Why I stopped working on the Bongard Problems

This text was written in the summer of 2007, and explains why I, the author, took a long respite from working on my research topics, after the summer of 2006. At the time when I wrote this, and up until around 2011, I had really stopped my research — so the title was correct up to then. Later, after 2011, I timidly started working again, on my own, for reasons explained near the end of this article, and obtaining some results. So the title is not correct anymore. It should be: “Why I Forced Myself to Take a Long Break from My Research”. Still, I preferred to keep this article on the web so as to document an important period of my life and explain my attitude and thoughts on scientific research in general.