Anyone Can Think!

You just need to give people the right tools. To this end, I teach a course at the University of Arizona entitled “The Art of Scientific Discovery”. Through sequences of puzzles and games, students develop a box of tools that they can use to solve problems forever. The course is organized around themes that relate directly to how scientists solve problems – themes like how you discover and solve problems simply by observing the world around you, how you construct tools to help you organize a daunting pile of data and make sense of it, and how you recognize and dispense with obstacles to clear thinking.

Scientific Problem Solving is a lab course. The idea is to train scientific problem solving skills through exercise & self-analysis. Puzzles and challenging problems matched to aspects of each theme provide a fun and productive path to improving problem solving skills. While play and practice create an important foundation, active learning requires the development of some additional tools – strategic thinking and thinking about thinking (i.e., metacognition). Readings combined with introspective analysis help to consolidate the concepts and mental tools so that they'll stay with you for your whole life.

If you're interested, consider
who takes this course and why they do.


This website is meant for those who view Science and Life as a continuous process of problem solving and who seek to hone their abilities in a gym filled with mental barbells.