The world is teeming with problems. Wherever man looks, he encounters some new problem—in his home life and in his job, in economics and in technology, in the arts and in the sciences. And some problems are very stubborn; they refuse to leave us in peace. They torture our thoughts, sometimes haunting us throughout the day and even robbing us of sleep at night. If by lucky chance we succeed in solving a problem, we experience a sense of deliverance and rejoice over the enrichment of our knowledge. But it is a different story, and highly annoying, to discover after tedious efforts that the problem is incapable of solution--either because there exists no indisputable method of solving it or, because soberly looked at, it is void of meaning—a phantom problem on which our labors and thoughts were wasted. There are a good many such phantom problems—in my opinion, far more than is ordinarily assumed—even in the sciences.(2 ¶ 1)