Bill, (01)
On Jun 13, 2007, at 9:15 AM, Bill Andersen wrote: (02)
> Hi Chris.
>
> On Jun 13, 2007, at 11:57 , Chris Partridge wrote:
>
>> Barry,
>>
>> I'd like to believe this is true, but, I am not quite sure it is.
>>
>> I was at an conference a few years back with some engineers doing
>> the safety
>> critical work (including simulation) for the Paris Metro - and what
>> intrigued me that there were more concerned that the model of what
>> they were
>> going to implement had an easy to check structure than a close
>> match to
>> reality. I suppose as they were going to impose this reality, they
>> felt a
>> simpler structure was safer.
>>
>> I agree there is a stronger argument when you are trying to model
>> natural
>> structures - but even here I suspect the civil engineers building the
>> nuclear power station use Newtonian rather than quantum mechanics.
>>
>> The engineering question is how useful is to understand the
>> underlying
>> reality. And I think we are still waiting for a good argument.
>
> Yes - the question of what is good engineering wrt ontology is
> certainly an open one. It seems obvious to me, however, that a
> mutual understanding of reality (to the extent that that can be
> provided by science) is precisely what allowed the engineers working
> on the Paris Metro to do what they did. If one group, however,
> believed Newton's laws would do the job for them, and the other group
> believed the spirit of Napoleon moves the cars on schedule, it'd be
> unlikely they'd come to an agreement.
>
> I'll pose this question to the list as I've posed it before to many
> others, most of whom have failed to give a satisfactory reply – if
> ontology-building is an exercise in application-specific modeling
> among a constrained group of users, then why is it not just a variant
> on what we already do with UML which goes under the more pedestrian
> name of data modeling? Surely it cannot be the use of this or that
> formalism which delivers the desired interoperability properties. (03)
Good question, and very much to the point of this forum. I can't
wait to see the answer. It could be that the result [ an ontology]
is somehow better than a data model for one or more purposes. That
would be a good enough reason, but I don't think its the real
answer. On the the other hand, the metaphysical motives seem counter
to practical applications in any reasonable future. It would be nice
to have a succinct response the next time I get asked [probably
tomorrow...].
Doug
>
>
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