----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 5:20
AM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Current
Semantic Web Layer pizza (was ckae)
Here is a link to a paper by Kim Veltman:
This paper argues that the computing community (and semantic web crowd in
particular) has been overly fixated on first order logic and has failed thus
far to produce a semantic web that is suitable for culture. The abstract
reads:
Today’s
semantic web deals with meaning in a very restricted sense and offers
static
solutions.
This is adequate for many scientific, technical purposes and for
business
transactions
requiring machine-to-machine communication, but does not answer
the
needs of
culture. Science, technology and business are concerned primarily with the
latest
findings, the
state of the art, i.e. the paradigm or dominant world-view of the day. In
this
context,
history is considered non-essential because it deals with things that are out
of
date.
By contrast,
culture faces a much larger challenge, namely, to re-present changes in
ways
of knowing;
changing meanings in different places at a given time (synchronically)
and
over time
(diachronically). Culture is about both objects and the commentaries on
them;
about a
cumulative body of knowledge; about collective memory and heritage.
Here,
history plays
a central role and older does not mean less important or less
relevant.
Hence, a
Leonardo painting that is 400 years old, or a Greek statue that is 2500 years
old,
typically
have richer commentaries and are often more valuable than their
contemporary
equivalents.
In this context, the science of meaning (semantics) is necessarily much
more
complex than
semantic primitives. A semantic web in the cultural domain must enable
us
to trace how
meaning and knowledge organisation have evolved historically in
different
cultures.
This paper
examines five issues to address this challenge: 1) different world-views (i.e.
a
shift from
substance to function and from ontology to multiple ontologies); 2)
develop-
ments in
definitions and meaning; 3) distinctions between words and concepts; 4)
new
classes of
relations; and 5) dynamic models of knowledge organisation. These
issues
reveal that
historical dimensions of cultural diversity in knowledge organisation are
also
central to
classification of biological diversity.
New ways are
proposed of visualizing knowledge using a time/space horizon to
distinguish
between universals and particulars. It is suggested that new
visualization
methods make
possible a history of questions as well as of answers, thus
enabling
dynamic
access to cultural and historical dimensions of knowledge. Unlike earlier
media,
which were
limited to recording factual dimensions of collective memory, digital
media
enable us to
explore theories, ways of perceiving, ways of knowing; to enter into
other
mindsets and
world-views and thus to attain novel insights aSome practical consequences are
outlined.
On Sep 9, 2007, at 9:06 AM, John F. Sowa wrote:
Might I remind people that this thread started with
a discussion
of how the pieces of the SemWeb are related to
ontology.
John Cage's compositions are worth some discussion,
but perhaps
the amount spent so far has strayed a bit off
topic.
John
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