A Heuristic Programming Study of Theory Formation in Science

The general strategy of Meta-DENDRAL is to reason from data to plausible generalizations and then to organize the generalizations into a unified theory. Three main subprobleras are discussed: (1) explain the experimental data for each individual chemical structure, (2) generalize the results from each structure to all structures, and (3) organize the generalizations into a unified theory. The program is built upon the concepts and programmed routines already available in the Heuristic DENDRAL performance program, but goes beyond the performance program in attempting to formulate the theory which the performance program will use. I. Introduction Theory formation in science embodies many elements of creativity which make it both an interesting and challenging task for artificial intelligence research. One of the goals of the Heuristic DENDRAL project has long been the study of processes underlying theory formation.