At 11:51 AM 11/20/2005, you wrote:
>Dear Barry,
>
>
>
> > Uniquely, among existing
> > contributions, the BFO Relation Ontology allows the drawing of a
> > clear distinction between relations on the level of instances (e.g.
> > between your heart and your body) and relations on the level of types
> > (e.g. between the type human heart and the type human body).
>
>MW: Just for the record, ISO 15926 also supports this.
>
>
>Regards
>
>Matthew West (01)
ISO 15926 does indeed distinguish between relationships and classes
of relationships: (02)
A <relationship> is an <abstract_object> that indicates something
that one thing has to do with another. (03)
A <class_of_relationship> is a <class_of _abstract_object> whose
members are members of <relationship>. (04)
However, it does not provide an account of the distinction between
relationships BETWEEN CLASSES (for example in general assertions such
as: human heart PART_OF human body, capital city PART_OF country) and
relationships BETWEEN INSTANCES (such as Matthew's heart part_of
Matthew's body; London part_of England). As is shown in (05)
http://genomebiology.com/2005/6/5/R46 (06)
these are formally two quite distinct sorts of relationships. And
only if we provide an account of how they are connected one to the
other can we understand how an ontology (which deals with
relationships BETWEEN CLASSES) can be linked to the real world of oil
rigs and generators. (07)
BS (08)
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