[xtm-wg] Genesis of Terms, and Why do we care?

[Andrius Kulikauskas <ms@ms.lt>]

I was very inspired by the Final Draft Specification.  I wanted to at
least read it, and hopefully do something helpful.  I set aside this
whole day for that.  Then I unzipped it and saw, it's 80 pages!  I got
immersed in the Terminology.  I very much liked the definition of
Subject: "Anything that can be spoken about or conceived of by a human
being. In the most generic sense, a subject is anything whatsoever..." 
Standardized!

I also liked the hyperlinking within the Terminology section, so I
started to ask myself, which concepts flow from which ones?  I spent the
whole day making a diagram, where I place concept A above concept B if A
makes me care about B.  It's a very subtle question, trying to decide,
when two concepts are related, which did we care about first?  For
example, if we didn't care about "variant names", then we'd have no
reason to care about "parameters".  But if we didn't care about
"parameters", we still might be interested in "variant names".  So I
went through all of the related terms this way.

I was actually able to fit them into a tree, which I attach below.  The
root concept is "subject", because if we didn't care about subjects,
then we wouldn't care about anything! 

The terms unfolded like a conceptual Genesis.  I'll tell it like a
story, an allegory.  After the story, I have some thoughts about which
terms are most central, and why.

*****************************************
In the beginning there was Thinking, chaotic and orderly. There were no
perspectives, just Thinking.  

And then the Thinking encapsulated itself, and there was Subject.  "Let
there be light: and there was light.  And Thinking saw the light, and
the light was good: and Thinking divided the light from the darkness. 
And Thinking called the light Day, and the darkness Night."  There was
order, with the division of Thinking into one perspective.  This was the
first event.

How could Thinking keep to the Subject?  Was the Subject itself, or
not?  So Thinking established Subject Identity.  "Let there be a
firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from
the waters.  And Thinking made the firmament, and divided the waters
which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the
firmament: and it was so.  And Thinking called the firmament Heaven." 
And so there were two perspectives, that the Subject might be the same,
or it might be different.  There was existence, with the division of
Thinking into two perspectives.  This was the second event.

Who could take up the Subject?  How might the Subject be engaged?  So
Thinking created the Subject Indicator.  "Let the waters under the
heaven be gathered unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it
was so.  And Thinking called the dry land Earth; and the gathering
together of the waters called Seas: and Thinking saw it was good.  And
Thinking said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed,
and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in
itself, upon the earth: and it was so."  So there was an Indicator that
engaged the subject, and engaged those who refer to the subject, and
even engaged itself.  There was participation, with the division of
Thinking into three perspectives.  This was the third event.

Who could hold the Subject within them?  So Thinking asked Whether?
What? How? and Why? to rule the Subject.  "Let there be lights in the
firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them
be signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.  And let them be for
lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and
it was so.  And Thinking made two great lights; the greater light to
rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; made the stars
also."  The greater light, Is, shone directly like the Sun, encompassing
Why.  The lesser light, Is Not = Describes, indicated Whether,
indirectly like the Moon.  And there were Topics that told What - Not Is
but Seems, and Topic Types that told How - Not Is-Not but Might Be. 
There was knowledge, with the division of Thinking into four
perspectives.  This was the fourth event.
*****************************************

I'm long familiar with this kind of structural unfolding, through
comprehensive divisions. (Instead of Thinking, I start with Everything -
which is structurally I think the same as God, as much as we know him,
of himself, from ourselves).  So it was very interesting to identify
such basic structures (the division of everything into one, two, three
or four perspectives) within our work here.  It just means that we're
very thoroughly addressing the corresponding issues (order, existence,
engagement, knowledge).

More practically, I think it's helpful, though, to work in a
Subject-centric point of view.  You'll note from the diagram that the
concepts Subject, Subject Identity, Subject Indicator are all more
important than Topic.  There's no point in having a topic, if there's no
Subject Indicator.  And there's no point in having a Subject Indicator,
if there's no Subject Identity!  This kind of logic yields interesting
results (I should note that I may be wrong on some points simply because
I don't understand XTM so well).

- <TOPIC> is probably more central than Topic, at least in the current
draft.  That's because <TOPIC> can be interpreted (in the mind) in two
very different ways, as a particular Topic or as an instance of a
general Topic Type (when the <INSTANCEOF> is used).  
- Characteristic would be a contrived concept (we'd use Name,
Occurrence, Role directly), except for the Assignment of
Characteristics, which has to take place in some context, which is
circumscribed by Scope.  Prescription of Scope is given by the Topic
Naming Constraint, and that's what I think is the real driver for the
XTM spec.
- Merging is a separate issue, that is relevant on the <TOPIC> level, I
think, because it's the consistency of the actual tags that are what
matter here.  
- A mental map is really only relevant because we care about
associations.
- A topic map, as defined in the draft, is actually very remotely
relevant to "Subject", and I think becomes important only because we
want to formalize the processed topic map.
- Even though I was voted down in Dallas, I still think "Is Not" is more
correct and relevant than "Describes".  I guess I don't understand! 
"Seems" would be another way to think of Topic, and "Might Be" would be
another way to think of Topic Type.

It may seem strange why Topic Map is such a remote concept, given that
it's the one we're working on!  But this just reflects that we're
looking for: the minimal set of concepts on which we can build the Topic
Maps paradigm.  So we can expect that practically every concept should
be more basic than Topic Map.

I like this kind of drawing, I find it extremely useful (even if it's
wrong, it still make sense to me).  I myself like things to be explained
in such a way, starting from the origins, so maybe for XTM 2 it would be
nice to start with the description with Subject, and explain how
everything unfolds (rather than start with Topic, Topic Type, etc.) 
Certainly it would be great if somebody mapped out the RDF terms, and we
could compare the reasons behind XTM, and the reasons behind RDF.  I
would think that would reveal the basic differences.  Overall, though, I
think the diagram gives a thumbs-up to our work, as much as I understand
it.

Also, I think I can use the diagram to
construct an Artificial Intelligence Topic Maps Participating Author
(equal to myself!) That can say things like: "The Subject has Subject
Identity indicated by Subject Indicator which may point to
bracket-Topic, which is thought of as a Topic whose having a
characteristic is referred to by an assignment valid across a scope
constrained by the Topic Naming constraint satisfied by any Topic Maps
document complying with processing requirements yielding a processed
topic map expressed as an XTM document consisting of topic map nodes." 
I think I'll memorize that.  (It helps to say it slowly).

Yours,

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Director
Minciu Sodas laboratory
devoted to "caring about thinking"
http://www.ms.lt
ms@ms.lt
+1 (559) 735-0262
in Visalia, California

Public Domain 2001
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