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112 CHAPTER 6 Evolving and Spiking Connectionist Systems

5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................130
Acknowledgment.....................................................................................................131
References .............................................................................................................131

1. FROM ARISTOTLE’S LOGIC TO ARTIFICIAL NEURAL
NETWORKS AND HYBRID SYSTEMS

1.1 ARISTOTLE’S LOGIC AND RULE-BASED SYSTEMS FOR
KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION AND REASONING
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an interdisciplinary science area that develops and
implements methods and systems that manifest cognitive behavior. Main features
of AI are: learning, adaptation, generalization, inductive and deductive reasoning,
human-like communication in a natural language, etc. [1e8]. Some more features
that are currently being developed include consciousness, self-assembly, self-
reproduction, and social networks. Human cognitive behavior is based on knowledge
that is evolving with time, always changing, improving, to ensure that we survive and
do better. And evolving is expected to be its representation in AI.
AI has a long history of development and one cannot understand it or further
develop it, if they do not understand and embrace the rich set of methods AI developed
over a long time. Many of these methods are used in the current AI development and
will be used in the future to come, in different ways of course.
In the beginning, there was a school of learning that assumed that understanding
of nature and its knowledge representation and articulation would not change with
time. Aristotle was perhaps the most pronounced philosopher and encyclopedist
of this school.
Aristotle (384 BCe322 BC) was a pupil of Plato and teacher of Alexander the
Great. He is credited with the earliest study of formal logic. Aristotle introduced the
theory of deductive reasoning.

Example:
All humans are mortal (i.e., IF human THEN mortal)
New fact: Socrates is a human
Deducted inference: Socrates is mortal
Aristotle introduced epistemology, which is based on the study of particular
phenomena which leads to the articulation of knowledge (rules, formulas) across
sciences: botany, zoology, physics, astronomy, chemistry, meteorology, psychol-
ogy, etc. [9,10]. According to Aristotle, this knowledge was not supposed to
change. In places, Aristotle went too far in deriving “general laws of the universe”
from simple observations and overstretched the reasons and conclusions. Because
he was perhaps the philosopher most respectedbyEuropeanthinkersduringand
after the Renaissance, these thinkers, along with institutions, often took Aristotle’s
erroneous positions, such as inferior roles of women, which held back science and
social progress for a long time.