[tcs-lc] Names as Objects

[Kennedy, Jessie]

Gregor wrote: 
>
>Jessie wrote:
>> > we want them to be
>> > concepts even if in the original publication of that name there
>> > is no concept described as such there will be reference to the
>> > original concept (in your terms the original name embedded in the
>> > original concept) that this is a correction for.
>
>Rich wrote:
>> That's where we disagree, I think.  If I read you correctly, 
>you suggest
>> that a name without an elaborated concept should default to 
>the "Original"
>> concept.  I say it should default to the corresponding 
>"Nominal" concept.
>> That's why I think the "Nominal" concept is such a powerful 
>tool -- it says "we
>> don't know what concept was asserted, but we know that it 
>likely falls within
>> the set of possible concepts for which this name has been 
>assigned". That's
>> exactly the sort of "concept" we want name-only data to default to.

>
>I would like to support Rich here. 
I'm not sure you do - but Rich can confirm. Rich wants a nominal concept I think  not a name object which is what you want.

>The original concept at the time of 
>publication of the nomenclatural name may indeed be 
>meaningful, and it should 
>be possible to make an assertion that something has been 
>identified according 
>to the original concept. However, if this is not know, 
>"defaulting" to it would 
>be highly confusing.

I do not (and DID NOT) say we should default to the original concept but that for any data where it is unclear what the meaning behind a name is we should default to the nominal concept! EWvery original concept should have a nominal concept that allows people where ambiguity exists to default to the name explicitly without a meaning.
 
>
>This may be a social question depending on the group you work 
>with. Probably in 
>most vascular plants, the original concept has reasonable 
>circumscription. 
>However, in groups like fungi, bacteria, viruses, microscopic insects, 
>probabaly many molluscs, for many species older than 50 or 100 
>years the 
>original concept is so far removed from current knowledge as 
>to be meaningless.

we realise that many original descriptions are useless but so be it - I do remember your discussions with us as htings being described as green blobs or whatever. We took this on board and in fact introduced the notion of nominal concepts to deal with the scenarios you gave us.

>
>My largest concern about NOT being able to cross-reference 
>name-object and 
>circumscription object is that much of the biological reality 
>I encounter in 
>our diagnostic work of plant pathogens is not expressible:
>
>Publication1 publishes a name "Ustilago violacea" with a 
>historic character 
>circumscription. Publication2 20 years ago studied morphology 
>and produced 
>keys/diagnostic descriptions for "Ustilago violacea" defining 
>a circumscription 
>concept. Publication3 studies chemical or molecular characters 
>and concludes it 
>needs to be recombined into Microbotryum. However, in my group 
>it is highly 
>unlikely that Publication3 either explicitly bases its character 
>circumscription on any specific publication, nor gives a character 
>circumscription itself.
>
>If I identify this pathogen, I would call it "Microbotryum violaceum 
>(nomenclatural recombination Publication 3) sensu Publication 
>2". Note I may be 
>the first that uses the names from Publication3 in the 
>circumscription sense of 
>Publication 2, a fact that rightfully is not even noticed in science. 

as I've said to you before I believe what you are doing is defining a new concept (in TCS terminology - i.e. combination of name and definition) but fo rsome reason you don't want to say you are. If you defined your new concept and published it with the relationships to the other concpets that you mentioned then you would be sorting out some of the problems for people and making your concept available with a good definition for others ot use - again improving things. Without doing this I see you adding to the general confusoin and leaving it for others to continually try to interpret what you did - we will never get anywhere...
>
>Conclusion: biologists freely recombine knowledge on 
>nomenclatural on type-
>concepts with existing character circumscriptions concepts. 

and add confusion without documenting these as new concpets and relating to previous work....

>This can be easily 
>modeled of the two concept types are different object types, 
>but not so easily 
>in a single object type. 

but how do I refer to your concept?
>
>Alternatively the nomenclatural type can be represented by a TCS type 
>"nominal". However, it must be elaborated who shall create the 
>additional 
>relationship asserptions between the four other TCS concept 
>types and the 
>nominal TCS record. I am afraid that none of the current data 
>providers is 
>interested in doing this work. With a separation of name and 
>concept object 
>types, these relations would already exist and allow actions 
>such as above.

if we had a system for generating GUIDs we could automatically create nominals for every original and automatically relate them.


Jessie

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