The ability to reason qualitatively about physical systems is important to understanding and interacting with the world for both humans and intelligent machines. Accordingly, this study has become an important subject of research in the artificial intelligence and cognitive science communities. The goal of "qualitative physics," as the field is sometimes known, 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.
"Readings in Qualitative Reasoning About Physical Systems" is an introduction and source book for this dynamic area, presenting reprints of key papers chosen by the editors and a group of expert referees. The editors present introductions discussing the context and significance of each group of articles as well as providing pointers to the rest of the literature. In addition, the volume includes several original papers that are not available elsewhere.
