The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):

neats vs. scruffies
 n.

    The label used to refer to one of the continuing holy wars in AI
    research. This conflict tangles together two separate issues. One is the
    relationship between human reasoning and AI; ?neats? tend to try to build
    systems that ?reason? in some way identifiably similar to the way humans
    report themselves as doing, while ?scruffies? profess not to care whether
    an algorithm resembles human reasoning in the least as long as it works.
    More importantly, neats tend to believe that logic is king, while scruffies
    favor looser, more ad-hoc methods driven by empirical knowledge. To a neat,
    scruffy methods appear promiscuous, successful only by accident, and not
    productive of insights about how intelligence actually works; to a scruffy,
    neat methods appear to be hung up on formalism and irrelevant to the
    hard-to-capture ?common sense? of living intelligences.


The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

neats vs. scruffies
scruffies

    The label used to refer to
   one of the continuing holy wars in artificial intelligence
   research.  This conflict tangles together two separate issues.
   One is the relationship between human reasoning and AI;
   "neats" tend to try to build systems that "reason" in some way
   identifiably similar to the way humans report themselves as
   doing, while "scruffies" profess not to care whether an
   algorithm resembles human reasoning in the least as long as
   it works.  More importantly, neats tend to believe that
   logic is king, while scruffies favour looser, more ad-hoc
   methods driven by empirical knowledge.  To a neat, scruffy
   methods appear promiscuous, successful only by accident and
   not productive of insights about how intelligence actually
   works; to a scruffy, neat methods appear to be hung up on
   formalism and irrelevant to the hard-to-capture "common sense"
   of living intelligences.

   (1994-11-29)