Background

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is that branch of computer science dealing with symbolic, nonalgorithmic methods of problem solving. Several aspects of this statement are important for understanding MYCIN and the issues discussed in this book. First, most uses of computers over the last 40 years have been in numerical or data-processing applications, but most of a person's knowledge of a subject like medicine is not mathematical or quantitative. It is symbolic knowledge, and it is used in a variety of ways in problem solving. Also, the problem-solving methods themselves are usually not mathematical or data-processing procedures but qualitative reasoning techniques that relate items through judgmental rules, or heuristics, as well as through theoretical laws and definitions.