The Claremont Graduate School Claremont, California 91711 USA 1.
Social science tends to deal with symbolic data rather than numeric one.
Natural science could utilize information systems for manipulating numerical data easily while social science has been slow to adopt information systems largely due to the symbolic nature of data. The advancement of technique of manipulating symbolic representation of data, or knowledge in information systems such as expert system technology made the door open for social scientists. This paper presents a political intelligence analysis information system which processes symbolic data such as how democratic a nation is and produces a conclusion on the nuclear capability of a given nation. In political science area, the issue of politics of nuclear weapon has been researched extensively, i.e., there are human experts who can make an authoritative judgment on the nuclear capability of a nation by examining relevant data on the nation such as the existence of heavy-water nuclear reactor. Figure 3-1 2.