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From: jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: AI in the 13th Century
Message-ID: <17106@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Fri, 26-Jun-87 14:28:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: glacier.17106
Posted: Fri Jun 26 14:28:37 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Jun-87 00:57:43 EDT
References: <1654@uwmacc.UUCP>
Reply-To: jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle)
Organization: Stanford University
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     A thorough discussion of the Ars Magna ("Great Art") of Ramon Lull
can be found in Martin Gardner's "Science - Good, Bad and Bogus" (ISBN
0-87975-144-4).  The Great Art is basically a system for exhaustively
combining terms, using a stack of disks, each containing a set of related
terms.  For example, one set of Lull's disks contained the following words:

	1.  God, creature, operation
	2.  difference, similarity, contrariety
	3.  beginning, middle, end
	4.  majority, equality, minority
	5.  affirmation, negation, doubt

In operation, one chooses one term from each set, more or less at random.
One can thus explore, Gardner writes, "such topics as the beginning and
end of God, differences and similarities of animals, and so on."

The Great Art provides no assistance in selecting useful combinations from
the many produced, or for doing anything with them once selected.  It 
provides only a means for enumerating the possibilities inherent in some
taxonomic scheme.  So, while the Great Art may be useful as a prod 
for creative thinking by humans, it does not provide anything more profound.
It does, though, generate the illusion of profundity, which provides much of
its appeal.  


					John Nagle