William, Leo, and Sjir, (01)
I think we mostly agree on the basic issues, but there are many side
issues and qualifications that I'd like to comment on: (02)
WF
> I have to disagree that the organization of domains of human endeavor
> is the work of lexicographers. (03)
One important distinction is whether the definitions are intended
to be descriptive or normative. Linguists and lexicographers try
to describe language usage as accurately as possible while avoiding
biases and value judgments. (04)
But educators try to organize and standardize the curriculum with
many normative goals in mind: ease of teaching, ease of learning,
prerequisites for other courses, systematic coverage of the subject... (05)
Leo
> In general, the mapping is n terminologies to 1 ontology,
> but realistically things can get more complicated. (06)
I would put more emphasis on the second clause. Physics, for example,
uses terms like mass, energy, momentum, velocity, etc., in every
subfield. But they adapt the representations to the problems with
different granularity, coordinate systems, approximations, etc. (07)
For fluid mechanics, the Navier-Stokes equations are so complex,
that they use different -- and contradictory -- approximations
for different aspects and subproblems of the same application. (08)
Sjir
> community specific terminologies and even more are part
> of such an engineering approach. (09)
Even in the same community, different people use the same terms
with different definitions. A physician, a nurse, a pharmacist,
and a patient may use the same name for the same drug. But
they think about the drug in different ways at different levels
of detail. (010)
John (011)
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