Viewing the History of Science as Compiled Hindsight

ion is also important in AI. Scientists sometimes make use of mathematical models at one level of abstraction, but multiple levels of abstraction, with each increasingly abstract, is not a common idea in science or the history and philosophy of science. In AI it is easy to consider dropping detail as one proceeds upward in an abstraction hierarchy. Forming the higher-level, abstract concepts while building a knowledge base can be a creative process for the knowledge engineer. The AI researcher might have to add new abstract concepts in order to put the knowledge into a knowledge representation system with multiple levels of abstraction. For example, the concept of a “molecular switch” was developed at a high level of abstraction in the MOLGEN knowledge base, and it has proved of interest