MA Thesis of Timothy Hilgenberg

Introduction

Every time we come across something unknown or puzzling, we try to discover what it takes to resolve the conundrum. This is something not unique to humans, curiosity is something we find in many animals too. A cat will look at a new toy, sniff it and poke it gingerly at first to see what happens.

Like animals we develop a stock of solutions through learning and experience which we apply as a first attempt at explaining the unknown or solving any new riddle we come across. In the same way that the cat pokes at a new toy to see what happens, we try previously successful solution schemata on the new problem. To gauge which type of solution to try first, we take a closer look at the problem to see if it can be broken down into smaller more readily recognisable "chunks" - we reduce it. We try to match elements to stuff we have come across before, parts we recognise, to as we say "get a handle on."

This is of course, a very rough and ready description of reduction. Today several different kinds of Reduction are under investigation as well as their ability and efficacy as an approach to trying to understand a complex by disassembling it into the constitutive parts, perhaps even by trying to understand those parts.