Human thinking and problem-solving and their relationship to medicine

Abstract

Human thinking processes have been the subject of many theories and philosophies, from the earliest days of mankind to the present day, from Socrates to Artificial Intelligence. Yet, we have only a diffuse picture of their true nature. First, the ancient Greek philosophers (Plato, Aristotle) gave shape to theories about human thinking and reasoning, followed by philosophers like Locke, Bacon, Kant, Descartes and Mill in later days. New incentives came from a different discipline, experimental psychology, which was founded by Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1890) at the University of Leipzig and followed by psychologists from the University of Wuerzburg. They applied ‘introspective methods’ to higher mental processes. After the demise of the Wuerzburg school, most thinking processes were studied under the guise of ‘problem-solving’. Under the influence of economic principles (utilitarian theory, J. S. Mill, 1806–1873) and game theory (Von Neumann, 1928) a new branch on this tree appeared: decision theory, which is mainly preoccupied with the outcomes of the thinking processes.