"A broad, sweeping inquiry of what concepts are, what learning is, and how it can take place at all.... Induction is a deep synthesis of epistemology, evolution and computation. This path-breaking treatise will undoubtedly come to be recognized as a major step toward an interdisciplinary explanation of mentality"
-- Douglas Hofstadter

Two psychologists, a computer scientist, and a philosopher have collaborated to present a framework for understanding processes of inductive reasoning and learning in organisms and machines. Theirs is the first major effort to bring the ideas of several disciplines to bear on a subject that has been a topic of investigation since the time of Socrates. The result is an integrated account that treats problem solving and induction in terms of rule­based mental models.

John Holland is Professor of Electrical Engineering at Michigan University. Keith Holyoak is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Richard Nisbett is Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan and Paul Thagard is Research Scientist at Princeton University's Cognitive Science Laboratory Induction is included in the Computational Models of Cognition and Perception Series.