That's right, and left! ;) Fusing the "scruffy" and "neat" approaches has been the idea since the terms were coined by Roger Schank in the 70's and written about in 1982 by Robert Abelson in his Major Address of the Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society in "Constraint, Construal, and Cognitive Science" (page 1).

His question is: Is it preferable for scruffies to become neater, or for neats to become scruffier? His answer explains why he aspires to be a neater scruffy.

"But I use the example as symptomatic of one kind of approach to the cognitive science fusion problem: you start from a neat, right-wing point of view, but acknowledge some limited role for scruffy, left-wing orientations. The other type of approach is the obvious mirror: you start from the disorderly leftwing side and struggle to be neater about what you are doing. I prefer the latter approach to the former. I will tell you why, and then lay out the beginnings of such an approach."

https://cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/676/F01/neat.scruffy.txt

Article: 35781 of comp.ai
From: fass@cs.sfu.ca (Dan Fass)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: who first used "scruffy" and "neat"?
Date: 26 Jan 1996 10:03:35 -0800
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C.

Abelson (1981) credits the neat/scruffy distinction to Roger Schank.
Abelson says, ``an unnamed but easily guessable colleague of mine
... claims that the major clashes in human affairs are between the
"neats" and the "scruffies". The primary concern of the neat is
that things should be orderly and predictable while the scruffy
seeks the rough-and-tumble of life as it comes'' (p. 1).

Abelson (1981) argues that these two prototypic identities --- neat
and scruffy --- ``cause a very serious clash'' in cognitive science
and explores ``some areas in which a fusion of identities seems
possible'' (p. 1).

- Dan Fass

REF

Abelson, Robert P. (1981).
Constraint, Construal, and Cognitive Science.
Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science
Society, Berkeley, CA, pp. 1-9.

https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/...

[I'll quote the most relevant first part of the article, which is still worth reading in its entirety if you have time, since scanned two column pdf files are so hard to read on mobile, and it's so interesting and relevant to Douglas Lenat's work on Cyc.]

CONSTRAINT, CONSTRUAL, AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE

Robert P. Abelson, Yale University

Cognitive science has barely emerged as a
discipline -- or an interdiscipline, or whatever it
is -- and already it is having an identity crisis.

Within us and among us we have many competing
identities. Two particular prototypic identities
cause a very serious clash, and I would like to
explicate this conflict and then explore some areas
in which a fusion of identities seems possible.
Consider the two-word name "cognitive science".
It represents a hybridization of two different
impulses. On the one hand, we want to study human
and artificial cognition, the structure of mental
representatives, the nature of mind. On the other
hand, we want to be scientific, be principled,
be exact. These two impulses are not necessarily
incompatible, but given free rein they can develop
what seems to be a diametric opposition.

The study of the knowledge in a mental system
tends toward both naturalism and phenomenology.
The mind needs to represent what is out there
in the real world, and it needs to manipulate it
for particular purposes. But the world is messy,
and purposes are manifold. Models of mind,
therefore, can become garrulous and intractable
as they become more and more realistic. If one's
emphasis is on science more than on cognition,
however, the canons of hard science dictate a strategy
of the isolation of idealized subsystems which can
be modeled with elegant productive formalisms.
Clarity and precision are highly prized, even at
the expense of common sense realism. To caricature
this tendency with a phrase from John Tukey (1959),
the motto of the narrow hard scientist is, "Be
exactly wrong, rather than approximately right".

The one tendency points inside the mind, to see
what might be there. The other points outside the
mind, to some formal system which can be logically
manipulated (Kintsch et al., 1981). Neither camp
grants the other a legitimate claim on cognitive
science. One side says, "What you're doing may seem
to be science, but it's got nothing to do with
cognition." The other side says, "What you're
doing may seem to be about cognition, but it's
got nothing to do with science."

Superficially, it may seem that the trouble
arises primarily because of the two-headed name
cognitive science. I well remember the discussions
of possible names, even though I never liked
"cognitive science", the alternatives were worse;
abominations like "epistology" or "representonomy".

But in any case, the conflict goes far deeper
than the name itself. Indeed, the stylistic division
is the same polarization than arises in all fields
of science, as well as in art, in politics, in
religion, in child rearing -- and in all spheres
of human endeavor. Psychologist Silvan Tomkins
(1965) characterizes this overriding conflict as
that between characterologically left-wing and
right-wing world views. The left-wing personality
finds the sources of value and truth to lie within
individuals, whose reactions to the world define
what is important. The right-wing personality
asserts that all human behavior is to be understood
and judged according to rules or norms which
exist independent of human reaction. A similar
distinction has been made by an unnamed but easily
guessable colleague of mine, who claims that the
major clashes in human affairs are between the "neats"
and the "scruffies". The primary concern of the
neat is that things should be orderly and predictable
while the scruffy seeks the rough-and-tumble of
life as it comes.

I am exaggerating slightly, but only slightly,
in saying that the major disagreements within
cognitive science are instantiations of a ubiquitous
division between neat right-wing analysis and scruffy
left-wing ideation. In truth there are some signs
of an attempt to fuse or to compromise these two
tendencies. Indeed, one could view the success of
cognitive science as primarily dependent not upon
the cooperation of linguistics, AI, psychology, etc.,
but rather, upon the union of clashing world views
about the fundamental nature of mentation. Hopefully,
we can be open minded and realistic about the
important contents of thought at the same time we
are principled, even elegant, in our characterizations
of the forms of thought.

The fusion task is not easy. It is hard to
neaten up a scruffy or scruffy up a neat. It is
difficult to formalize aspects of human thought
which are variable, disorderly, and seemingly
irrational, or to build tightly principled models
of realistic language processing in messy natural
domains. Writings about cognitive science are
beginning to show a recognition of the need for
world-view unification, but the signs of strain are
clear. Consider the following passage from a
recent article by Frank Keil (1981) in Pscyhological
Review, giving background for a discussion of his
formalistic analysis of the concept of constraint:

"Constraints will be defined...as formal
restrictions that limit the class of logically
possible knowledge structures that can normally
be used in a given cognitive domain." (p. 198).

Now, what is the word "normally" doing in a
statement about logical possibility? Does it mean
that something which is logically impossible can be
used if conditions are not normal? This seems to
require a cognitive hyperspace where the impossible
is possible.

It is not my intention to disparage an author
on the basis of a single statement infelicitously
put. I think he was genuinely trying to come to
grips with the reality that there is some boundary
somewhere to the penetration of his formal constraint
analysis into the viscissitudes of human affairs.
But I use the example as symptomatic of one kind of
approach to the cognitive science fusion problem:
you start from a neat, right-wing point of view, but
acknowledge some limited role for scruffy, left-wing
orientations. The other type of approach is the
obvious mirror: you start from the disorderly leftwing
side and struggle to be neater about what you
are doing. I prefer the latter approach to the
former. I will tell you why, and then lay out the
beginnings of such an approach.

[...]

To read why and how:

https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/...