[xtm-wg] Relativistic views [Re: XTM syntax issues]

["Bernard Vatant" <bernard@universimmedia.com>]

rho@bigpond.net.au wrote :

"... we could eventually drop the concept of a 'topic' as a whole.
This would let us live in a highly _relativistic_ world in which
there is nothing like "the tree in my garden" but only "what most
people see as tree in my garden", "what some birds may do with that
tree in my garden", "what the gardener sees in that tree" ...

So the tree is no more than the association of all viewpoints about it.
Sure enough. Heard that proposition lately from a brilliant graph
theorician. As true as you are no more than the association of all your
relationships with the universe. From a philosophical viewpoint, I fully
approve ... put it that way if you like, but you will stay with the
viewpoints as topics ... and won't escape the fact that is you want
associations, you'll need topics to be members anyway.

And from a technical and communication viewpoint, it seems more simple to
keep the tree as a topic, and then add "gardening" or "birdies" scopes,
even if you and me know that this "tree" is only a language facility ;-).
Physicists have known for years that there is no such "object" as an
"electron", but they keep using the word because it's more handy than
Schrödinger's Equation.

Don't forget Topic Maps will have hopefully all sorts of human users. For
most of them, ask to give away what they consider as common sense to begin
with, and they'll fly away ... As pointed before, we're not in an academic
exercise, but trying to build effective tools.

Cheers

Bernard

---------------------------------------
Bernard Vatant
bernard@universimmedia.com
www.universimmedia.com
"Building Knowledge"
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