Defeasible reasoning in Description Logics: an overview on DL^N

In complex areas such as law and science, knowledge has been in centuries formulated by primarily describing prototypical instances and properties, and then by overriding the general theory to include possible exceptions. For example, many laws are formulated by adding new norms that, in case of conflicts, may partially or completely override the previous ones. Similarly, biologists have been incrementally introducing exceptions to general properties. For instance, the human heart is usually located in the left-hand half of the thorax. Still there are exceptional individuals, with so-called situs inversus, whose heart is located on the opposite side. Eukariotic cells are those with a proper nucleus, by definition. Still they comprise mammalian red blood cells, that in their mature stage have no nucleus.