fundamental method of problem-solving, characterized by repeated, varied attempts which are continued until success, or until the practicer stops trying
Trial and error is a fundamental method of problem-solving characterized by repeated, varied attempts which are continued until success, or until the practitioner stops trying.
According to W.H. Thorpe, the term was devised by C. Lloyd Morgan (1852–1936) after trying out similar phrases "trial and failure" and "trial and practice". However, the phrase 'trial and error' was already in use in 1833, where it can be found in the book title "Practical Methods by Trial and Error for Finding the Latitude and Time at Sea". Under Morgan's Canon, animal behaviour should be explained in the simplest possible way. Where behavior seems to imply higher mental processes, it might be explained by trial-and-error learning. An example is the skillful way in which his terrier Tony opened the garden gate, easily misunderstood as an insightful act by someone seeing the final behavior. Lloyd Morgan, however, had watched and recorded the series of approximations by which the dog had gradually learned the response, and could demonstrate that no insight was required to explain it.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).