ABSTRACT
The following commentaries on the chapters in this volume start with a few humble premises. The realization is inescapable that the enterprise of psychology is vast, has a long history, and is deeply divided into often non-communicating subfields. The enterprise of artificial intelligence (AI) is much younger than psychology and yet is also divided into areas that barely communicate with each other. The divisions in AI often parallel those in psychology and often seem to be motivated by similar theoretical and methodological concerns. In addition, the enterprise of expert system construction, and in particular knowledge acquisition (KA), is but one tiny corner of AI, yet the activities focused on expertise are expanding beyond the narrow confines of computer science. It is as if a new field concerning itself with expertise, knowledge, and expert system construction—a field as yet unnamed—is trying to be born. It is an event exciting to witness, but it leaves the poor commentator with no fixed or generally agreed-upon platform—no firm Newtonian coordinate system from which to survey and summarize multidisciplinary research.
