Some historical and current trends in reflective practice (RP),
artificial intelligence (AI), and engineering design (ED) are
presented and compared. Human artistry, context, and connectionist
approaches to knowledge are the common threads highlighted.
ED is considered to be a type of RP and AI a part of RP. This
is supported by an analysis of the transformation processes
involved in each. AI and systems are presented as approaches
for the formalization of RP at the technical and conceptual
levels, respectively. Interconnectedness in a hierarchical fashion
and purposeful process loops are defined as the key ingredients
of a systems approach. AI techniques that could support a range
of ED categories (case-based reasoning, decomposition, and
transformation) are identified, as are the wider RP approaches
that subsume those categories. The ED, AI, and RP categories
are identified as spanning from routine to creative, connectionist
to cognitivist, and intuitive to deliberate, respectively.
A cybernetic systems approach to abnormality detection in retina images using case based reasoning
