SUO: Re: General Design
In an uncertain world, we have but "cloudy crystal balls", as I have heard
it put.
For another view of contentious totalities only partly grasped, see, for
example, www.rrraul.org
Jay
Source: WordNet (r) 1.7
environment
n 1: the totality of surrounding conditions; "he longed for the
comfortable environment of his livingroom"
2: the area in which something exists or lives: "the
country--the flat agricultural surround" [syn: environs,
surroundings, surround]
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
Environment \En*vi"ron*ment\, n. [Cf. F. environnement.]
1. Act of environing; state of being environed.
2. That which environs or surrounds; surrounding conditions,
influences, or forces, by which living forms are
influenced and modified in their growth and development.
It is no friendly environment, this of thine.
--Carlyle.
Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (09 FEB 02)
environment
environment variable
----- Original Message -----
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@bestweb.net>
To: "West, Matthew R SITI-ITPSIE" <matthew.west@shell.com>
Cc: "Jon Awbrey" <jawbrey@att.net>; "Kenneth Fields" <ken@create.ucsb.edu>;
"Ontology" <ontology@ieee.org>; <protege-discussion@SMI.Stanford.EDU>; "SUO"
<standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>; <cg@cs.uah.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 07:01
Subject: SUO: Re: General Design
>
> Dear Matthew,
>
> Thank you for the support. I have been arguing for
> as long as the SUO list existed that every engineering
> project (including knowledge engineering) makes
> abstractions from reality that omit seemingly
> "irrelevant" details. But what is irrelevant for
> one project is often the central core of some
> other project.
>
> I certainly agree with people like Adam, Doug, and
> Nicola that axioms are essential for detailed reasoning.
> But in the early stages of any design -- and in any
> stage of communication between independent projects --
> conflicts in the assumptions (i.e., the axioms) are
> the major obstacle. And you simply *cannot* solve
> that problem by forcing people to adopt axioms that
> weren't designed for their purpose.
>
> Of all the axioms that have been proposed, the
> axioms of mereology are the worst offenders.
> I consider mereology to be a useful approximation
> for many purposes, but those axioms are *always*
> approximations that are simply false at the level
> of atoms and molecules (and even at the level of
> bacteria, dust, surface grime, and cat hairs).
>
> That is why I consider any ontology with lots of
> formally defined axioms -- including Cyc, Sumo,
> and Dolce -- to be at best a useful approximation
> for some purposes, and at worst a disaster waiting
> to happen for other purposes.
>
> That doesn't mean that we have to throw away all the
> work that went into writing the axioms of Cyc, Sumo,
> and Dolce. But what we must do is to develop means
> of modularizing them and, for any given purpose,
> extracting, combining, and revising whatever modules
> are appropriate.
>
> John
>
> PS: Note how many times the word "purpose" occurs in
> the above paragraphs. Some people have been trying to
> eliminate the idea of "purpose" from their ontologies.
> That attempt is guaranteed to make their work useless
> for *every* purpose.
> _____________________________________________________
>
> West, Matthew R SITI-ITPSIE wrote:
>
> > Dear John,
> >
> > A word of support.
> >
> >>Of course, not. The main reason why WordNet is more flexible than
> >>Cyc, Sumo, Dolce, or any other axiomatized ontology is simple;
> >>
> >> The axioms get in the way.
> >
> > I have spent many years trying to improve the quality of data models
> > in Shell and elsewhere. By far the biggest problem has been that
> > data models impose constraints that simply aren't true (except in
> > some limited set of circumstances). As a result I have become very
> > conservative about constraints or axioms.
> >
> > Matthew West
> > Principal Consultant
> > Shell Information Technology International Limited
> > Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA, United Kingdom
> >
> > Tel: +44 20 7934 4490 Other Tel: +44 7796 336538
> > Email: matthew.west@shell.com
> > Internet: http://www.shell.com
>
>