John, (01)
Glad you liked Hasok's work, I do too. I'd recommend his book as well - I
thoroughly enjoyed it. I particularly liked the idea that water only boils
at 100 degrees because it has dust and oxygen added to it. This also helps
to illustrate the point that these types of relation are subject to ceteris
paribus conditions. (02)
I agree that there needs to be a decision on scope. However, I would expect
it to consider trade-offs. The indirect apparently UoM type quantities are
something that engineers use a lot and could do with some clarification. In
other words, this would have significant value. Whether another UoM standard
would have the same value - or illustrate as well the value an ontological
analysis can bring - is doubtful. Also, if it is decided these are excluded,
this needs to be make clear - and not fudged. (03)
Regards,
Chris Partridge
Chief Ontologist (04)
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: uom-ontology-std-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:uom-ontology-std-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
> Sent: 02 October 2009 16:22
> To: uom-ontology-std
> Subject: Re: [uom-ontology-std] What is mass?
>
> Chris,
>
> That is an important observation:
>
> CP> In my experience with working engineers, especially when they
> > design artefacts, they need to specify the characteristics of
> > the equipment (and its components) they are building.
>
> I'd also like to thank you for the pointer to the surprisingly
> fascinating studies by Hasok Chang on boiling water. Following
> is a text summary, with video clips that illustrate phenomena
> we have all seen, but never really examined:
>
> http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/chang/boiling/index.htm
>
> And I also recommend a longer lecture by Chang, which includes
> the above examples plus other fascinating points about voltaic
> cells (not modern batteries, but the innumerable variations
> with poorly understood consequences that had been explored in
> around 1800):
>
> http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/chang/
>
> But these studies show that the scope of a thorough treatment
> of units of measurement naturally leads to a broader study
> of measurement in general, which leads further into a deeper
> analysis of all the ways of doing measurements in science
> and engineering for the past several centuries.
>
> That raises another question: Where do we stop?
>
> My answer is that all these issues are far too large and far too
> important to be dumped into a *module* about units of measurement.
>
> I have always emphasized the need to modularize the ontology.
> For the UoM, that implies a very *narrow* treatment of the
> terminology of units of measure and their relationships.
>
> I certainly do not want to minimize the importance of the
> other issues. On the contrary, they so important that they
> do *not* belong in the UoM. Instead, they should be given
> a thorough treatment in modules devoted specifically to them.
>
> Meanwhile, the formalization in the UoM should be as neutral
> as possible with respect to every upper ontology that has been
> widely used (and as many others as we can reasonably imagine).
>
> John
>
>
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> (08)
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