John,
Do you think that a topic classification system suitable for libraries can
actually serve to encode information in a form suitable for automated
reasoning? Do you have any examples of how such a classification has been
used with an automated reasoner? (01)
Pat (02)
Patrick Cassidy
MICRA, Inc.
908-561-3416
cell: 908-565-4053
cassidy@xxxxxxxxx (03)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
> Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2008 12:08 PM
> To: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Curation view of Ontologies
>
> Ravi,
>
> Ranganathan's colon classification system is of fundamental importance.
> I would strongly urge everybody with any interest in ontology to get
> a basic acquaintance with the system. For starters, see the appendix
> to the following article about Ranganathan:
>
> http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v7p045y1984.pdf
>
> For Ranganathan's own outline and examples, see
>
> http://www.iskoi.org/doc/colon.htm
>
> A few of his detailed examples:
>
> 2;45:6 circulation of newspapers
> B331,1,2:1 numerical solution of ordinary linear differential
> second order equations
> B952:72 orbits of comets
> C3:11;5 velocity of sound in water
> D5153,8:5 specification for the brake of railway carriage
> H191:16 genesis of diamond
> H4115.53 volcanoes of France
> H7.438 mineral resources of Burma
> H7113:16.8 origins of the copper deposits of Australia
> KZ351:421:5 prevention of tuberculosis in poultry
> NQ44,3;3:6 Indian distemper fresco painting of landscape
> O-,2J64,51:g(S) psychology of Hamlet
> P111,9D56175,1:1 pronunciation in Yorkshire dialect
> T15:3(B2),1 audio-visual method of teaching algebra in
elementary
> schools
> W691:58(Q) freedom of conscience in communist state
> X:53.440r56'N5 the influence of British tariff on Indian tariff
> brought up to 1950's
>
> I would challenge anyone who prefers some other system to give any
> evidence that their own system is more general, more principled,
> or more systematic than Ranganathan's. I wouldn't claim that R's
> system is perfect, but I would say that anyone who hasn't studied
> it is in serious danger of reinventing a square wheel.
>
> RS> I have tried many times to talk around the factors that lead
> > Ranganathan (*reference19 in the Curation PDF) toward his colon
> > classification (similarly many multitudes of such concepts in
> > Sanskrit texts) but have not yet had many responses from our
> > participants and I thought that concepts from other ways of
> > thinking about Reasoning and Logic were not very much encouraged!
>
> First of all, colon classification is not one of the "other ways
> of thinking". It is based on a fundamental principle that must
> be taught to every newbie and every so-called expert in ontology:
>
> Single inheritance is hopelessly inadequate for classification.
>
> Librarians give several reasons why colon classification has not
> been more widely used:
>
> 1. The detailed codes can become too long to fit on the back of
> a book spine.
>
> 2. The methods for deriving a code are hard to learn.
>
> 3. Tree structures, such as the Dewey Decimal System or the Library
> of Congress codes, can be mapped to a linear string of cards in
> a catalog or bookshelves in a library. But multiple-inheritance
> systems have no linearization that preserves the ordering.
>
> The first point can be met by the obvious way of truncating the
> code in order to fit it on the book spine and pasting the full code
> inside the front cover.
>
> The second point can be met in the usual way: most librarians
> today just look up a book in a directory to see how the "experts"
> have classified it. That is just as easy to do with R's system
> as with Dewey's.
>
> But the third point was a major stumbling block in the pre-computer
> days. The solution to that problem is to replace the linear card
> catalogs with computers (and that has been done for every large
> library and most small libraries in the world). Then the computer
> can map the multiple-inheritance system to any coordinate system
> used for locating books.
>
> RS> Of course, it would require thinking outside the notion that all
> > we know about these subjects came largely from Greek Civilization...
>
> Not true. I have often recommended that people learn something
> about the history of world civilizations:
>
> (a) The Egyptian, Sumerian-Babylonian, Minoan, Greek, Persian,
> Indian, and Chinese civilizations were trading ideas, religions,
> mathematics, inventions, spices, silk, seeds, livestock, and
> armies along the silk road since about 1500 BC.
>
> (b) As examples of the trade of ideas, all the alphabets of the
> world (except the relatively recent Korean alphabet) are based
> on the Phoenician alphabet, which is based on a simplified
> version of Egyptian hieroglyphics. In the opposite direction,
> the Arabs transmitted the Indian invention of "Arabic numerals"
> to Europe. And Leibniz invented binary arithmetic by studying
> the encoding of the 64 hexagrams of the Chinese I Ching.
>
> (c) Aristotle's system of syllogisms fully supports multiple
> inheritance. Leibniz exploited that fact for his own lattice-
> based system (Universal Characteristic), which uses the same
> principle as Ranganathan's facets.
>
> Summary: Every single-inheritance ontology is obsolete. Any
> single-inheritance system that is currently in use should be
> replaced or updated to a multiple-inheritance system in order
> to make it suitable for further development and extension.
>
> John
>
>
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