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

["Wrightson, Ann" <Ann.Wrightson@sweetandmaxwell.co.uk>]

Jack...

Yes, there are many views. Matthew's document is interesting because its
view provides a metaphysical underpinning suitable for effective modelling
of engineering systems. As I discussed in a (much) earlier mail I think,
there are different views which will be appropriate to other information
domains, eg legal. To me, utility in metaphysical views is itself an
interesting and distinctive perspective brought in by information modelling
- I believe that the question of engineering-style fitness-for-purpose for
"a metaphysics" would have been v. strange to most of the authors I read for
my metaphysics course at University...

Cheers

Ann W.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jack Park [mailto:jackpark@verticalnet.com]
> Sent: 23 October 2000 17:44
> To: xtm-wg@egroups.com
> Subject: Re: [xtm-wg] The Nature of Things...
> 
> 
> 
> 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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