Logical Versus Analogical or Symbolic Versus Connectionist or Neat Versus Scruffy

Engineering and scientific education condition us to expect everything, including intelligence, to have a simple, compact explanation. Today, some researchers who seek a simple, compact explanation hope that systems modeled on neural nets or some other connectionist idea will quickly overtake more traditional systems based on symbol manipulation. Others believe that symbol manipulation, with a history that goes back millennia, remains the only viable approach. AI is not like circuit theory and electromagnetism.