{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,22]],"date-time":"2026-03-22T08:05:41Z","timestamp":1774166741305,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":65,"publisher":"SAGE Publications","issue":"1-2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2017,10,17]],"date-time":"2017-10-17T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1508198400000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["journals.sagepub.com"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Data Science"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2017,12,8]]},"abstract":"<jats:p> Symbolic approaches to Artificial Intelligence (AI) represent things within a domain of knowledge through physical symbols, combine symbols into symbol expressions, and manipulate symbols and symbol expressions through inference processes. While a large part of Data Science relies on statistics and applies statistical approaches to AI, there is an increasing potential for successfully applying symbolic approaches as well. Symbolic representations and symbolic inference are close to human cognitive representations and therefore comprehensible and interpretable; they are widely used to represent data and metadata, and their specific semantic content must be taken into account for analysis of such information; and human communication largely relies on symbols, making symbolic representations a crucial part in the analysis of natural language. Here we discuss the role symbolic representations and inference can play in Data Science, highlight the research challenges from the perspective of the data scientist, and argue that symbolic methods should become a crucial component of the data scientists\u2019 toolbox. <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3233\/ds-170004","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2017,6,2]],"date-time":"2017-06-02T19:34:19Z","timestamp":1496432059000},"page":"27-38","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":31,"title":["Data Science and symbolic AI: Synergies, challenges and opportunities"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"1","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8149-5890","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Robert","family":"Hoehndorf","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Computational Bioscience Research Center, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia."},{"name":"Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences & Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0169-8159","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"N\u00faria","family":"Queralt-Rosinach","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, USA."}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,10,17]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref001","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/170035.170072"},{"key":"ref002","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.15252\/msb.20156651"},{"key":"ref003","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/532413a"},{"key":"ref004","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/75556"},{"key":"ref005","unstructured":"F.\u00a0Baader, D.\u00a0Calvanese, D.\u00a0McGuinness, D.\u00a0Nardi and P.\u00a0Patel-Schneider, The Description Logic Handbook: Theory, Implementation and Applications, Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN:13:9780521781763."},{"key":"ref006","unstructured":"J.\u00a0Barwise, Model-Theoretic Logics (Perspectives in Mathematical Logic), Springer, 1985. ISBN:10:0387909362, 10:3540909362."},{"key":"ref007","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/scientificamerican0501-34"},{"key":"ref008","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.4018\/jswis.2009081901"},{"key":"ref009","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pcbi.1005500"},{"key":"ref010","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"D.\u00a0Brown, Mesopotamian Planetary Astronomy\u2013Astrology, Styx, Groningen, 2000. ISBN:10:9056930362.","DOI":"10.1163\/9789004453326"},{"key":"ref011","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.websem.2016.06.001"},{"key":"ref012","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-38288-8_14"},{"key":"ref013","unstructured":"C.\u00a0d\u2019Amato, N.\u00a0Fanizzi and F.\u00a0Esposito, A semantic similarity measure for expressive description logics, CoRR, arXiv:0911.5043, 2009."},{"key":"ref014","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/1978542.1978559"},{"key":"ref015","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2245276.2245341"},{"key":"ref016","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/nbt.2463"},{"key":"ref017","unstructured":"L.\u00a0Ferrone and F.M.\u00a0Zanzotto, Symbolic, distributed and distributional representations for natural language processing in the era of deep learning: A survey, ArXiv e-prints, arXiv:1702.00764, 2017."},{"key":"ref018","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3233\/SW-160240"},{"key":"ref019","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/bioinformatics\/btu470"},{"key":"ref020","unstructured":"A.\u00a0Graves, G.\u00a0Wayne and I.\u00a0Danihelka, Neural Turing machines, CoRR, arXiv:1410.5401, 2014."},{"key":"ref021","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/nature20101"},{"key":"ref022","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1006\/ijhc.1995.1081"},{"key":"ref023","unstructured":"N.\u00a0Guarino, Formal ontology and information systems, in: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Formal Ontologies in Information Systems, FOIS\u201998, N.\u00a0Guarino, ed. IOS Press, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1998, pp.\u00a03\u201315. http:\/\/citeseerx.ist.psu.edu\/viewdoc\/summary?doi=10.1.1.29.1776."},{"key":"ref024","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/0167-2789(90)90087-6"},{"key":"ref025","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1136\/bmj.327.7414.557"},{"key":"ref026","unstructured":"G.E.\u00a0Hinton, J.L.\u00a0McClelland and D.E.\u00a0Rumelhart, Distributed representations, in: Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition. Volume 1: Foundations, D.E.\u00a0Rumelhart, J.L.\u00a0McClelland and PDP Research Group, eds, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1986, pp.\u00a077\u2013109. ISBN:13:9780262181204."},{"key":"ref027","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/nar\/gkr538"},{"key":"ref028","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/CECNet.2012.6202092"},{"key":"ref029","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"E.\u00a0Husserl and W.\u00a0Biemel, Die Krisis der Europ\u00e4ischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Ph\u00e4nomenologie, 1st edn, W.\u00a0Galewicz, ed. Springer, Netherlands, 1976. ISBN:13:9789024702213.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-94-010-1335-2_1"},{"key":"ref030","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"R.\u00a0Ingarden, Gesammelte Werk, Band 7: Zur Grundlegung Der Erkenntnistheorie, Vol.\u00a01, Walter de Gruyter, 1996. ISBN:10:348464107X, 13:9783484641075.","DOI":"10.1515\/9783110916393"},{"key":"ref031","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pmed.0020124"},{"key":"ref032","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/bioinformatics\/btt765"},{"key":"ref033","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1186\/2041-1480-5-5"},{"key":"ref034","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3758\/BF03193491"},{"key":"ref035","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/nar\/gkq1143"},{"key":"ref036","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s10994-016-5563-y"},{"key":"ref037","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1609\/aimag.v37i1.2642"},{"key":"ref038","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/bioinformatics\/btu282"},{"key":"ref039","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/nature14539"},{"key":"ref040","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"J.\u00a0Lehmann and J.\u00a0V\u00f6lker\u00a0(eds), Perspectives on Ontology Learning, hardcover edn, Studies on the Semantic Web, Vol.\u00a018, IOS Press, 2014. ISBN:13:9781614993780.","DOI":"10.3233\/978-1-61499-379-7-i"},{"key":"ref041","unstructured":"H.\u00a0Lu, R.\u00a0Setiono and H.\u00a0Liu, NeuroRule: A connectionist approach to data mining, ArXiv e-prints, arXiv:1701.01358, 2017."},{"issue":"2","key":"ref042","first-page":"34","volume":"12","author":"Minsky M.","year":"1991","journal-title":"AI Mag."},{"key":"ref043","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pbio.0020309"},{"key":"ref044","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/s41562-016-0021"},{"key":"ref045","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/13117-003"},{"key":"ref046","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/360018.360022"},{"key":"ref047","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/JPROC.2015.2483592"},{"key":"ref048","unstructured":"M.\u00a0Nickel, V.\u00a0Tresp and H.P.\u00a0Kriegel, A three-way model for collective learning on multi-relational data, in: Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML-11), L.\u00a0Getoor and T.\u00a0Scheffer, eds, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2011, pp.\u00a0809\u2013816. http:\/\/machinelearning.wustl.edu\/mlpapers\/papers\/ICML2011Nickel_438."},{"key":"ref049","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"L.\u00a0Nowak, Remarks on the nature of Galileo\u2019s methodological revolution, in: Idealization VII: Structuralism, Idealization and Approximation, M.\u00a0Kuokkanen, ed. 1994. ISBN:13:9789051837926.","DOI":"10.1163\/9789004457416_009"},{"key":"ref050","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2623330.2623732"},{"key":"ref051","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/JBHI.2016.2636665"},{"key":"ref052","unstructured":"A.L.\u00a0Rector, W.A.\u00a0Nowlan and A.\u00a0Glowinski, Goals for concept representation in the GALEN project, in: Proc. Annu. Symp. Comput. Appl. Med. Care, 1993, pp.\u00a0414\u2013418. PMID:8130507."},{"key":"ref053","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"T.\u00a0Rockt\u00e4schel and S.\u00a0Riedel, Learning knowledge base inference with neural theorem provers, in: Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Automated Knowledge Base Construction, AKBC@NAACL-HLT 2016, San Diego, CA, USA, June 17, 2016, pp.\u00a045\u201350. http:\/\/www.anthology.aclweb.org\/W\/W16\/W16-1309.pdf.","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/W16-1309"},{"key":"ref054","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"T.\u00a0Rockt\u00e4schel, S.\u00a0Singh and S.\u00a0Riedel, Injecting logical background knowledge into embeddings for relation extraction, in: HLT-NAACL, 2015. http:\/\/aclweb.org\/anthology\/N\/N15\/N15-1118.pdf.","DOI":"10.3115\/v1\/N15-1118"},{"key":"ref055","unstructured":"D.E.\u00a0Rumelhart, J.L.\u00a0McClelland and CORPORATE PDP Research Group\u00a0(eds), Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, Vol. 1: Foundations, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1986. ISBN:13:9780262181204."},{"key":"ref056","unstructured":"J.\u00a0Sachs, Aristotle\u2019s Physics: A Guided Study, 1st edn, Rutgers University Press, 1995. ISBN:13:9780813521923."},{"key":"ref057","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/bioinformatics\/btv399"},{"key":"ref058","unstructured":"M.\u00a0Schneider, OWL 2 Web Ontology Language RDF-based Semantics, 2nd edn, 2012, http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/2012\/REC-owl2-rdf-based-semantics-20121211\/ (visited on 03\/15\/2015)."},{"key":"ref059","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"J.R.\u00a0Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge University Press, 1983. ISBN:13:9780521273022.","DOI":"10.1017\/CBO9781139173452"},{"key":"ref060","unstructured":"T.A.\u00a0Skolem, \u00dcber Einige Grundlagenfragen der Mathematik. Skrifter Utgitt Av det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo. 1, Matematisk-Naturvidenskapelig Klasse, Dybwad, 1929. OCLC:39228673."},{"key":"ref061","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/nbt1346"},{"key":"ref062","unstructured":"R.\u00a0Socher, B.\u00a0Huval, C.D.\u00a0Manning and A.Y.\u00a0Ng, Semantic compositionality through recursive matrix-vector spaces, in: Proceedings of the 2012 Joint Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing and Computational Natural Language Learning, EMNLP-CoNLL \u201912, Association for Computational Linguistics, Jeju Island, Korea, 2012, pp.\u00a01201\u20131211. ISBN:13:9781937284435, http:\/\/aclweb.org\/anthology\/D\/D12\/D12-1110.pdf."},{"key":"ref063","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.2307\/2216869"},{"key":"ref064","unstructured":"D.\u00a0Whalen, Holophrasm: A neural automated theorem prover for higher-order logic, CoRR, arXiv:1608.02644, 2016."},{"key":"ref065","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/sdata.2016.18"}],"container-title":["Data Science"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/pdf\/10.3233\/DS-170004","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/full-xml\/10.3233\/DS-170004","content-type":"application\/xml","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/pdf\/10.3233\/DS-170004","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,3,11]],"date-time":"2025-03-11T06:53:59Z","timestamp":1741676039000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/10.3233\/DS-170004"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2017,10,17]]},"references-count":65,"journal-issue":{"issue":"1-2","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2017,12,8]]}},"alternative-id":["10.3233\/DS-170004"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3233\/ds-170004","relation":{},"ISSN":["2451-8484","2451-8492"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2451-8484","type":"print"},{"value":"2451-8492","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2017,10,17]]}}}