Information technology has been, in recent years, under increasing commercial pressure to provide devices and systems which help/ replace the human in his daily activity. This pressure requires the use of logic as the underlying foundational workhorse of the area. New logics were developed as the need arose and new foci and balance has evolved within logic itself. One aspect of these new trends in logic is the rising impor tance of model based reasoning. Logics have become more and more tailored to applications and their reasoning has become more and more application dependent. In fact, some years ago, I myself coined the phrase "direct deductive reasoning in application areas", advocating the methodology of model-based reasoning in the strongest possible terms. Certainly my discipline of Labelled Deductive Systems allows to bring "pieces" of the application areas as "labels" into the logic. I therefore heartily welcome this important book to Volume 25 of the Applied Logic Series and see it as an important contribution in our overall coverage of applied logic.
This volume is based on the papers that were presented at the International Conference 'Model-Based Reasoning: Scientific Discovery, Technological Innovation, Values' (MBR'01), held at the Collegio Ghislieri, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, in May 2001. The previous volume "Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery", edited by L. Magnani, N.J. Nersessian, and P. Thagard (Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, 1999; Chinese edition, China Science and Technology Press, Beijing, 2000), was based on the papers presented at the first 'model-based reasoning' international conference, held at the same venue in December 1998. The presentations given at the Conference explore how scientific thinking uses models and exploratory reasoning to produce creative changes in theories and concepts. Some address the problem of model-based reasoning in ethics, especially pertaining to science and technology, and stress some aspects of model-based reasoning in technological innovation.The study of diagnostic, visual, spatial, analogical, and temporal reasoning has demonstrated that there are many ways of performing intelligent and creative reasoning that cannot be described with the help only of traditional notions of reasoning such as classical logic.
Understanding the contribution of modeling practices to discovery and conceptual change in science requires expanding scientific reasoning to include complex forms of creative reasoning that are not always successful and can lead to incorrect solutions. The study of these heuristic ways of reasoning is situated at the crossroads of philosophy, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and logic; that is, at the heart of cognitive science.There are several key ingredients common to the various forms of model-based reasoning. The term 'model' comprises both internal and external representations. The models are intended as interpretations of target physical systems, processes, phenomena, or situations. The models are retrieved or constructed on the basis of potentially satisfying salient constraints of the target domain. Moreover, in the modeling process, various forms of abstraction are used. Evaluation and adaptation take place in light of structural, causal, and/or functional constraints. Model simulation can be used to produce new states and enable evaluation of behaviors and other factors.
The various contributions of the book are written by interdisciplinary researchers who are active in the area of creative reasoning in science and technology, and are logically and computationally oriented: the most recent results and achievements about the topics above are illustrated in detail in the papers.
