Artificial Intelligence and Scientific Method examines the remarkable advances made in the field of AI over the past twenty years, discussing their profound implications for philosophy. Taking a clear, non-technical approach, Donald Gillies focuses on two key topics within AI: machine learning in the Turing tradition and the development of logic programming and its connection with non-monotonic logic. Demonstrating how current views on scientific method are challenged by this recent research, he goes on to suggest a new framework for the study of logic. Finally, Professor Gillies draws on work by such seminal thinkers as Bacon, Gödel, Popper, Penrose, and Lucas to address the hotly contested question of whether computers might become intellectually superior to human beings.

An old-fashioned monograph: tightly argued, heavily referenced. * New Scientist *
if you are not a philosopher this book is worth reading - but for interest alone ... If you know any philosophers, however, you should make sure they read it. * Mike James, Scientific Computing World, June 1997 *
'...Donald Gillies's new book is a worthy addition to the literature...a fascinating and occasionally bold investigation of an ongoing, two-way interaction...Gillies has produced an insightful, well-written book, which will be welcomed as a useful contribution to contemporary debate by philosophers of logic, philosophers and historians of science, philosophers of AI, and AI researchers 'on the ground...' * Michael Wheeler, Univ. of Oxford. *

Donald Gillies is Professor of the Philosophy of Science and Mathematics at King's College, London. His books include An Objective Theory of Probability (1973), Revolutions in Mathematics (1992), and Philosophy of Science in the Twentieth Century (1993). He was the editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science from 1982 to 1985.