- From: Jim McCusker <mccusj@rpi.edu>
- Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:05:56 -0400
- To: Luc Moreau <L.Moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
- Cc: Provenance Working Group WG <public-prov-wg@w3.org>
On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 7:33 AM, Luc Moreau <L.Moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote: > JimMcC indicated that activity implied a notion of agency. I am not familiar > with this > interpretation. Where does it come from? He suggests 'event', but this term > is already in > the document (and will be the subject of a future clarification proposal). Activity (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/activity) is defined as a quality or state of being active. If you look at the examples at MW, all of them have some sort of agent or actor. There is one natural process example, which is that a volcano is active. Even in that case, the volcano is being considered an actor (which is fine in discourse, but isn't technically correct). The root word, "act", when used, requires an actor. An act can happen with an unknown actor, but there is always an entity that is behind an act. Using this word to describe all events (including natural events), especially formally in a standard, gives the model a pre-scientific bais (the idea that a prime mover is needed, because all events are acts). Note that this is actually a western bais too, as many eastern traditions do not require a prime mover. Maybe I'm reading far too much into this, but if we're looking to simplify, I would far prefer Event or Process (but with a clear explanation that it is a occurrent, not a specification of an occurrent) to Activity. Jim -- Jim McCusker Programmer Analyst Krauthammer Lab, Pathology Informatics Yale School of Medicine james.mccusker@yale.edu | (203) 785-6330 http://krauthammerlab.med.yale.edu PhD Student Tetherless World Constellation Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute mccusj@cs.rpi.edu http://tw.rpi.edu
Received on Wednesday, 26 October 2011 14:06:56 UTC