Readings in Qualitative Reasoning About Physical Systems

Readings in Qualitative Reasoning about Physical Systems describes the automated reasoning about the physical world using qualitative representations. This text is divided into nine chapters, each focusing on some aspect of qualitative physics. The first chapter deal with qualitative physics, which is concerned with representing and reasoning about the physical world. The goal of qualitative physics is to capture both the commonsense knowledge of the person on the street and the tacit knowledge underlying the quantitative knowledge used by engineers and scientists. The succeeding chapter discusses the qualitative calculus and its role in constructing an envisionment that includes behavior over both mythical time and elapsed time. These topics are followed by reviews of the mathematical aspects of qualitative reasoning, history-based simulation and temporal reasoning, as well as the intelligence in scientific computing. The final chapters are devoted to automated modeling for qualitative reasoning and causal explanations of behavior. These chapters also examine the qualitative kinematics of reasoning about shape and space. This book will prove useful to psychologists and psychiatrists.

Table of Contents:
Preface Qualitative Physics: A Personal View Chapter 1 Overview and Motivation Introduction 1.1 Qualitative Physics: Past Present and Future 1.2 Multiple Representations of Knowledge in a Mechanics Problem-Solver 1.3 The Second Naive Physics Manifesto 1.4 Modeling Simultaneous Actions and Continuous Processes Chapter 2 Qualitative Simulation Introduction 2.1 A Qualitative Physics Based on Confluences 2.2 Qualitative Reasoning with Higher-Order Derivatives 2.3 Temporal Qualitative Analysis: Explaining How Physical Systems Work 2.4 Qualitative Process Theory 2.5 The Qualitative Process Engine 2.6 Qualitative Simulation 2.7 Taming Intractable Branching in Qualitative Simulation 2.8 Non-intersection of Trajectories in Qualitative Phase Space: A Global Constraint for Qualitative Simulation 2.9 Global Filters for Qualitative Behaviors 2.10 Reasoning about Discontinuous Change Chapter 3 Mathematical Aspects of Qualitative Reasoning Introduction 3.1 Problems of Interval-Based Qualitative Reasoning 3.2 Assembling a Device 3.3 MINIMA A Symbolic Approach to Qualitative Algebraic Reasoning 3.4 Order of Magnitude Reasoning 3.5 Formal Order-of-Magnitude Reasoning in Process Engineering 3.6 'Commonsense' Arithmetic Reasoning 3.7 Hierarchical Reasoning about Inequalities Chapter 4 History-Based Simulation and Temporal Reasoning Introduction 4.1 Doing Time: Putting Qualitative Reasoning on Firmer Ground 4.2 Maintaining Knowledge about Temporal Intervals 4.3 Constraint Propagation Algorithms for Temporal Reasoning: A Revised Report 4.4 Reasoning about Partially Ordered Events Chapter 5 Other Styles of Reasoning Introduction 5.1 Comparative Analysis 5.2 Exaggeration 5.3 Order of Magnitude Reasoning in Qualitative Differential Equations 5.4 Troubleshooting: When Modeling is the Trouble 5.5 Interpreting Observations of Physical Systems Chapter 6 Automating Quantitative Analysis Introduction 6.1 Intelligence in Scientific Computing 6.2 Generating Global Behaviors Using Deep Knowledge of Local Dynamics 6.3 Piecewise Linear Reasoning Chapter 7 Multiple Ontologies and Automated Modeling Introduction 7.1 Naive Physics I: Ontology for Liquids 7.2 Reasoning about Fluids via Molecular Collections 7.3 Multiple Models of Evaporation Processes 7.4 The Use of Aggregation in Causal Simulation 7.5 Abstraction by Time-Scale in Qualitative Simulation 7.6 Diagnosis via Causal Reasoning: Paths of Interaction and the Locality Principle 7.7 Granularity 7.8 Reasoning about Assumptions in Graphs of Models 7.9 Setting up Large Scale Qualitative Models Chapter 8 Reasoning about Shape and Space Introduction 8.1 Qualitative Kinematics: A Framework 8.2 Qualitative Kinematics in Mechanisms 8.3 Shape and Function in Mechanical Devices 8.4 Automated Reasoning about Machine Geometry and Kinematics 8.5 A Qualitative Approach to Mechanical Constraint 8.6 Simplification and Abstraction of Kinematic Behaviors 8.7 A Framework for Qualitative Reasoning about Solid Objects Chapter 9 Causal Explanations of Behavior Introduction 9.1 The Declarative Representation and Procedural Simulation of Causality in Physical Mechanisms 9.2 The Origin and Resolution of Ambiguities in Causal Arguments 9.3 Causality in Device Behavior 9.4 Theories of Causal Ordering 9.5 Theories of Causal Ordering: Reply to de Kleer and Brown 9.6 Causal Reasoning about Quantities Bibliography Author Index Subject Index Credits