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Re: Re: Syntax + object model

• To: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>, <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: Re: Syntax + object model
• From: "Jonathan Borden" <jonathan@o...>
• Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 15:30:40 -0400
• References: <r01050400-1026-630DC4BC8E0B11D7AA160003937A08C2@[192.168.124.11]>

Simon St.Laurent wrote:

> grimlinda@e... (Linda Grimaldi) writes:
> >I admire your single-mindedness and certainty about the universe- I
> >just don't share it.  I'm working on a project now that might use an
> >RDF-based ontology for a repository application, and, I think it just
> >might work pretty neatly.
>
> I have no certainty whatsoever about the universe.  I find onotologies
> to be an approach to making claims of certainty about the universe, a
> project I find unfortunate.

You might find "ontologies" to be about this, but perhaps that is because
you are looking at "ontologies" with a limited viewpoint. Granted there are
project to build a standardized ontology of the universe e.g. Cyc and SUO,
but those particular projects are *hardly* all that ontologies in general
are about.

Linda has got it right, ontologies can be used as tools in getting projects
done. Criticizing "ontologies" in general is akin like criticizing
"mathematics" as a project that you might find unfortunate.

Do you find the American College of Pathology's SNOMED project unfortunate?
How about the U.K. Galen project? Do you find dictionaries or thesauri
unfortunate? Do you have any respect for the library cataloging community?
Dewey Decimal System? etc.

> XML's sort-of-shared syntax is as far up
> the chain of certainty as I find plausible.
>

You have the perfect right to wear as dark a shade of sunglasses as you like
while walking around your own house, just as I might walk around my own
house with both hands firmly tied behind my back. I'd find that rather
limiting at work, and analogously some folks might find ontologies rather
useful at work as well. The "chain of certaintly" or "claims about the
universe" are just phrases that may or may not help us get our work done.

Jonathan

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