- From: Marijke Keet <keet@inf.unibz.it>
- Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:51:27 +0200
- To: Eric Jain <Eric.Jain@isb-sib.ch>
- CC: Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>, wangxiao@musc.edu, Michel_Dumontier <Michel_Dumontier@carleton.ca>, public-semweb-lifesci <public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org>, Mark Wilkinson <markw@illuminae.com>, Benjamin Good <goodb@interchange.ubc.ca>, Natalia Villanueva Rosales <naty.vr@gmail.com>
Eric Jain ha scritto: > > Marijke Keet wrote: > >> just because proteins are smaller than persons does not make them >> into mere abstractions--thingies of your imagination that only >> materialise by means of their representations in some information >> system. proteins were around for quite a while before you imagined >> them as mere abstract concepts, and will be so after you and any >> representation of proteins-as-records-in-an-information-system cease >> to exist. > > The problem with proteins is that I haven't seen any biologists agree > on a general way to determine whether two proteins are the same or > not, and in fact you could argue that the concept of any specific > protein is a helpful simplification that allows people to get their > job done -- but depending on what your job is, the optimal > simplification may of course differ! > > With people, I think there is less of a problem: If there is any > uncertainty about whether two people are the same, this is more likely > due to lack of knowledge than to different ideas of what a person is > (though I'm sure there are a few gray areas here, too)... > "...due to lack of knowledge...": and I presume it may be that biologists disagree also because of insufficient knowledge about the protein, and/or its (over-)simplification, that is, comparing apples and oranges at a too coarse level of granularity. Moreover, that we don't know enough about all (types of) proteins and that biologists argue every now and then does not justify conflating the actual proteins and their representations in an information system. Lack of sufficient knowledge about a particular (biological) entity is a sideshow, not an argument, to the issue of distinguishing real proteins from their records. Best regards, Marijke
Received on Monday, 16 July 2007 10:51:48 UTC