Thought: Pattern recognition in researching a new topic

I was appraising one of my colleague yesterday, and they said something interesting on the approach they'd taken to tackle a new topic.

They and another colleague had gone out to talk to peers in search of patterns in how they'd approached the topic, but hadn't found any and figured out they'd have to experiment.

In some ways, this should be standard operating procedure - but it was the phrase they used of "searching for patterns" which I liked as it very much taps into Kurzweil's view of the mind - we are all advanced pattern recognisers - as outlined in his book, How to Create a Mind: The secret of human thought revealed.

The mind as pattern recogniser is a controversial theory with possibly little evidence so far. But I recall finding his explanation of the grief response to the loss of a loved one, both reassuring and moving.