ONT Re: Topology
¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤
JA = Jon Awbrey
JV = John Velman
JV: I've skipped ahead, since at one time I knew some topology,
and in fact I have my very own copy of JLK's book, plus
Dugundji's book (Dugundji was my Topology prof).
JV: Question: have I missed the application you are making
to of topology to ontology (or ontology to topology?),
or is it still to come after the intro to topology?
Hi John,
I'll go ahead and answer on list as I had been planning to give an explanation soon.
I just wanted to lay a few maths on the floor before I opened my big mouth and risked
taking a tumble myself. It's a terrible thing for a Peircean to admit, but I am still
a 2-fingered typist -- unless that thumb I now spy on the spacebar can count for 3 --
anyway, I really hate typing a lot and so it takes me 5 or 6 good reasons to push
me over the thrash-hold of anything so tedious as this type of drill.
Here are the reasons that I think I can give the shortest schrift right away:
1. They were just now hawking the verdues of mereo-topology on the Midway.
Don't know much about mereo-top but I know it ain't the Big Top by far.
So I thought I would hoist this old standard up the flagpole and see
if anybody could tell the difference between a Goldberg Invention
and a Rube.
2. In many on-&-off list discussions with DM, JS, MP, MW, PG, and others,
I have begun, somewhat timidly for me, to express the change of heart that
has gradually crept up on me over the last couple of years about the utility
and lack thereof of "special purpose ontology interchange languages" (SPOIL's).
JA: I cannot speak for KIF, and I do not know any mathematically trained folk
who would actually consider trying to do any amount of serious work in it.
Why any of them would bother writing things up in a post hoc format that
you can't actually use to think in is beyond me. And no, it is not any
better for computing or theorem proving on machines.
JA: My feelings about the advisability of a "dedicated ontology language"
are quite a bit different than they were a couple of years ago, mostly
from observing the content in SUMO and the process in the SUO group.
I now believe that we would be better off writing the specification
for a standard upper ontology in the same mix of nat lang and math
that one normally reads in technical papers and engineering specs,
leaving it to the language-of-the-moment crews to implement them
in whatever happens to be the hot format this week. The best
that we can do is to keep pushing innovation and to challenge
folks to put more logical and computational power into the
hackworks that will continue to rule the scene due to the
sorts of things that impress college dropout programmers,
or that self-styled "logicians" continue to exercise
their mystifyingly uninformed authority over.
Okay, that was a little harsh, but sadly, it is roughly true.
I believe that most sensible and sensitive observers understand
the kind of rift that was widened up between the philosophical
and the scientific communities by the "premature machinations"
of 'Principia Mathematica', and I earnestly opine that there
is far too much at stake now to let that sort of schismatic
debacle go on into another century or millennium, much less
than to start the whole damn thing all over again in this
brave new web world of ours.
Anyway, it has developed in these discussions that my interlocutors
have a variety of different sentiments about this recommended genre
of "mixed natural language and mathematical monographics", so I've
been planning to exhibit some "models of style" that I personally
think are admirable, especially in their prose presentations.
That's only 2 of 5 or 6, but maybe enough for now.
Jon Awbrey
¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤