Seminar Session on October 4

Monday 4th of October at 16:00 hrs we will have another session of our seminar: Lex Hendrix (ILLC) will present his work entitled Imagining Future Knowledge with the abstract given below.

The meeting will take place in room D1.162 in Science Park 904.

Abstract

Design, as in designing a vehicle to climb trees, is one of those aspects of rational agency hardly even mentioned in traditional logical theory. As an engineering discipline, design obviously involves reasoning but seems to depend much more on a mix of factual knowledge, experimenting and imagination. We will present a formal framework for the dynamic interplay between knowledge and imagination inspired by C-K theory and discuss the possible directions for further development of a ‘logic of design’.

C-K theory, Hatchuel and Weil 2005, is claimed to be a ‘unified Design theory’ based on the ‘expansion’ of two separated spaces: the space of Concepts (C) and the space of Knowledge (K). C-K theory has inspired both research and applications in design practice.

Although the authors often refer to C-K theory as a ‘formal’ theory (with similarities to forcing in set theory) no mathematical or logical formalism for the co-evolution of concepts and knowledge is provided.

The formalism presented, was developed in cooperation with Akin Kazakci (CGS, École des Mines, ParisTech) to explain the main mechanism of C-K theory, the expansion of both concept and knowledge.