Chapter 5: The Generalization of Relations and the Dependence of Generalization on Analysis and Abstraction

Thinking is, by necessity, associated with generalization; thinking is done in generalizations and leads to generalizations of a higher and higher order. The very transition from problem-solving by means of practical trials based on action to problem-solving on a theoretical, intellectual basis has, as its indispensable prerequisite, the formation of generalization. In the example analyzed earlier, a necessary condition for solving the problem based on a perception that emerged from practical action was a generalized description of “implements” in terms of characteristics essential for solving the problem. Generalization is a result of analysis that identifies essential elements and of synthesis. Every problem is solved by analyzing its conditions based on correlating them with its requirements. Hence a solution to any problem requires a certain degree of generalization of the objects that it deals with and of their properties and relations in terms of characteristics essential to the problem. We dealt with the process of generalization when we studied transfer. Generalization has already appeared in both of its basic forms—an elementary one and a higher one. Elementary generalization is executed as a process of identifying what is in common in the sense of similar; generalization on a higher level is executed as a process of determining essential, necessary connections. How generalized a solution is depends, as we have also seen already, on how “cleanly” the analysis of a problem’s conditions relative to its requirements isolated the essential conditions on which a solution depends from the attendant circumstances in which the problem was initially presented (a certain position of a figure in space and so on). Until a test subject (a pupil and so forth) has analyzed the circumstances in which a problem was presented to him and isolated from them its conditions in the strict sense by correlating them with the requirements of the problem, the solution to the problem cannot