Friday, January 27, 2006
[148] ß [parallel discussion on
generative methodology (Judith Rosen)
[147] ß [parallel discussion on
generative methodology (Peter Krieg)
[368] ß [comment on four issues (Richard
Ballard)
Additional comment and history
Four Issues about Ontological
Modeling
Communication from Paul Werbos à [367]
Communication from Dr Richard Ballard (founder, Knowledge Foundations Inc)
Colleagues:
I hold perhaps the extreme position on this issue of representing natural laws and systems that evolve in concert with their living condition and ALL those laws dictating that survival. Without doubt, they all evolve and while the laws themselves have measures of certainty -- none are certain and with change the relative importance of one law over another certainly does change.
If you choose words and processes that cannot change to describe things that do change, failure appears an absolute certainty.
Albert Einstein -- "As far as the propositions of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
We make ontological commitments to concepts because those concepts are essential to theories that we believe are valuable and applicable in particular instances (Quine). In science, the test of that belief is in formally testing that theory's predictive success where applicable.
If you set up standards that are oblivious to theory testing, or slow to react to on-going debates about theory relevance or applicability -- you do no good service for the sake of standardization.
Dick