Re: URI thoughts

Donald's solution feels a little circular. The interpretation of  
these relations still need a formal specification, which OWL would do  
nicely for, but then OWL already defines similar constructs.

I think the "one true ontology" idea fails simply through open world  
semantics; I'm not sure the community should be aiming to formally  
agree on one true identity of something, but should formally agree on  
how to formally describe something so that reasoning/classification  
agents can provide the mechanism to highlight what is same or  
different identity.


On 31/07/2006, at 12:31 PM, Donald Doherty wrote:

>
> Eric,
>
> What you call "covering" below seems particularly important. In my  
> view,
> there can never be one true ontology, especially in science (unless  
> we're
> done and have reached complete knowledge...if that's possible). You  
> present
> an interesting solution...
>
> Don
>
> Donald Doherty, Ph.D.
> Brainstage Research, Inc.
> www.brainstage.com
> donald.doherty@brainstage.com
> 412-478-4552
>
>
> [snip]
>
> In the absence of any formal ontology that could cover all life
> sciences data records (e.g., Genes), a relational instance model might
> be more practical and appealing; A transitive rule could be proposed
> that states all data records referencing the same bio/chem-entity  
> would
> be viewed as "bio/chem entity" equivalent, regardless of what
> ontology/rdfschema were used to define each of them:
> (?data1 hcls:isDefinedAs ?ent) AND (?data2 hcls:isDefinedAs ?ent) ->
> (?data1 hcls:sameEntityAs ?data2 )
>
> This is an example of what I had suggested as a "Covering", since  
> there
> is no explicit need to use ontologies to map data records to common
> class-based concepts. owl:sameAs could be used hear, but  the
> 'sameEntityAs' relation could have more selective meaning for this
> community in terms of data records and 'things'. I leave it open for
> discussion...
>
> I'd be interested to hear how important and practical the points  
> raised
> here are. The main objective I have is to try and get our common
> discussion to focus on some basic, agreeable points that we can work
> together on over the next (hopefully) few weeks.
>
> cheers,
> Eric
>
>
> Eric Neumann, PhD
> co-chair, W3C Healthcare and Life Sciences,
> and Senior Director Product Strategy
> Teranode Corporation
> 83 South King Street, Suite 800
> Seattle, WA 98104
> +1 (781)856-9132
> www.teranode.com
>
>
>
>
>
>

Received on Monday, 31 July 2006 00:47:08 UTC