ABOUT PROBLEM SOLVING by AXIL

There is a training process that forms the mind of the problem solver that might explain why scientists are reluctant to accept unorthodox ways of problem solving. In scientific education, a scientist gains success by learning the established doctrinaire of the field of study he is being educated in. The scientist is presented with a doctrinaire outline in a text book and will pass the course if his way of thinking has been properly molded by his professor in the course of his studies whose chief objective is conformance with the required doctrinaire. He passes a final examine that demonstrates that he understands and agrees with the doctrinaire and the professor who has enforced the course of study on the student.

Over a lifetime of conformance based thinking, a religious like need to conform to the prevailing belief structure is ingrained in his mental being. When an idea is outside that conformant framework, the scientist’s mental processes automatically and unconsciously rebels to discount the new idea as a sin against doctrinaire and the dereliction of consistency implied by the new idea.

Over the centuries, this doctrinaire has been modified and oftentimes been replaced whole cloth with some new way of thinking that is forced on science to meet some unusual nonconforming natural idiosyncrasy. When a new scientific theory is introduced it usually takes years or decades to penetrate through the closed minded prejudices of the majority of conservative scientists.

Furthermore, science has become specialized to such an extent that in order to get to the cutting edge of any given field, it takes half a lifetime to acquire the knowledge and the history of the narrowly defined subject matter.  When a scientific specialist writes about the hard won advancement that he has labored hard to contribute to his specific field, that information lays fallow because only a few people in the world understand the context and the background required to properly understand and utilize his contribution.   Over his career, the scientific specialist builds on his contributions to the field and hopes someone will reference any of the papers that he has produced. Each new paper becomes more and more incomprehensible dealing on more and more unfathomable and obscure detail of the subject matter.

This extreme scientific specialization has resulted in stove piping of the scientific disciplines.

Stovepiping (also stove piping) is a metaphorical term which recalls a stovepipe's function as an isolated vertical conduit for information and knowledge, and has been use to describe several ways in which raw  information may be presented without proper context. It is a system created to solve a specific problem.

The lack of context springs from the specialized nature of the knowledge and information. It also has limited and myopic focus that is not easily shared. Alternatively, the lack of context may come from a particular group, selectively presenting only that information that supports certain conclusions or supports the agenda that advances the interest of that group.

The other mode of education of problem solving is provided by real world experience in meeting project oriented requirements. In business, a customer puts out a request for quote (RFQ) that requires a potential vender to meet a specification describing the project.

The customer does not require the vender to follow any method in the way that the vender solves the conformance of the proposed solution to totally meeting the entirety of the specification.

The vender in a functional analysis of the specification brakes up the specification into a thousand atomic level individual requirements. His solution must meet all these many requirements simultaneously and in every possible permutation and combination of situations.

A chief project engineer will develop a pragmatic solutions oriented way of thinking. This mindset is not concerned with following the rules as a means of the solution; he just wants to come up with any viable way of solving the problem, rules be dammed. Success is what counts no matter the way in which that success is achieved. Cleverness and elegance of thought is what distinguishes a great project engineer from all the rest.

An experienced project engineer will develop a feeling about the major directions to be taken that are implied by the specification. He thinks to himself, if we can stay true to these fundamental design principles we will be alright.  In this way like high art, the design engineer breaths the essence of his soul into the system to be uncovered by any who can appreciate the brilliance of his creation.

Under the realities and pressures imposed on the chief project engineer by the commercial world, this renaissance man  is usually faced with a task that he has little or no background to apply to or depend on. And yet, to be successful in implementing his project, he must become an expert second to none in multiple fields. His first job is to determine what fields of expertise he must acquire to meet the new challenge. Two dozen diverse fields of knowledge might be required in a large and convoluted project. As an expert adept at learning and correlating of information, he begins his study by identifying, surveying, and going through all the thousands of obscure scientific papers that have been produced by the various scientific specialist both newly written or that have been laying fallow and unappreciated for ages.

He begins to apply this knowledge to the requirements both specified and implied in his project. His plans are formed around the aggregation of knowledge that seldom ends until the customer accepts the project as completed. Even then he works to solve latent defects in his project until the project has reached a high level of utility, effectiveness, and customer satisfaction.

A good example of this type of adaptable mentality is the various ways NASA has solved how spacecraft  land on Mars. Based on the projects requirements, the Mars landing method may use balloons that bounce the lander on touchdown, or use retrorockets, or a Sky Crain that gently lowers the lander from a height.  All these method are based on absolutely meeting all the requirements of the project, the least of which is a successful landing.

LENR requires a project oriented way of thinking. The LENR method must conform to the multitude of individual observations of its nature. The method must be independent of any constraints imposed by existing scientific doctrinaire, the majority of which are always subject to some level of untruthfulness. We must look for a solution that meets all the experimentally derived clues that have been gathered over the years and no clue must be ignored.

The ultimate goal of the theorist looking to understand LENR must be to uncover the ultimate operational principles that underlie the entirety of LENR. A true LENR theory will cover all LENR systems as well as each and every situation demonstrated by all those various systems.

I believe that this is what Peter Gluck means when he says that LENR requires an engineering solution approach that is not constrained and limited by existing scientific doctrinaire.