MODEL BASED REASONIN CONFERENCE (MBR)          

From Thursday the 16th to Saturday the 18th of December 2004, the International Conference

MODEL-BASED REASONING IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING: ABDUCTION, VISUALIZATION, AND SIMULATION                                                                       Chair: Lorenzo Magnani

took place at the University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.

The conference continued the theme of the Conferences “Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery” MBR’98 and “Model-Based Reasoning: Scientific Discovery, Technological Innovation, and Values” MBR’01 . The conference dealt with the logical, epistemological, and cognitive aspects of modeling practices employed in science and engineering, including computational models of such practices. We solicited papers that examined the role of abduction, visualization, and simulation in model-based reasoning from philosophical, historical, sociological, psychological, or computational perspectives.

We called for papers that covered topics pertaining to model-based reasoning in science and engineering from the following list:

• abduction
• visual, spatial, imagistic modeling and reasoning
• simulative modeling
• the role of diagrammatic representations
• computational models of visual and simulative reasoning
• causal and counterfactual reasoning in model construction
• visual analogy
• thought experimenting
• logical analyses related to model-based reasoning
• manipulative reasoning
• distributed model-based reasoning
• embodiment in model-based reasoning
• model-based reasoning and technological innovation