[seek-kr-sms] KOAN2

Ferdinando Villa ferdinando.villa at uvm.edu
Fri Nov 4 13:21:13 PST 2005


> 
> In some sense I've been pushing this notion of a "kernel" for 
> a while for seek ... and I think that the notion of 
> measurement and the surrounding framework is precisely what 
> that "kernel" should consist of.

There was some discussion of this at the AHM, stimulated by Joseph's
comments. I wonder if it would be productive to see this kernel as a two
(or more?)-level hierarchy. I would see advantages in having two levels:

Level 1, the smallest possible set of concepts that lay out how SEEK
views the scientific process. Things like: entities of interest can be
measured (but no details about measurements), if they're measurements
they measure something [philosophical side issue: is "measure-of" a
synonym of "subclass-of"? I can see practical pros and cons for yes and
for no], and they can be observed in observational contexts (such as
time, space, and possibly "hypothesis spaces"). [second philosophical
side issue: can time and space be seen productively as mere
observational contexts, orthogonal to the "identity" of an entity, or
should we endeavor to capture the much larger semantic implication of
existing in time and space when defining the entities themselves?] 

Level 2, details of measurement system (units, dimensional classes,
etc), and possibly of time and space.

Level 3 would be the "open world" which we should probably endeavor to
leave as open as possible, as Joseph was describing, in order to ensure
that SEEK's concepts are the community's concepts.

The advantage I see in having a Level 1 where only a few key concepts
and relationships are defined is that 1. it's small enough to ask people
to understand it, and 2. it can become a "blueprint" when a domain
scientist is asked to provide new concepts that we don't know about yet.
My Thinkcap thing will use such a kernel to lay out "new concept"
submission pages.

Cheers,
ferdinando

> -shawn
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Joseph Goguen wrote:
>  > Dear Shawn,
>  >
>  > At the KR/SMS section of the SEEK AHM, i made some 
> suggestions about  > this, which i subsequently wrote up and 
> circulated.  Just now, ive put  > it on my  > website, at  >
>  >    http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/~goguen/papers/onto-intgn.txt
>  >
>  > It starts off a bit philosophical but i think gets quite 
> practical by  > the end,  > and also mentions the supporting 
> theory; i still need to add citations  > though....  >  > We 
> all missed you at the meeting but admired all the work that 
> you have  > done.  >  > Cheers,  >
>  >    joseph
>  >
>  > Shawn Bowers wrote:
>  >
>  >> Hi all,
>  >>
>  >> Since I wasn't at the AHM, I'm not sure if any discussion 
> or progress  >> was made in terms of Kepler/SEEK strategies 
> and infrastructure for  >> managing ontologies.  >>  >> 
> Recently, KOAN2 was released with an impressive list of 
> features.  I  >> wonder if this is something that we should 
> look at more carefully,  >> and possibly adopt for 
> Kepler/SEEK.  >>  >> http://kaon2.semanticweb.org/  >>  >>  
> >> -shawn  >>  >>  >> _______________________________________________
>  >> Seek-kr-sms mailing list
>  >> Seek-kr-sms at ecoinformatics.org
>  >> 
> http://mercury.nceas.ucsb.edu/ecoinformatics/mailman/listinfo/
seek-kr-sms
 >>
 >>

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