Re: HPO and Gene Ontology Licenses

Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com> writes:

>> As you know, we and others have demonstrated that alternative
>> representations and reformulation of knowledge is desirable for certain
>> kinds of scientific inquiry.
>
> Sorry, I'm unaware of such demonstration. Could you cite some references?


http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0012258

A few examples of where multiple representations of the same knowledge
have been used for good reasons:

 - multiple syntaxes for RDF
 - multiple syntaxes for OWL
 - two APIs for XML (DOM and SAX). 
 - multiple computer languages which are reducable to lambda calculus
 - lambda calculus and a Turing Machine
 - continued use of Newtonian mechanics, although its an approximation
   of relativistic mechanics
 - multiple statisical techniques for expression of central tendancy
 - PDFs are still better for reading in the bath than HTML

And so on. Any model is a compromise between accuracy, usability,
convenience and so on. Sometimes having more than one compromise is a
better solution than trying to shoe-horn everything into one bucket.
This is a compromise too. 

Phil

Received on Friday, 10 August 2012 11:44:27 UTC