Re: scientific publishing process (was Re: Cost and access)

(Replying only to semantic-web and not linked-data.)

Hi Michael,

On Sun, 2014-10-05 at 12:07 +0200, Michael Brunnbauer wrote:
> Hello Paul,
> 
> On Sat, Oct 04, 2014 at 06:47:19PM -0500, Paul Tyson wrote:
> > I certainly was not suggesting this. It would indeed be silly to publish
> > large collections of empirical quantitative propositions in RDF.
> 
> Yes. And describing such collections with RDF on a level above basic metadata
> is not so silly but very difficult in many cases - as I tried to show with my
> example.
> 
> > Connecting those propositions to significant conclusions through sound
> > arguments is the more important problem. They will attempt to do so,
> > presumably, by creating monographs in an electronic source format that
> > has more or less structure to it. The structure will support many useful
> > operations, including formatting the content for different media,
> > hyperlinking to other resources, indexing, and metadata gleaning. The
> > structure will most likely *not* support any programmatic operations to
> > expose the logical form of the arguments in such a way that another
> > person could extract them and put them into his own logic machine to
> > confirm, deny, strengthen, or weaken the arguments.
> > 
> > Take for example a research paper whose argument proceeded along the
> > lines of "All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is
> > mortal." Along comes a skeptic who purports to have evidence that
> > Socrates is not a man. He publishes the evidence in such a way that
> > other users can if they wish insert the conclusion from such evidence in
> > place of the minor premise in the original researcher's argument. Then
> > the conclusion cannot be affirmed. The original researcher must either
> > find a different form of argument to prove his conclusion, overturn the
> > skeptic's evidence (by further argument, also machine-processable), or
> > withdraw his conclusion.
> > 
> > This simple model illustrates how human knowledge has progressed for
> > millenia, mediated solely by oral, written, and visual and diagrammatic
> > communication. I am suggesting we enlist computers to do something more
> > for us in this realm than just speeding up the millenia-old mechanisms.
> 
> Can you express this argument with triples? I would not be able to do that.
> Maybe if I devoted my life to it - starting with the famous "the cat sat on a
> mat" example. The end result would be incomprehensible to others and
> absolutely useless.

RDF(S) alone is unsuited for this, by design. It lacks negation and
quantification. Furthermore, traditional logic takes a different
approach to argument from the the mathematical logic notion of proof. It
should be possible to build for this purpose an RDF vocabulary and
conventions for use (in the manner of SKOS and OWL). And it would be
possible to develop an XML attribute vocabulary (in the manner of RDFa
or xlink).

> 
> I even doubt that science works the way you describe it.

Do you mean to suggest that science proceeds other than by arguing to
conclusions from premises? What might that be?

>  Mathematics works 
> this way and there are good reasons that formal proofs are absolute exeptions
> in this field ca. 2014.

Mathematicians and mathematical logicians can take care of themselves.
The rest of us can use their results (when they are useful) without
feeling obligated to apply their methods (developed for a specialized
domain) to the wide world of realistic experience and communication
thereof.

> 
> Basic metadata is good. Publishing datasets with the paper is good. Having
> typed links in the paper is good. But I would not demand to go further.
> 

This is not currently my main problem space, so I don't have a dog in
the hunt. I'm just observing, as others have, that there are no
technical challenges around metadata and linking on the web--only
political, economic, and motivational challenges. However, there is a
technical gap (i.e., opportunity) regarding making the semantic web into
a web of knowledge.

Regards,
--Paul

Received on Sunday, 5 October 2014 15:53:55 UTC