Re[2]: Cute Fable - good point!

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>>>>> "Kyle" == R Kyle Jones <rkjones@husc.harvard.edu> writes:

    Kyle> At 12:58 AM 10/5/95 -0500, you wrote:
    >> Ten years or so ago, when I was in grad school studying AI and
    >> math, I studied Prolog, and the algorithm underlying its
    >> inference engine, on which I later published an article [DDJ
    >> April 1986].  That algorithm is the Resolution Principle of
    >> J. A. Robinson [1965].  It subsumes all the sylogisms of
    >> Aristotle, and also the one Aristotle missed, which was later
    >> discovered by George Boole.  The completeness theorem for
    >> resolution is based upon the concept of a Hebrand Universe.  A
    >> Hebrand universe is a space of possibilities.  Ehud Shapiro
    >> wrote in his "The Art of Prolog" book that the "meaning" of a
    >> program is all the valid ground clauses derivable from that
    >> program -- all of the correct possible results of executing
    >> that program.  This really turned on a light in my mind,
    >> because I recognized that Shapiro was echoing:
    >> 
    >> 2Pe 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture
    >> is of any private interpretation.
    >> 
    >> A scripture can, and frequently does, have multiple valid
    >> interpretations.

    Kyle> Interesting.  Would it be possible for me to get a copy of
    Kyle> the article?

I could email you a copy of it, but I ultimately expect to put it on
my home page.  The trouble is that back in 1984 when I actually
*WROTE* the article, I was not yet using Unix, and as I have not had a
need to put it on a Unix filesystem until the web came into being, it
still lives on a very old back-up diskette in DOS format, and what is
worse, that disk is still at my old home in Kentucky, having not yet
been moved to my new home here in the Chicago area.  Next time I get
home, I plan to bring all those old disks back with me, along with yet
another car load of books. (Two carloads of books have already been
moved...) 

The article I wrote delves into the internals of the Prolog inference
engine.  I would recommend that you go to your school's library and
just look up in the index "meaning of a program" in Ehud Shapiro's
book "The Art of Prolog" instead.  If you want more info on Hebrand
universes, et al, the bibliographical keys to that are in Shapiro's
book also.

-- 
--"Hear now my reasoning, and harken to the pleadings of my lips." [Jb 13:6]--
Robert J. Brown  (Bob/Rj)   rj@eli.wariat.org  1 708 705-0370 (vmail/fax/data)
Elijah Laboratories Inc;  759 Independence Drive;  Suite 5;  Palatine IL 60074
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