ONT Re: Topology & Religion
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JV = John Velman
okay, it's friday, and i need a break from all this hot lead
i've been type-coercing here, so let me tell you a story that
comes to mind in this connection.
by a half twist of fate i was taking my first real topology class
at the same time that i was taking a course in comparative religion --
can't pin it down in time exactly as i flunked the latter three times,
would always do okay right up until the final, which was a 3 hour essay,
and, well, i'm sure you can imagine -- anyway, the first thing that struck
me was the analogy between these two subjects, having to compare radically
different ways of organizing the world into adherence classes, "callings" if
you heed the etymology of "class", and other "matters of ultimate concern",
as my comp rel text defined "religion". so let us now con-template that --
in silence ...
JV: Thanks for the response. From here it appears that you do quite well
as a two-fingered typist. My own problem is that I can type faster
than I can think. Some days I believe I was more productive when
I wrote by hand, and then (in the good days in industry), someone
else typed my work. But I've tried working by hand, and I can't
seem to think anymore unless at the computer.
JV: Which, by the way, relates to your point about KIF.
I've heard that those who use Lisp a lot think in it,
and I suppose that is believable. There was a time in
the past when I used to dream in Fortran, but thank
goodness that time is long gone.
JV: The problems with "the same mix of nat lang and math that one normally reads
in technical papers and engineering specs," are the various kinds of imprecision.
i bite my tongue ...
Quine (somewhere in "The ways of paradox and other essays", probably in the essay
'The Scope and Language of Science") recommends the 1st order predicate calculus
as the basic ideal language of science (with, of course, "to be is to be a value
of a variable").
bound variable? see etymology of "religion".
JV: He also notes: "In practice, one does not explicitly rid one's work of
indicator words, tense, and ambiguity, nor does one limit one's use of
logic to sentences thus purified. In practice, one _supposes_ all such
points of variation fixed for the space of one's logical argument."
JV: I guess that it is this purification that is needed for interchange of ontologies.
Thus KIF. However, I for one, would certainly like to have an expression of the
Standard Upper Onotology (whatever that might be) in terms more friendly (to me)
than KIF.
JV: If the "purified content" were recorded in something like the "usual" notation
of FOPC, but embeded in plain text (in a way similar to literate programing,
as used in the Haskell community) providing non-binding explanations,
that might suit my taste.
JV: The display form of CGs would be a good way to present the formal sentences.
Of course, the display form itself isn't (currently) machine readable,
as far as I know.
i have done the alpha part --- the omega will take a little longer ...
JV: By the way, I've avoided using CGs in the past because I couldn't find
a reasonable tool. Currently, it looks like Cogitant will satisfy my
needs, and I'm looking forward to actually trying to think using CGs
(the linear forms are no better for thinking than KIF).
JV: But maybe it is more important to get a consensus on the scope and content of
the SUO than the presentation. -- I.e., monolithic, vs. multiple ontologies
as per John Sowa.
JV: I hope I can get to some remarks on mathematical topology vs mereo-topology sometime.
be careful what you pray for ...
jon awbrey
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