Modelling the Innovation is an interdisciplinary book concerned with updated modelling techniques in the following areas: system architectures, new telecom services, FMS/robotics systems, natural language and qualitative modelling. The book should appeal to researchers and professionals in various manufacturing industries, as well as academics involved with electronic engineering and computer science.

A unique resource exploring the nature of computers and computing, and their relationships to the world. Philosophy of Computer Science is a university-level textbook designed to guide readers through an array of topics at the intersection of philosophy and computer science. Accessible to students from either discipline, or complete beginners to both, the text brings readers up to speed on a conversation about these issues, so that they can read the literature for themselves, form their own reasoned opinions, and become part of the conversation by contributing their own views. Written by a highly qualified author in the field, the book looks at some of the central questions in the philosophy of computer science, including: What is philosophy? (for readers who might be unfamiliar with it) What is computer science and its relationship to science and to engineering? What are computers, computing, algorithms, and programs?(Includes a line-by-line reading of portions of Turing’s classic 1936 paper that introduced Turing Machines, as well as discussion of the Church-Turing Computability Thesis and hypercomputation challenges to it) How do computers and computation relate to the physical world? What is artificial intelligence, and should we build AIs? Should we trust decisions made by computers? A companion website contains annotated suggestions for further reading and an instructor’s manual. Philosophy of Computer Science is a must-have for philosophy students, computer scientists, and general readers who want to think philosophically about computer science.

Instantiation Theory presents a new, general unification algorithm that is of immediate use in building theorem provers and logic programming systems. Instantiation theory is the study of instantiation in an abstract context that is applicable to most commonly studied logical formalisms. The volume begins with a survey of general approaches to the study of instantiation, as found in tree systems, order-sorted algebras, algebraic theories, composita, and instantiation systems. A classification of instantiation systems is given, based on properties of substitutions, degree of type strictness, and well-foundedness of terms. Equational theories and the use of typed variables are studied in terms of quotient homomorphisms and embeddings, respectively. Every instantiation system is a quotient system of a subsystem of first-order term instantiation. The general unification algorithm is developed as an application of the basic theory. Its soundness is rigorously proved, and its completeness and efficiency are verfied for certain classes of instantiation systems. Appropriate applications of the algorithm include unification of first-order terms, order-sorted terms, and first-order formulas modulo alpha-conversion, as well as equational unification using simple congruences.

This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the Seventh Logic Programming Conference that took place in Tokyo, April 11-14, 1988. It is the successor to the previous conference proceedings published as Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volumes 221, 264 and 315. The book covers various aspects of logic programming such as foundations, programming languages/systems, concurrent programming, knowledge bases, applications of computer-aided reasoning and natural language processing. The papers on foundations present theoretical results on "narrowing", a proof strategy for proving properties of Prolog programs based on inductionless induction and several issues in nonmonotonic reasoning. Of special interest to mathematicians is the paper on computer-aided reasoning, which describes a system for assisting human reasoning. Natural language application papers treat the lexical analysis of Japanese sentences, a system that generates a summary of a given sentence and a new knowledge representation formalism suited for representing dynamic behavior by extending the frame system.

The contributors set out to demonstrate the influence of the computer - not just in the philosophy of mind, where the influence has been enormous, but also in epistemology, metaphysics, logic and the philosophy of mathematics. Even ethics and ethical reasoning have been explored through the use of the computer. Indeed, the lead contribution by Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon argues that it is no exaggeration to speak of a "computational turn" in philosophy to match the much-celebrated (and maligned) "linguistic turn" of a previous generation. Of particular interest are the examinations of the wide range of applications of computational methods, the innovative instructional computer programs, and the discussions of the ethical implications of computer use.