Algebraic Meta-Theories and Synthesis of Equational Logics

Fiore and Hur [18] recently introduced a novel methodology—henceforth referred to as Sol—for the Synthesis of equational and rewriting logics from mathematical models. In [18], Sol was successfully applied to rationally reconstruct the traditional equational logic for universal algebra of Birkhoff [3] and its multi-sorted version [26], and also to synthesise a new version of the Nominal Algebra of Gabbay and Mathijssen [41] and the Nominal Equational Logic of Clouston and Pitts [8] for reasoning about languages with name-binding operators. Based on these case studies and further preliminary investigations, we contend that Sol can make an impact in the problem of engineering logics for modern computational languages. For example, our proposed research on secondorder equational logic will provide foundations for designing a second-order extension of the Maude system [37], a first-order semantic and logical framework used in formal software engineering for specification and programming. Our research strategy can be visualised as follows: