Automated Model Building

On the history of the book: In the early 1990s several new methods and perspectives in automated deduction emerged. We just mention the superposition calculus, meta-term inference and schematization, deductive decision procedures, and automated model building. It was this last field which brought the authors of this book together. In 1994 they met at the Conference on Automated Deduction (CADE-12) in Nancy and agreed upon the general point of view, that semantics and, in particular, construction of models should play a central role in the field of automated deduction. In the following years the deduction groups of the laboratory LEIBNIZ at IMAG Grenoble and the University of Technology in Vienna organized several bilateral projects promoting this topic. This book emerged as a main result of this cooperation. The authors are aware of the fact, that the book does not cover all relevant methods of automated model building (also called model construction or model generation); instead the book focuses on deduction-based symbolic methods for the construction of Herbrand models developed in the last 12 years. Other methods of automated model building, in particular also finite model building, are mainly treated in the final chapter; this chapter is less formal and detailed but gives a broader view on the topic and a comparison of different approaches. Howtoreadthisbook: In the introduction we give an overview of automated deduction in a historical context, taking into account its relationship with the human views on formal and informal proofs.