Automated Model Building

This is the first book on automated model building, a discipline of automated deduction that is of growing importance. Although models and their construction are important per se, automated model building has appeared as a natural enrichment of automated deduction, especially in the attempt to capture the human way of reasoning. The book provides an historical overview of the field of automated deduction, and presents the foundations of different existing approaches to model construction, in particular those developed by the authors. Finite and infinite model building techniques are presented. The main emphasis is on calculi-based methods, and relevant practical results are provided. The book is of interest to researchers and graduate students in computer science, computational logic and artificial intelligence. It can also be used as a textbook in advanced undergraduate courses.