Re: SUO: Non-gibberish Version of Ontological Additions
Four points:
1. Set theory
add Symmetric Difference for convenience?
2. Quantities, Calendar Time
Base engineering quantities should be easy
to find in the upper ontology, say as
'Measurable Thing'.
Spatial dimension, time dimension, gravitational force,
temperature, frequency, EMF, and chemical molecules are
all basic .
Measurables are things that can be quantified by an observer,
resulting in either a (value, unit) pair
value : number X unit : ReferenceUnit
or a triple
value : number X uncertainty : number X unit : ReferenceUnit.
ReferenceUnits are part of ReferenceSystems such as
Universal Coordinated Time, SI Length, SI Mass etc.
The upper ontology may simply state ReferenceSystems exist,
and allow specific domains such as Software Metrics or
Global Positioning Systems to choose relevant units.
ReferenceSystems are often combined in the one measurement,
eg height position from one datum, lat-long position from
another datum , time , date, and uncertainty from other systems.
Naive notions of geospatial position could be
accommodated as local referencesystems with simple
orderings such as 'the computer monitor is on the desk which
is on the floor'.
Temporal orderings such as names for days of the week
could be placed into a specific domain also.
Advantages
The advantage of such an approach is that
ISO metrology terms are used where possible,
rather than inventing a new vocabulary in
place of terms every engineer has grown up with.
Neologisms like Abstract, Quantity, PhysicalQuantity,
ConstantQuantity, ScalarQuantity, FunctionQuantity
UnaryScalarFunctionQuantity, TimeDependentQuantity,
Unit-Of-Measure, TimeMeasure-Position, birthTime,
deathTime, YearFn, MonthFn, DayFn, HourFn, MinuteFn
, SecondFn, and RelationExtendedToQuantities Relation
are just unnecessary and will have no effect.
Simplicity is usually a good criterion in science.
Both coordinate-based and other reference systems
can be accommodated. Specific engineering areas like
precise spatial location or precise time can draw on
more complicated domain ReferenceSystems as needed.
3. Positions
If a single ReferenceSystem hierarchy is used,
it will be possible to define comparisions in
a single hierarchy based on geometric dimension
of the items being compared. In some ways time
comparisons are like linear geometry for example.
ISO standard geometry terms and comparisons could
be used in the core, based on 0-dimension, 1-dimension,
etc. The set-theoretic core terms are :
disjoint, relates, boundary, exterior, interior, equals,
contains, intersects, overlaps, touches, within,
and crosses.
The up-down, left-right reference system referred
to with words like left-of, right-of, on, under , below,
above, behind etc could be constructed more clearly
from the base terminology, no?
4. Artifacts, Social Hierarchy
For the engineering ontology, what traceability is there
to terminology that working engineers actually want here?
EngineeringElement seems indistinguishable from
EngineeringComponent. Then I became completely lost
around about 'engineeringSubcomponent IrreflexiveRelation'.
huh?
The miscellaneous Social groups are from what theory?
Whatever..
yy
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