Logic Programming

Foundation of logic historically dates back to the times of Aristotle, who pioneered the concept of truth/falsehood paradigm in reasoning. Mathematical logic of propositions and predicates, which are based on the classical models of Aristotle, underwent a dramatic evolution during the last 50 years for its increasing applications in automated reasoning on digital computers. The subject of Logic Programming is concerned with automated reasoning with facts and knowledge to answer a user’s query following the syntax and semantics of the logic of propositions/predicates…

The book covers topics spanning the period from the early days of logic programming to current times. It discusses applications to computational logic and potential applications to the integration of models of computation, knowledge representation and reasoning, and the Semantic Web. The authors develop well-known and important semantics in logic programming from a unified point of view using both order theory and new, nontraditional methods. They closely examine the interrelationships between various semantics as well as the integration of logic programming and connectionist systems/neural networks.

Logic is now widely recognized as one of the foundational disciplines of computing and has applications in virtually all aspects of the subject, from software engineering and hardware to programming languages and artificial intelligence. The Handbook of Logic in Artificial Intelligence and its companion The Handbook of Logic in Computer Science were created in response to the growing need for an in-depth survey of these applications. This handbook comprises five volumes, each an in-depth overview of one of the major topics in this area. The result of years of cooperative effort by internationally renowned researchers, it will be the standard reference work in AI for years to come. Volume 5 focuses on logic programming. The chapters, which in many cases are of monograph length and scope, emphasize possible unifying themes.

Logic Programming was effectively defined as a discipline in the early seventies. It is only during the early to mid eighties that books, conferences and journals devoted entirely to Logic Programming began to appear. Consequently, much of the work done during this first crucial decade in Marseilles, Edinburgh, London, Budapest and Stockholm (to name a few) is often overlooked or difficult to trace.