AAAI Conference 1990 Conference Paper
Qualitative Reasoning with Microscopic Theories
- Shankas A. Rajamoney
- Sang Hoe Koo
A model of the elementary particles of a domain and their rudimentary interactions is essential for sophisticated reasoning about the macroscopic behavior of physical system. A microscopic theory can make explicit the deeper mechanisms underlying causal models, collapse a great variety of macroscopic phenomena into a few rudimentary interactions, elaborate upon or validate macroscopic explanations, and so forth. This paper describes a qualitative representation for microscopic theories and, a method for reasoning with microscopic particles to obtain the macroscopic behavior. The representation and reasoning are illustrated using implemented examples from the fluids domain.