Recent Work in Computational Scientific Discovery

A more historical-cognitive approach was the aim of the work on BACON, which rediscovered various scientific laws by finding patterns in numerical data (Langley, Simon, Bradshaw & Zytkow, 1987). Simon's early work on finding patterns in sequences (Simon & Kotovsky, 1963) was extended in BACON to heuristic search for patterns in numerical data. The most creative of BACON's abilities was the decomposition of relational data to conjecture intrinsic properties in one or more of the objects engaging in the relations. This step went beyond curve-fitting and was based on the metaphysical assumption that an entity's relational properties are caused by its intrinsic properties. In addition to the data-driven tasks modeled in BACON, the group also investigated theory-driven discovery in STAHL.