Imagine using a computer to augment a human's creativity, or to assist in the discovery of interesting new theories in a variety of fields. This area of study is not new, but continues to receive attention. The benefits are twofold: understanding the creative process in humans , and the result of discovery in computers, both of which produce new theories and ideas.
Some of the original discovery programs were developed to discover new concepts and conjectures in elementary mathematics, set theory, and graph theory. Doug Lenat's Automatic Mathematician (AM) and his later Eurisko rediscovered some fundamental mathematical axioms in addition to some new conjectures.
Artificial scientific discovery methods have also been applied to other domains of science including chemistry , particle physics, and orbital mechanics. The BACON.3 system (developed by P. Langley) rediscovered Kepler's third law (the squares of the periods of the planets are proportional to the cubes of their semimajor axes). While rediscovery may not add to new knowledge, it does illustrate that computers can discove complex theories and shows hope for future discovery.