Reformulating Domain Theories for Reuse in Problem Solving
D. Paul Benjamin · 1995
The effective reuse of domain theories in problem solving requires the problem-solving agent to identify general theories whose prop-erties "scale up": they hold for a class of problems of varying size. Otherwise, the agent will be overwhelmed by the cost of indexing and retrieving a huge collection of domain theories, each of which applies in very restricted cases. Furthermore, these general theories need to be represented in a manner that is as independent as possi-ble of the circumstances of particular cases. This paper describes research on analysis and reformulation of domain theories. The per-spective of this work is to view a problem space as though it were physical space, and the actions in the problem space as though they were physical motions. A domain theory should then state the laws of motion within the space. Following the analogy with physics, a representation is a coordinate system, and theories are reformulated by transforming coordinates. The mathematical basis for this anal-ogy is briefly given, and illustrated on two simple examples.