Re: [topicmapmail] Re: [topicmaps-comment] Notions have existence .....

[Enrico Silterra <catluver67@yahoo.com>]

--- Sam Hunting <sam_hunting@yahoo.com> wrote:

> 
> A Platonist would be comfortable with rhetoric like
> "changeless and
> eternal" but as a wannabe Pragmatist, I'm not. 
Likewise.

I hope that we can cool the rhetoric that describes
anything in topic maps as being eternal and
changeless.
Also anything implying "precision" in subject
indicators.  I think on this subject the less said the
better.  Now, because I started this whole thing, I
can't help violating that dictum.

Currently, I am reading "Kant and the Platypus" by
Umberto Eco.  On page 57, he discusses how Marco Polo
described the unicorn that he encountered -- quadraped
with single horn -- but they were not white, and they
had "feet like the feet of an elepant".  This was in
actuality a rhinoceros in Java.  Should MP have
created a new subject? or, as he did, provided new
associations within his own scope?  Or modified the
"precise subject description"? I don't think these
questions are answerable.

I don't think precise subject indicators are possible
at all; in the end we will be reduced to simply
pointing at something and saying - "things like that".


But I still think topic maps are useful -- just like
any game that we agree on is useful -- within the
universe of people who agree to play that game.

Just my $.000002
Rick Silterra


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