Humans are Scruffy Evolution makes scruffy brains Human thinking is not purely logical Perception and Memory are important

Humans are scruffy thinkers and problem solvers. Our brains are the product of over 3 million years of evolution, and the resulting brain is not neat. It has evolved to solve particular problems in evolutionary history, for example the detection of predators. As a result we have very sophisticated perceptual systems. Human brains were not designed to be neat problem solving machines. Human thinking is not purely logical. Of necessity, it relies upon previous experience to organise its thoughts. Perception and memory are of vital importance to human problem solving. We perceive features of problems and recognise previous problems from our experience that may be relevant. We usually rely on previous knowledge rather than attempting a new solution to a problem from scratch.