Fuzzy Logic and Science

Abstract

After more than forty years since the seminal paper of L.A. Zadeh on fuzzy sets [30], a search on the term fuzzy “logic” in the top Science journal may be discouraging and claims for an explanation: despite those almost 7000 cites acknowledged by Thomson’s ISI Web of Knowledge to such a seminal paper, less than 20 articles in Science journal include the term “fuzzy logic”. And indeed some of them not in Zadeh’s sense. One of these out-of-context articles is a Science editorial note [4], where F.E. Bloom acknowledges that key acceptance criteria for publishing a paper in Science (like the existence of novel concepts of interdisciplinary interest or novelty and general significance) are ambiguous criteria, trying below in such a note to illuminate as editors potential authors of Science journal with some of the fuzzy logic behind their decisions. Should we think then that scientists can take advantage of some kind of “fuzzy logic”, in order to evaluate the quality of a scientific paper, but such a logic can not be part of such a scientific paper?