Re: [xtm-wg] The Nature of Things...

[Jack Park <jackpark@verticalnet.com>]

From: Wrightson, Ann <Ann.Wrightson@sweetandmaxwell.co.uk>

> May I strongly recommend...
>
> http://www.pdtsolutions.co.uk/standard/wg10/n307/wg10n307.pdf
>
> - as a succinct exposition of some of the basic nature-of-things issues we
> keep coming back to.
>
> Cheers
>
> Ann W.

I have read with great interest the pdf mentioned above.  I would like to
respond with a suggestion that there exist other points of view on the
matter of metaphysics, some of which do not, IMHO, get sufficient press
coverage to keep them out in the collective *minds eye*. I must point out,
however, that this post, in no sense of the idea, tries to detract from the
importance of the Matthew West's paper. Indeed, the paper covers a number of
important issues that were also covered by C.S. Peirce and others.  In fact,
there has been a class of reasoning systems based on qualitative physics
that cover, with exception of modal logics, much of the space of issues
discussed in West's paper. We do have the capability to do this kind of
modeling.

In 1954, N. Raschevsky (U. Chicago), one of the inventors of mathematical
biology, began to wonder *what it's all about*.  He pointed out that we can
take a living cell apart but we do not know enough about it to put it back
together.  He began to wonder *what is life?*.  He wrote a paper at that
time in which he began to invent a new science, *relational biology*.  He
first posited that graph theory should be enough; he was looking for a way
to model a canonical living thing.  He was reacting to reductionist thinking
;   He never really completed that work, though he later wrote a book about
extensions to set theory (_Organismic Sets_) that he thought would provide
the tools.  Raschevsky's student Robert Rosen later discovered category
theory and posited that to be a sufficient mathematical structure on which
to build relational biology.  His book _Life Itself_ detailed his thoughts
on this topic, covering what he called the *modeling relation* -- the
relationship between the world of actual events and the world of inferences.
A web site:
http://views.vcu.edu/complex/
is devoted to his work.

Ann W. earlier mentioned the notion of Information Flow, due to Jon Barwise.
I consider that an insightful idea; information flow is based upon category
theory.  Recently, Robert Kent has taken that work to an XML dialect he
calls IFF <Information Flow Framework> (http://www.ontologos.org).

The thrust of this post is to point out that some scholars are concerned
that reductionist frameworks may not offer the tools we need to represent
and discuss the metaphysics of the universe as it really exists.  Is there a
connection between this notion and the needs of XTM?  I think there is, but
I also *know* it will not -- perhaps,indeed, should not -- be addressed
until quite possibly XTM v 3.0 or beyond; I'd like to think we could agree
to explore such a path in the mean time. Bernard Vatant, others, and I have
been conducting a kindof discussion along these lines over on the other
topic maps mailing list and now at Bernard's new quicktopic.com web site.
Jack



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