However, you state yourself that there *is* a common ontology, which
represents knowledge across multiple disciplines. Rather than focus
on the differences, why not focus on the commonalities? Using the
biochemistry/immunology example you proposed earlier, while the
perspectives may be different the semantic representation of what
both the biochemist and the immunobiologist is identical. In fact,
this is one of the fundamental tenets of comparative biology. (01)
It is possible to create a upper level ontology to categorize the
world-- and even continuous variables can be made categorical by
various types of binning strategies. We do this in biology all the
time-- when a potentially new organism is found, it is compared to
type specimens. (02)
Best. (03)
-Neil. (04)
On 2005 Nov 26, at 16:15 EST, Paul S Prueitt wrote: (05)
> I feel that the notion that John Sowa is talking about; some common
> ontology
> core where there is no disagreement has to address the fact that
> various
> groups have quite different and often contridictory ontological
> commitments. (06)
--
Indra Neil Sarkar, PhD
Bioinformatics Associate
Divisions of Invertebrate Zoology
& Library Services
American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 79th Street
New York, NY 10024 USA
+1 212 769 5571
--
sarkar@xxxxxxxx
www.genomeCurator.org/people/sarkar
-- (07)
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