Mechanizing Hypothesis Formation Mathematical Foundations for a Gene

Hypothesis formation is known as one of the branches of Artificial Intelligence, The general question of Artificial IntelligencE' ,"Can computers think?" is specified to the question ,"Can computers formulate and justify hypotheses?" Various attempts have

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P. Hajek T. Havranek

Mechanizing Hypothesis Formation Mathematical Foundations for a General Theory

Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York 1978

Petr Hajek Mathematical Institute, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences Praha, Czechoslovakia TomM Havranek Department of Biomathematics, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences Praha, Czechoslovakia The authors are members of the Society of Czechoslovak Mathematicians and Physicists

AMS Subject Classification (1970): 02-02, 02 C 05, 68-02, 68 A 20, 68A 45

ISBN-13: 978-3-540-08738-0 001: 10.1007/978-3-642-66943-9

e-ISBN-13: 978-3-642-66943-9

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically those of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, broadcasting, reproduction by photocopying machine or similar means, and storage in data banks. Under § 54 of the German Copyright Law where copies are made for other than private use, a fee is payable to the publisher, the amount of the fee to be determined by agreement with the publisher. © by

Springer-~rlag

2141/3140-543210

Serlin Heidelberg 1978

To Marie and Marie

Preface

Hypothesis formation is known as one

of the branches of Artificial Intelligence,

The general question of Artificial IntelligencE' ,"Can computers think?" is specified to the question ,"Can computers formulate and justify hypotheses?" Various attempts have been made to answer the latter question positively. The present book is one such attempt.

Our aim is not to formalize and mechanize the whole domain of

inductive reasoning. Our ultimate question is: Can computers formulate and justify scientific hypotheses? Can they comprehend empirical data and process them rationally, using the apparatus of modern mathematical logic and statistics to try to produce a rational image of the observed empirical world?

Theories of hypothesis formation are sometimes called logics of discovery. Plotkin divides a logic of discovery into a logic of induction: studying the notion of justification of a hypothesis, and a logic of suggestion: studying methods of suggesting reasonable hypotheses. We use this division for the organization of the present book: Chapter I is introductory and explains the subject of our logic of discovery. The rest falls into two parts: Part A - a logic of induction, and Part B - a logic of suggestion. In Part A we define and investigate formal calculi appropriate for formalizing (fragments of) observational and

theoretical languages of scientific theories

based on empirical data. The definitions are motivated by statistical considerations, which seem to be unjustly neglected in contemporary Artificial Intelligence. Our calculi are modified generalized

predicate calculi and are related to calculi

proposed by Suppes. The following are emphasized: ( i) explicit semantics in T arski 's style, (ii) use of generalized quantifiers and abstract truth values,

VIII (iii) relation to effective computability and complexity of computations.

As a result, we obtain Ca) ma