Sorry, engineers execute they don't design - what you describe is the work of
an architect.
Peter
Sent from my Phone - Apologies for brevity and typos: it's
hard writing on a moving planet (01)
-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Barkmeyer
Sent: Tuesday, 11 January, 2011 13:56
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] I ontologise, you ontologise, we all mess up...
(was: Modeling a money transferring scenario, or any of a range of similar
dialogues) (02)
> +1
>
> I was about to write almost exactly what Chris wrote below. An ontology
> is an artifact that performs a function. Engineers design artifacts
> that perform functions. Thus the term.
>
> Peter is right that 'ontology engineers' and 'knowledge engineers' and
> 'computer systems analysts' may tend to inject their ideas and
> misunderstandings into their artifacts. But part of that is that
> encoding knowledge involves a certain amount of understanding of that
> knowledge by the knowledge engineer. There is a fine line between
> rephrasing what you think was said for the purpose of clarifying what
> the expert said, and injecting your own understanding into the model.
> The related problem is the erroneous belief that your technology is
> powerful enough to represent exactly the knowledge that is needed, which
> causes you to dismiss what you don't know how to represent, as opposed
> to wondering whether your product will be able to perform the intended
> function.
>
> I repeat what I said earlier about the hubris of engineers -- many
> engineers think they can quickly master any related subject sufficiently
> for their work, and knowledge engineers are no exception. Like any
> trade, there is a spectrum of competence, and the high end practitioners
> are experienced enough to know when they are out of their depth. (As a
> journeyman software engineer working with a physicist to debug a
> program, I pushed deeper and deeper into the mathematics. At some
> point, the physicist said to me, "I don't know how much nuclear magnetic
> resonance I can teach you in an hour!" Point taken!)
>
> -Ed
>
> "The greatest enemy of Knowledge is not Ignorance,
> it is the Illusion of Knowledge."
> -- Stephen Hawking
>
>
>
>
> Christopher Menzel wrote:
>> On Jan 11, 2011, at 1:49 PM, Peter Brown wrote:
>>
>>> ...
>>> I remain baffled by the terms (and the presumed concepts behind them –
>which are *not* clear at all) of ‘ontology engineer’ and ‘ontology
>engineering’. I do not think that one can ‘engineer’ an ontology any
>more than one can engineer a meeting: one can bring skills, methods and tools
>to the meeting (as Chair of a meeting for example) and can make sometimes
>significant progress even in ignorance of the subject of the meeting – if
>the purpose of the role of Chair is to help the meeting to come to some
>conclusion. However, once a Chair starts to pronounce on matters and get
>involved in the substance of a meeting, those skills and methods become
>overshadowed by their ignorance or partisanship.
>>>
>>
>> Hello Peter,
>>
>> I don't understand your analogy. An ontology is a concrete artifact (unlike
>a meeting). And, like the production of any quality artifact, the production
>of a good ontology requires training and expertise. On the face of it,
>anyway, "ontology engineer" seems a reasonable title for those with the
>appropriate training and expertise. (Opinions vary, of course, regarding the
>nature and extent of such training and expertise.)
>>
>> I have to say that I don't see how an ontology is in any way enough like a
>meeting to support your argument that, because it makes no sense to engineer a
>meeting, it makes no sense to engineer an ontology.
>>
>> -chris
>>
>>
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>
> --
> Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
> National Institute of Standards & Technology
> Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
> 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528
> Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800
>
> "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
> and have not been reviewed by any Government authority."
>
>
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