I am indebted to my thesis advisor, Michael Genesereth, for his
guidance, inspiration, and support which has made this research
possible. As a teacher and a sounding board for new ideas, Mike was
extremely helpful in pointing out Haws, and suggesting new directions to
explore. I would also like to thank Harold Brown for introducing me to
the application of artificial intelligence to reasoning about designs,
and his many valuable comments as a reader of this thesis. Significant
contribu- tions by the other members of my reading committee, Mark
Horowitz, and Allen Peterson have greatly improved the content and
organization of this thesis by forcing me to communicate my ideas more
clearly. I am extremely grateful to the other members of the Logic Group
at the Heuristic Programming Project for being a sounding board for my
ideas, and providing useful comments. In particular, I would like to
thank Matt Ginsberg, Vineet Singh, Devika Subramanian, Richard Trietel,
Dave Smith, Jock Mackinlay, and Glenn Kramer for their pointed
criticisms. This research was supported by Schlumberger Palo Alto
Research (previously Fairchild Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence).
I am grateful to Peter Hart, the former head of the AI lab, and his
successor Marty Tenenbaum for providing an excellent environment for
performing this research.