BACON.5: The Discovery of Conservation Laws

Abstract

BACON.s is a program that discovers empirical laws. The program represents information at varying levels of description, with higher levels summarizing the levels beiow them. The system applies a small set of data·driven heuristics to detect regularities in numeric and nominal data. These heuristics note constancies and trends, leading BACON .s to formulate hypotheses, define theoretical terms, and postulate intrinsic properties. Once the program has formulated an hypothesis, it uses this to reduce the amount of data it must consider at later times. A simple type of reasoning by analogy also simplifies the discovery of laws containing symmetric forms . These techniques have allowed the system to rediscover Snell's law of refraction , conservation of momentum, Black's specific heat law, and Joule's formulation of conservation of energy. Thus, BACON .s's heuristics appear to be general mechanisms applicable to discovery in diverse domains.