Re: [xtm-wg] For a general formalism of the semantic web - for more patient and formal work

[Sam Hunting <sam_hunting@yahoo.com>]

[bernard]
> *You* spoke of "big unified theory". I never mentioned it. 
> ... It's a local concern, not a global one. I
> just considered unifying all that is waiting for the right tool to be
> unified : many developments - of which Topic Maps and XTM and RDF are
> just some - have an implicit graph structure. Making that structure
> explicit, based on strong existing mathematical tools, is what I'm up
> to.

This is very much like the Cyc approach -- there is no attempt to avoid
global contradiction. In fact, a locality could be defined by its
absence of contradiction...

[bernard]
> I'm really amazed, to say the least, by those arguments about
> complexity of use. Thousands of people keep learning in just no time
> Java and Perl and C++ and other incredibly non-obvious stuff I just 
> don't dare try to understand - IMO far more complex and far less 
> intuitive to learn than graphs. Gads! Maths are far simpler than any 
> of those weirds syntaxes you find all around!

Agreed (except for Python and Eiffel ;-)

However, I think the most effective way to claim simplicity on this
list would be to propose some sort of simple algebra for representing
topic maps as graphs. As Nikita points out, my tables are good, but
still not formal enough....

Can you or any of your mathematical friends come up with one? 

S.

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