Integration of Research Tasks for Modeling Discoveries in Particle Physics

Systematic Methods of Scientific Discovery

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Systematic Methods of Scientific Discovery

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This paper describes BR-4, a discovery system that integrates several research tasks in modeling the discovery of certain quantum properties and conservation laws by physicists in this century. The program is directed by consistency and completeness constraints, and it has the ability to formulate and revise theories in its domain and to explain its knowledge state using these constraints. BR-4 is able to formulate new elementary particles and particle reactions and to propose observations to test their existence. The program revises its theory when it detects formal and theoretical contradictions, and when its domain theory conflicts with observational data.