General system problem solving paradigm for qualitative modeling

In this chapter qualitative modeling is applied to inductively reason about the behavior of physical systems. Inductive reasoning does not dwell on the principles of “naive physics” as the commonsense reasoning does, but rather implements a sort of pattern-recognition mechanism. The basic differences between inductitive reasoning and commonsense reasoning are explained. It is shown under which conditions either of the two approaches may be more successful than the other.