Steve, (01)
I agree to a certain extent: (02)
SN> I guess I'm saying that, at bottom, all solutions are
> ad hoc solutions; no one solution is the Holy Grail. (03)
But there are patterns and invariants that enable translations
from one ad hoc solution to another. Those invariants are the
landmarks or signposts that make it possible to find order
in the chaos. (04)
> Benefits accrue to us when we face up to the fact that
> endlessly diverse ad-hockeries are a fact of life, and
> one that we'd better learn to deal with efficiently. (05)
I also agree, and that is one of the major themes of my
article on knowledge soup: (06)
http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/challenge.pdf
The Challenge of Knowledge Soup (07)
Logic is the discipline that has been searching for those
underlying invariants. But those invariants are often
obscured by variations in the notations and terminologies. (08)
That is why we have been developing the ISO standard for
Common Logic (which is currently in the FDIS stage): (09)
http://www.common-logic.org
Common Logic Standard (010)
The body of the standard uses an abstract syntax to avoid
endorsing any specific notation. The annexes specify three
very different concrete dialects that capture the full CL
semantics. But many other versions of logic (including
RDF(S) and OWL) can be treated as dialects of Common Logic
that express a subset of the semantics. (011)
I won't claim that CL is the final solution, but it serves
as one example of how to find order in the chaos. I also
admit that there is a lot more work to be done. (012)
John Sowa (013)
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