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Mechanizing the Search for Explanatory Hypotheses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Bruce G. Buchanan
Bruce G. Buchanan*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Extract

Mechanized methods in science have attracted much attention among philosophers since Bacon. Of the many facets of scientific activity discovery has seemed most inscrutable. Until recently, Peirce and Hanson were the only ones to claim publicly that there can be rational methods for discovering hypotheses as well as for testing them. Their arguments, and more recent ones, are based on historical examples and analysis, and thus lack the convincingness of an existence proof. In this paper I take an empirical look at the question of whether there are rational methods of discovery and claim that computer programs provide a laboratory for experimentation on this question. Recent work in artificial intelligence, or AI, has produced programs capable of serious intellectual work in science. Results from AI will be used to show that there exist mechanized procedures for discovering hypotheses and that these methods often lead to plausible hypotheses (but do not guarantee always finding the correct hypothesis).

Type
Part III. Discovery, Heuristics, and Artificial Intelligence
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1982 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1982 , 1982 , pp. 128 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I am grateful to Dr. Derek Sleeman, and Mr. Tom Dietterich for comments on early drafts of this paper, and to Dr. Lindley Darden for discussions. This work was supported in part by DARPA [Contract #MDA903-80-C-0107], ONR [Contract #N00014-79-C-0302], NLM [Contract #NLM 1 P01 LM03395], and NIH [Contract # NIH RR 00785-10.]

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