Hello Peter, All, On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Peter Ansell <ansell.pe...@gmail.com> wrote: > 2009/3/22 Egon Willighagen <egon.willigha...@gmail.com>: >> Chemists are not interested in single molecules (well, most are not, >> but with increasing nanotechnology...). I was told recently that upper >> ontologies have proper mechanisms to point out the difference between >> (in Java terminology) objects and classes, or instances and concepts. > > There is that possibility.
There is an infinite number of possibilities. What is the criteria for being relevant? > Having different identities might be the rational scientific way to do > things. They might be caused by different perspectives on the one > item, or they might be caused by an actual duality of theory based on > an actual inability to describe something in a single theory. Making > god-like decisions about which class particular records actually > belong to as ontologists might sound fun but in the world case it > seems counterintuitive because it doesn't promote progress in both > areas concurrently. Can you give an example? Take care -- Oliver Ruebenacker, Computational Cell Biologist BioPAX Integration at Virtual Cell (http://vcell.org/biopax) Center for Cell Analysis and Modeling http://www.oliver.curiousworld.org