Dear CRM-ers,
I think it is time for a heavy dose of reality here. I recognise and applaud
the motives underlying the development of the CRM, but you have to realise
that, to the vast majority of ordinary human beings, it is pure gibberish.
I hold degrees in the philosophy of science and linguistics from the
Universities of Cambridge and London and have over 15 years experience in
programming web-based applications and the majority of the time, I do not
understand a word you are saying. Even the fact you are referencing Frege -
known to philosophy students around the world as one of the most impenetrable
of all philosophers, demonstrates how far divorced this discussion has become
from the realities of managing a collection.
I know, and accept, that processes like this can often become tantalising for
structuralists and theorists alike, but if you go too far down this road, you
have to accept that your construct - no matter how conceptually brilliant -
will never be accepted.
I have watched with mounting frustration the latter stages of the development
of the CRM (ever since the FRBoo moment in Gothenberg). The original CRM was a
good job - at that point, you should have left the product alone and set about
the marketing of it to the sector. Instead, the SIG has tended to go in search
of ever more arcane applications and alliances, coupled to recursive and highly
technical discussions of points of utter minutiae.
I draw your attention to the following text from your own homepage: "The CIDOC
Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) provides definitions and a formal structure for
describing the implicit and explicit concepts and relationships used in cultural heritage
documentation." It certainly doesn't seem that this is the focus any more!
Days ago, I emailed the list offering to put time and money into an
international alliance focussed on making the CRM more directly applicable and
meaningful to the sector. I apologise if this message was insufficiently clear,
but I find it fascinating that the message garnered absolutely *no* response
whatsoever.
I apologise for the bluntness of this message, but the fact is that the CRM is
at a crossroads. If the SIG continues to treat it as an academic exercise, then
you will have to accept that nobody will adopt it. If you want to popularise
it, then you will have to abandon the detailed discussion and focus on simple
methods and applications (and that 'simple' as in comprehensible to humans, not
as in 'set theory'!)
I await your response with interest!
Nick
Nick Poole
Chief Executive
Collections Trust
www.collectionstrust.org.uk
www.collectionslink.org.uk
www.cuturalpropertyadvice.gov.uk
Tel: 01223 316028
Fax: 01223 364658
Until the end of April 2008, the Collections Trust's legal trading name is: MDA
(Europe) Ltd
Company Registration No: 1300565
Reg. Office: 22 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 1JP.
The Collections Trust believes that everybody, everywhere should have the right
to access and benefit from cultural collections. Our aim is to develop
programmes and standards which help connect people and culture.
The Collections Trust was launched from its predecessor body, the MDA, in March
2008.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Christian-Emil Ore
Sent: 01 May 2008 11:34
To: Guenther Goerz
Cc: crm-sig
Subject: Re: [Crm-sig] Issue: E89 Propositional Object and Symbolic Object, CRM
compliant and museum doc.
Dear Günther
There may be a misunderstanding here. I have no problems personally with
the CRM. I am completely aware that we don't need neither set theory or
higher order type theory. I also appreciate Frege for example his
definition of a number: The number 5 is 'to count to 5'. Altenatively,
the number 5 is what is common for all sets containing 5 elements. This
is in fact very parallel to what the nat.historians try to express with
their species concept.
My main concern is how we should disseminate a good understanding of
what the CRM is and why it is useful as a (conceptual) tool for
integrating information in the cultural heritage sector.
It is clear that the activities in the CRM SIG are and perhaps also
should be focused on the development of the CRM as an ontology. It may
also be so that the CRM SIG for these reasons no longer (perhaps it has
never been) is a group primarily for museum documentalists but for
people interested in analytic philosophy, ontologies and semantics and
the semantic web (in the computer science understanding). I have no
problems with that.
Still I think we should keep in mind why the work on the CRM was
initiated: The CIDOC ER model was not satisfactory and one saw the need
for a better model for data interchange in the cultural heritage sector.
The development of the CRM is a great success but if all memory
institutions use DC instead we have failed and the CRM will just be
another interesting exercise. I too often meet people who says the CRM
is too abstract or somewhat better' we have been inspired by the CRM but
the entire model is too complex for our needs'. This is an attitude I
have observed also among advanced groups in humanities' computing. This
worries me.
Compared to standard practice and models in the cultural heritage sector
there are three major new features in the CRM: Events, abstract objects
(abstract content of intellectual works, concepts (e.g. species in
nat.hist) and more specific abstract motifs of images) and the strict
distinction between a name and the object it denotes. In most museum
databases there are no explicit events, implicit events are thought to
be identical to their identifier and the databases are focused only on
material objects even in art museum database. We all know this.
In my opinion we need both to continue to develop the CRM and to make it
more accessible. If we could convince the museum community that they
should start to document events, abstract objects and make a distinction
between the denotation and the denoted object The CRM core is a step to
make the CRM more easily understandable. The main question is: How do we
find resources to write tutorial material and make it more
understandable to a wider community. At the Heraklion meeting in 2006, I
said that a transcript of Stephen Stead's introduction would be a good
starting point. I still below it would be.
Regards,
Christian-Emil
On 30.04.2008 00:48, Guenther Goerz wrote:
Dear Christian-Emil,
I think there is no need to be worried. Basically, things are quite
easy to understand and no set theory and no higher order logic are
required, although the proposed scope note for E89 seems to me rather
myterious and not very helpful. I think, the essentials can be
explained in a rather simple way which everybody will be able to
understand.
So let's start with a basic everyday scenario: Given a material object
we can point to --- common agreement about that simple fact assumed
---, we could use
a) a proper noun to address it (like "Emil"), or
b) a common noun or a definite description (as "man")
to refer to it. The second case explains the use of the term "man" by
pointing to examples (and counterexamples). In this way, we can only
address or refer to individuals, but not concepts: you can point to
the sign "IIIIIII" or "VII" or --- taken the cultural history of
number writng systems for granted --- the sign "7" , but not to the
concept of "number 7" oder just the concept of "number". Predication,
of course, is not a definition. If we want to define the concept of
"man" or "number", we need some more linguistic expressivity.
How do we get to concepts? Frege says, by abstraction, in the
following way: Under a given goal or purpose, we name explicitly and
positively certain properties, and we collect individuals which have
the same properties in a class, e.g. we collect all objects
representing the same number of counting signs in a class.
Mathematically spoken, this is an equivalence class partition, but
this can be handled by practicioners without understanding equivalence
relations at all. The decisive point is that we make a
linguistic/logical transition (only, no psychological operation etc.
--- keep in mind that Frege's abstraction was introduced at the time
where psychologism in mathematics was heavily criticzed) in that we
now speak about "abstract objects", but those are nothing else than
equivalence classes where any element may be used as a representative:
take seven strokes at the wall or seven nodes in a quipu or seven eggs
in a basket... No secret at all behind the concept of "number". So,
abstraction is a methodological "facon de parler", we speak about the
same individual objects in a new fashion: Abstracta are
linguistic/logical constructs, i.e. objects of language, and nothing
mental (as the tradition from Aristotle through Ockham --- yes, also
the Nominalists were mentalists --- to Descartes claimed).
If we build sentences which contain a defined concept as, e.g.,
"number", we speak "about" it, e.g. "The number 7 is a prime number"
(given the definition of prime numbers in advance).
This should be sufficient to demystify the Dahlberg diagram (although
I don't agree with everything she claims): We have an object, item of
reference, we use a linguistic sign to refer to it and we build
abstractions ("synthesis") by explicitly naming relevant properties.
Furthermore, we can construct sentences which say something "about" an
item of reference, i.e. by subsuming it under a given class, talk
about values of its properties, etc. So, I think, quite simple, no
artificial popularization level required, and no reason to worry.
The object-centered perspective comes in if we arrange concepts in a
hierarchy, i.e. if we describe prime numbers as a special kind of
numbers, etc., given by a terminological rule "if n is a prime number
then n is a number", etc. Assuming appropriate definitions, then
prime numbers "inherit" all general properties any number has... a
rather obvious idea. As for granularity, there is no general
recommendation except the fact that the degree of detail of a
description depends on the what you want to do with it; even as a
physicist you will not describe a piece of wood in quantum mechanical
terms if you want to build a table, but if you are planning some a
material science experiment you might want to extend your description
to the atomic level for obvious reasons.
Would you think that I left out something VERY important??
Hope this helps,
best wishes,
-- Guenther Goerz
On 4/29/08, Christian-Emil Ore <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear all,
I follow the interesting discussion about E89 Propositional Object and
Symbolic Object, 'refer to' and 'is about'. This is a non trivial topic
and specially interesting for people with background in formal
philosophy or logic. That is ok for me since I have this background (set
theoretical models for higher order type theory).
The introduction of higher level philosophical concepts in the model
may make the model harder to understand for persons without special
training in and/or interest in formal logic. This worries me.
One of the major advantages of CRM is the possibility to use the object
oriented formalism to choose levels of granularity.
It may be so that it could be an idea to have a granularity dimension
also on the philosophical complexity, that is, a kind of popularisation
axis (without throwing out the nicely and concise defined baby with the
water)? This may also make it easier to formulate an operational
compatibility requirement. It may also make CRM easier to understand for
a larger number of museum/cultural heritage persons form whom it was
originally intended (I at least believe).
Regards
hristian-Emil
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