Three decades of institution theory (abstract)
30 years have passed since the introduction by Joseph Goguen and Rod
Burstall of the concept of ‘institution’ (in [14] under the name
‘language).
Since then institution theory has gradually developed from a simple
and strikingly elegant general category theoretic formulation of the
informal notion of logical system into an important trend of what is
now called ‘universal logic’, with substantial applications and
implications in both logic and computing science.
The aim of this presentation is to guide the reader through the
development of institution theory from its seminal paper, included in
this anthology, to its current status. We will recall important
moments in this process, and discuss the most significant
contributions of institution theory. Due to the rather big size of
institution theory literature and also due to incompleteness in my
knowledge, the omission of important works from this survey and from
its references is inevitable. I apologize for all such omissions.
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