[SEEK-Taxon] Thoughts on GUIDs

[Nico M. Franz]

Hi there:

    I very much appreciate the comment.

    Berendsohn et al. (2003) have actually CHANGED the annotation system 
that the moss data authors (2000) used. In what I can only describe as an 
instantaneous reversal back to the Teutonic way ("Hope I'm funny!" - R. 
Pryor, 1975), the latter used a version of the "><" symbol (i.e. to 
indicate concept overlap, I suppose "interference" in set-theory speak) 
that may be part of a locally used scientific text program, but so far as I 
could tell isn't part of the Uni-Code, much less any standard package like 
MSWord. If interested you can see it here, bottom figures: 
http://tekka.nceas.ucsb.edu:8080/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=MossesAndConceptSynonymy 
I can see that they did this to have the difference of name vs. concept 
synonymies hard-coded in the symbols, but that means essentially that 
nobody else can participate.

    Berendsohn et al. (2003) changed this to the standard symbols for naive 
set theory. I actually wouldn't know how to insert THOSE in this e-mail 
either, although my MSWord has them. Å - now I pasted one in from Word, 
looks nothing like the circle with a cross inside, so there.

    So I'd contend that we need a system of annotation symbols that can be 
used widely, and included in "standard" software programs that taxonomists 
use to write their papers. We may have a table of corresponding equivalency 
symbols for those who possess fancier text editing tools. If we provide the 
software for doing annotations, we can use set theory language too. But in 
my view any regular user should already have the necessary symbol set on 
their hard drive.

    Though I'm not sure we have to - "logically." In fact I suppose those 
set theory symbols do derive from logic, which in some stricter sense deals 
with analytical issues, meaning removed from the world (analytic, not 
synthetic). In that sense there are no "logical" connections between 
concepts, because taxonomy is a gradual language-world matching process. 
Thus the meaning of anything can't just be stipulated (deductively), it 
must be inferred. So for the purist, using set theory symbols for induction 
is like using the term "ontology" in computer science - clearly a new 
evolutionary (mis?)step.

    That totally gratuitous excursion aside, if there's a commendable 
overview somewhere of how equivalence relations are expressed in various 
(or just one important) discipline(s), I'd be very interested in such a 
reference. Might be just a decent textbook.

Cheers,

Nico


At 06:39 PM 5/27/2004 -0400, Robert A. Morris wrote:

>Nico M. Franz wrote:
>
>>Hi Rich, et al.:
>>    ...
>>    So you're right, Bill, there are multiple ways to read an "=" sign. I 
>> think we need to make those alternatives explicit and available side by 
>> side, rather than put all our own money on just one of them. Apparently, 
>> that's not what practitioners (should) do.
>
>Both because I'm a visitor and because I really doubt that most of 
>seek-taxon cares much about mathematical infrastructure, and because I 
>don't know how much mathematics most of the readership does know, I omit 
>sending this to the list:
>
>Normally, the formal framework for discussing multiple ways to read an "=" 
>sign is instead to discuss "equivalence relations", which have the most of 
>the formal properties that "=" in the sense of "identical to" has.
>
>--
>Robert A. Morris
>Professor of Computer Science
>UMASS-Boston
>http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram
>phone (+1)617 287 6466