# The book Prolog: The Next 50 Years

**URL:** <https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/the-book-prolog-the-next-50-years/6668>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [June 29, 2023, 3:47pm UTC](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/the-book-prolog-the-next-50-years/6668 "2023-06-29T15:47:44Z")\
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**Author:** ![JCR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/258eb7/32.png) [@JCR](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/u/JCR)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2023, 3:47pm UTC](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/the-book-prolog-the-next-50-years/6668/1 "2023-06-29T15:47:44Z")

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Dear community,

The book Prolog: The Next 50 Years has now been published online (editors: David S. Warren, Veronica Dahl, Thomas Eiter, Manuel V. Hermenegildo, Robert Kowalski, Francesca Rossi). You can find the table of contents [here](https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-35254-6?page=2#toc).

Me and Håkan Kjellerstrand (@hakank) wrote a chapter _ **Prolog for Scientific Explanation** _; you can find it in fulltext [here](https://rdcu.be/de75e). In the chapter we discuss the advantages of Prolog for scientific explanation, specifically

- The ability to represent asymmetric many-one relations, which play a major role in causal laws
- The ability to represent relations that involve quantitative _and_ qualitative objects (i.e. both mathematics and natural language-like information)
- Homoiconicity (Prolog programs can handle Prolog programs as data)
- Transparency (important in relation to explainable AI)

We also discuss abduction in relation to scientific explanation and inductive logic programming in relation to empirical research.

Kind regards, JCR