Since both the coments and the structure of the book appeared to be
successful, only minor changes were made. In particular, some recent
work in ATP has been incorporated so that the book continues to reflect
the state of the art in the field. The most significant change is in the
quality of the layout including the removal of a number of inaccuracies
and typing errors. R. Caferra, E. Eder, F. van der Linden, and J. Muller
have caught vanous minor errors. P. Haddawy and S.T. Pope have provided
many stilistic improvements of the English text. Last not least, A.
Bentrup and W. Fischer have produced the beautiful layout. The extensive
work of typesetting was financally supported within ESPRIT pro- ject
415. Munchen, September 1986 W. Bibel PREFACE Among the dreams of
mankind is the one dealing with the mechanization of human thought. As
the world today has become so complex that humans apparently fail to
manage it properly with their intellectual gifts, the realization of
this dream might be regarded even as something like a necessity. On the
other hand, the incredi- ble advances in computer technology let it
appear as a real possibility.