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First, kudos to those who suggested
the Ontology Summit topic.
Big Systems, or Systems of Systems, are
vitally important to study as far as the world is rapidly globalizing, becaming
increasingly unpredictable and volatile, as well as complex and interconnected.
It'd be of good use to define some
guidlines and general principles to be discussed on the Ontology
Summit.
Broadly, we see two strands: Systems
Science and Ontology of Systems. Systems theory considers the world as a complex
system of interconnected parts.
The System Ontology views the world as the
ultimate megasystem, the metasystem of heterogenous systems, the unified whole
of parts and relations. Then, accordingly, a city is to be viewed as the urban
system of systems, or networks of transportation, utilities, telecommuications,
buidings, services, etc.
The Systems Theory divides the domain into
a triple of system, boundary and environment, stressing the following
features as the common ones: domain, structure (elements and composition),
behavior (inputs, outputs and processing), interconnectivity (structural and
functional relationships), and functions (processes).
There are many critical issues needing
ontological analysis: how to define environment from the system itself; how
to determine the boundary, what the big systems are; open and closed
systems; natural and artifical systems, physical and virtual systems, or
mixed systems, as sociotechnical systems or cyberphysical systems. If they
are large-scale nonlinear systems, and if all real system are just complex
causal systems.
Finally, what makes the core mechanism of
big systems, if it's nonlinear causality, manifested as the feedback mechanisms,
or causal loops, positive and negative.
As an example, following the systems
theory, Garry's made a rather interesting description of a natural system of
wetland, while the specialist's analysis is more real, or ontological: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetland.
Its about nature, meanings, definitions, classifications, properties,
interractions, etc.
Azamat Abdoullaev
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2012 12:07
AM
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit]
Large-scale engineered systems vs. large-scale sociotechnical systems
JackR. I’m not sure I follow your
appeal to an auto accident and its description.
One starting one for this part of the
thread was your statement:
>
My point is that the very act of
assigning the label, system, to natural phenomenon is arrogant ---- until we
have an ontology of system.
It would be nice to have such an
ontology, but we don’t have to wait for one to have a discussion and see what
conceptualization makes sense. Science has been helping us undestand the world
for quite a while.
You later used a caterpillar example,
which would involve an evolved object that is part of nature.
I could pursue that example but since I think of many aspects of nature
as systemic I used Wetlands as an example. Here are some of
the ways that I think that it qualifies as an class or instance of system
looking at the share common characteristics I used:
Wetlands like systems have structure.
So it has by components/elements like
ground water, low areas, vegetation components.
These have composition as much as any description of an
auto accident.
As a system it has behavior, which
involves inputs of rain or flow water, processing (water seepage, movement
etc.) and outputs of material as when some of the water flows to a lake or the
sea.
A wetlands shows interconnectivity as
well as the parts of a car. Groundwater interacts with surface water in nearly
all landscapes, ranging from small streams, lakes, and wetlands in headwater
areas to major river valleys and seacoasts.
The various parts of a wetlands such
as high parts and low have functional as well as structural relationships to
each other. Thus topographically high areas are generally groundwater recharge
areas and topographically low areas are groundwater discharge
areas.
Wetlands may have some
functions/processes like evaporation and transpiration. So hydrologic
processes associated with the surface-water bodies themselves, such as
seasonally high surface-water levels and evaporation and transpiration of
groundwater from around the perimeter of surface-water bodies, are a major
cause of the complex and seasonally dynamic groundwater flow fields associated
with surface water.
So I say it stacks up (or more than
stacks up) to the framework of characteristics.
So I think of a wetlands as a
system.
Gary Berg-Cross, Ph.D.
NSF INTEROP Project
SOCoP Executive Secretary
Knowledge Strategies
Potomac, MD
240-426-0770
On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 4:37 PM, Jack Park <jackpark@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Jack,
Does a caterpillar have to tell anybody
anything to otherwise be a
part of a larger system, be it engineered or
sociotechnical, natural,
or otherwise? How is that question related to
the subject?
JackP
On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 12:15 PM, Jack Ring
< jring7@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote: > Gary, > Has any caterpillar ever told you he is going
to become a butterfly? > On Jan 19, 2012, at 1:13 PM, gbergcross@xxxxxxxxx
wrote: > >> Jack....Wow. >> >> I do think
of MUCH of natural phenomena as part of a system of related parts, which
allows emergence from thise parts, for example. >> >>
Gary
--
Gary Berg-Cross, Ph.D.
NSF INTEROP Project
SOCoP Executive Secretary
Knowledge Strategies
Potomac, MD
240-426-0770
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