This book is devoted to a different proposal--that the logical structure of the scientist's method should guarantee eventual arrival at the truth given the scientist's background assumptions.

Inductive logic programming is a new research area formed at the intersection of machine learning and logic programming. While the influence of logic programming has encouraged the development of strong theoretical foundations, this new area is inheriting its experimental orientation from machine learning. Inductive Logic Programming will be an invaluable text for all students of computer science, machine learning and logic programming at an advanced level. * * Examination of the background to current developments within the area * Identification of (...) the various goals and aspirations for the increasing body of researchers in inductive logic programming * Coverage of induction of first order theories, the application of inductive logic programming and discussion of several logic learning programs * Discussion of the applications of inductive logic programming to qualitative modelling, planning and finite element mesh design. (shrink)

The paper investigates learning functions for first order languages. Several types of convergence and identification in the limit are defined. Positive and negative results on learning problems are presented throughout the paper.

Alternative models of idealized scientific inquiry are investigated and compared. Particular attention is devoted to paradigms in which a scientist is required to determine the truth of a given sentence in the structure giving rise to his data.