot


corn-cakes his mother was now serving and he eagerly
attacked his plate.

When the mother had cleared away the supper things,


the father said, "Well, now bring me the pipe and let us
hear what it sounds like."

Russli was a bit sleepy after his feast of corn-cakes, but


the fear that Faz might snatch the pipe from him to carry it
to his father and afterward keep it for himself brought him
to his feet.

"For heaven's sake, what are you bringing me?" asked


his father, taking the long pipe and examining it closely.
"That is no ordinary pipe. It is a real shawm with all the
necessary holes."

Lifting it to his lips, he brought forth something that


sounded almost like a tune.

"Father can do better the first time than any of us after


we had tried many times," said Jos in astonishment. "But
Vinzi can do better than father."

"Then we will listen to him," said his father, handing


Vinzi the pipe.

Vinzi remembered one little tune better than all others,


and he had played it fully ten times that day for the boys.
Alida had taught it to him. He played it now, and as he
came to the end there was intense silence for a moment.
"Yes, he can play differently than I," admitted his
cousin. "I wonder who taught him."

"That was lovely!" sighed his wife, quite overcome. "I


would like our musician to play a hymn that we could all
sing."

"And I can," said Vinzi, "because mother sings a hymn


with us every evening at home. What shall I play?"

"Can you play 'I Sing to You with Heart and Mouth?'"
she asked.

Yes, Vinzi knew it well, and after seeking a little for the
right pitch, played with assurance. The mother sang well
and her husband joined in with a strong bass, and suddenly
Jos lifted his fine voice. Faz growled after his father, then
jumped to his mother's high notes, and Russli squeaked in
between. But the other voices were so strong, that these
false notes did not disturb the song. Mrs. Lesa was so
delighted that she begged for another song directly the first
was finished, and then another and another.

The cousin was highly pleased and declared, "That was


a splendid entertainment and we will have another
tomorrow. It is a good thing to praise God with beautiful
music."

When Vinzi went to his hayrick, his heart was so full of


thanksgiving that he sat in the doorway a long time looking
up into the sky with its myriad of stars.

"Oh, how beautiful it is here, and it grows more lovely!


To praise God with music is something beautiful, Cousin
Lorenz said and tomorrow we will do it again, and so every
day," said Vinzi to himself.

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