Temporal Logics and their Applications

Edited by Antony Galton

Academic Press, 1987

ISBN 0-12-274060-2

The Preface

This book has arisen from a conference on Temporal Logic and its Applications held at the University of Leeds in January 1986 under the auspices of the then newly created Centre for Theoretical Computer Science. Some sixty delegates attended the conference, drawn mainly from computer science, philoophy, and mathematics. Of the papers in this book, those by Barringer, Galton, and Hale are directly based on presentations given at the conference, the other papers being also closely related to material presented there.

As the reader of this book will discover, temporal logic is a field which, having originated within philosophy, has now proved to be of relevance to several distinct areas in computer science. This is, I believe, the first publication in which all of these aspects of temporal logic are treated together. It is to be hoped that the book will provide a stimulus to further inter-disciplinary collaboration, not only as regards temporal logic itself but also in connection with other logical and philosophical issues which lie at the interface between computing and philosophy.

Each of the chapters in the book is entirely self-contained, and can be read independently of all the others. It is recommended, however, that the reader who is unfamiliar with temporal logic in any form should first read the introductory chapter.

Contents

  1. Temporal Logic and Computer Science: An Overview by Antony Galton.
  2. The use of Temporal Logic in the Compositional Specification of Concurrent Systems by Howard Barringer.
  3. Temporal Logic Programming by Roger Hale.
  4. Three Recent Approaches to Temporal Reasoning by Fariba Sadri.
  5. The Logic of Occurrence by Antony Galton.
  6. Modal and Temporal Logic Programming by Dov Gabbay.

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