Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Center of Excellence Proposal
à
ONTAC stands for Ontology and Taxonomy Coordinating Working Group
It is a working group of
Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP)
(not posted to general ONTAC discussion) (this page under development - 11/23/2005 10:09 AM)
Darwinian selection is based on a dominant principle.
The evolution of best global solutions depends
on an openness of the system to perturbation of underlying processes and
causes.
Edelman and others suggest that this dominant principle is supplemented by a requirement that function/structure mechanisms have many to many mappings.
It should be possible to do the same thing in multiple ways. Otherwise the evolution will get locked into a local basin of attraction.
Random perturbations of underlying causes and process will not force the “emerging” system to climb out of.
Monopoly is the practical consequence of not have "response degeneracy". Which Monopoly “first” occurs is determined accidentally, since the full knowledge of all processes has never been available to intentional decision making.
The Semantic Web is not now a reality, but in theory (the theory advocated by Tim Berners-Lee and others) the Semantic Web will ignite in a way similar to the landscape field dynamics ignites in Boolean switching networks (as discussed by Stu Kaufman (Santa Fe Institute) and others).
The switching network concept was part of my PhD thesis in 1988, and is the core theoretical element of the Orb (Ontology referential base) constructions that I have developed for linguistic analysis of co-occurrence patterns in human language. (For index of work I have done on this please see {link}).
The key to developing a unique top down system lies in the switching network theory of Kaufman and others. The identification of the real connectivity in the real world (now) can be done using the Orb construction and the free software. A measurement process can occur, as I recommended to US Customs. The measurement is local, ie only concerned about if “a” is communicating with “b”. If so then a program can place one unit, having the form “< a, r, b>”, into the Orb set.
A theory of type can then be applied to the set of Orb units. Something like the Basic Formal Ontology relationships serves this purpose, at least initially. The “a”s and “b”s are identifiers and these can be placed into a class, subclass hierarchy (using Protégé in its simplest version). The resulting taxonomy can then be mapped to community of practice generated controlled vocabulary.