Dear Franco,
Thank you for the great examples! I think we could elaborate further on
that to illustrate the principles of the
CRM. A good and comprehensive answer requires a more extensive text we
could work on together. This is
at the heart of the philosophical-epistemological questions we have to
formulate out and publish in order the CRM to
have a future beyond the current form.
I completely agree with what you describe, and that this in in the scope
of the CRM. I have the impression,
that I see the role of the CRM a bit differently, and basically less
ambitious. Important aspects to clarify
are the role of a knowledge base, the ontology, the reality, the sense
of truth in the knowledge base, and which
part of cultural-historical documentation should at all be covered by
formal ontologies, and which could at all
be covered, and how that part relates to other forms of documentation.
Let me try some preliminary remarks, more will better be discussed in
the meeting, and hopefully end in a
more comprehensive report.
On 21/2/2016 5:49 πμ, Franco Niccolucci wrote:
Dear Martin & Christian-Emile
Il giorno 20 feb 2016, alle ore 18:49, martin <[email protected]> ha scritto:
Dear Franco,
This rises two important methodological questions (also supporting
Christian-Emils response) :
On 19/2/2016 3:50 μμ, Franco Niccolucci wrote:
The correct definition mentioned by Christian-Emile refers to what I would call
“stand-alone” intangible heritage.
But, there is always an intangible component in tangible heritage, for example
what turns a stone into heritage.
In the CRM, as a principle, we reject this inversion of agency or causality,
which is common in the scholarly discourse: The stone does nothing, it does not
change. Therefore it cannot turn into heritage.
I never said that. I said (it is written above): “what turns a stone into
heritage”. The stone is the grammatical object, i.e. the entity that is acted
upon by the subject (here “what”). If you prefer, the same sentence may be
stated: “a stone is turned into heritage by its intangible heritage component”.
Analyzing this use of "heritage", we should answer the questions: what
is its substance, identity condition, how does it come into being, end
to be, and what is its parts. The existence conditions tell me, that a
community initiates it, and ends it. The stone is not affected, so it is
a state of a relationship between the community and the stone,
maintained by the community. In your examples below, you give evidence
that begin and end of this state is marked by causal events of human
activity. Would you agree on that?
I had objections against the verb "turned", sorry for misunderstanding
the agency! "Turning" something I'd understand anyway as a change of the
thing turned, but we agree that this is not the case. Modelling this
state as a "component" of the stone, which has no
influence on this state, is against knowledge representation principles.
It is in much better right a component of the community, because the
community is causal to it, but the RDF/OWL formalism does not have
components at all, only relationships, which relieves
us from the context-dependent decision where to attach the thing to.
It's between the stone and the community, but not the stone's. That was
my argument. I do not describe a different world than you do, I just
formalize it differently, always based on the same principles. There
should not be anything arbitrary or subjective in the process, once we
accept the principles. This gives the CRM its power. Now, if applying
these principles you or anybody else comes to a different result, we
discuss until we either agree which is the right application of the
principles, or detect more than one concept. Then we model both
concepts, if both are regarded relevant for the function of the CRM
(information integration).
Another question is, do I miss something doing this analysis? Do I
result in a loss of meaning versus the scholarly statement? Most
probably. But could I do better so that a machine will be able to
process these data?
Therefore in the CRM introduction:
"More specifically, it defines and is restricted to the *underlying
semantics* of database schemata and document *structures* used in
cultural heritage and museum documentation in terms of a formal
ontology. It does *not* define any of the *terminology* appearing
typically as data in the respective data structures; however it foresees
the characteristic relationships for its use. It does *not* aim at
proposing what cultural institutions *should* document. Rather it
explains the logic of what they actually currently document, and thereby
enables *semantic interoperability.**..
...*The CRM is however not thought to be a means to replace scholarly
text, rich in meaning, by logical forms, but only a means to identify
related data. "
*
*
This self-restriction is currently an admission to the shortcomings of
machines and formal logic for handling human knowledge, be it scientific
or scholarly.
Only people can start regarding it as heritage. People regarding it as heritage
will be supported by evidence about how people treat the stone or refer to the
stone. When the stone becomes (passively) heritage, there must be human
activities which are the cause, including human products such as texts,
paintings etc.
A painting (for example representing rites performed on that stone) cannot do
anything, it is a painting. Instead, it is somebody’s interpretation of the
painting and identification of the two stones, the material one and the
depicted one (sort of mental de-referencing), that identifies, or perhaps
defines, the intangible component of the material stone. Even a quotation in an
ancient text “Franco’s stone was sacred to the religion of the Francos” does
not suffice, as again you must identify the two stones, the one quoted and the
one you have in your hand.
Sure, obviously. I'd however acknowledge the different substance: The
stone in my hand is material, the one in my head a mental image.
As a mental image, it is a conceptual object, a stone-image, not a
stone. The quotation is a propositional object with material evidence -
the carrier on which I find it. Question: When I model the claim" "An
Actor XXX wrote around XXX BC ("ancient text") : “Franco’s stone was
sacred to the religion of the Francos”, do I need to represent for
purpose of information integration the mental image of "Franco's stone",
or is it sufficient from the modelled fact that someone wrote this text
and the quotation that we know and can rely on that necessarily the
writer had this mental image? This depends on the intend use and queries
of the model. For the CRM, we always ask for a use case in which the
modelled entity would serve a query and information integration.
Otherwise, such concepts can stay in our implicit understanding, or in a
much better scholarly text. Would you agree on that?
All this can be quite well documented in the CRM. If the stone were the cause,
different cultures couldn't have different perceptions about the stone. So, I
am not sure what else we would like to put into a formal ontology? If we have
evidence that the stone itself changes, we will model it.
I never said the contrary. But I am not sure (probably my ignorance) that all
the passages are correctly documented:
I see not gap in the CRM so far!
1. There is a stone (call it A) in the real world (probably an E18 Physical
Thing)
2. There is a stone (call it B) mentioned in a source (a text, a painting).
This is not a material stone, it is a conceptual one,
Yes
3. The two stones are "the same”, or, better, the conceptual stone B in the
source may be associated to (identified with?) the physical one, A.
This isomorphism of mental and physical world does not hold to my
understanding. This is, I believe, fundamental to understanding
scientific knowledge. This is on the agenda in the meeting this week.
I'd say the real stone has virtually unlimited properties, the image
only a few. The real stone justifies its images, which can be many, but
they are never the same. Different images may be compatible with the
same stone. If we model them as the same, we end up in logical
inconsistencies, if we model them as a relation of reference, we can
reason about the relationship. In case we have only the quotation, we
may have different candidate real stones.
Normally, we can assume the writer had one in mind, but in a poetic
text, he may play with polysemy. Would that make sense?
4. Somebody has made the above association.
5. This makes stone A an “interesting” thing.
In the communities minds and documents. In oder to argue historically,
we need an oral witness we document or a document, isn't it?
Both are material carriers in the end, isn't it?
If any of the above passages is removed (because it is wrong, it is a fake, whatever) Stone A loses much if its interest.
For a particular community...
Below two serious and a hilarious examples.
First example (real, courtesy Achille Felicetti). "It comes and goes"
In the 1970s’ a famous linguistic professor, Lejeune, had an Hungarian student,
Harmatta, also to become a famous scholar in linguistics, who told him about the
discovery in a part of ancient Pannonia (now Hungary) of some Venetic inscriptions
on a stone [our stone A], found in an excavation by Elisabeth Jerem, a well-reputed
archaeologist whom most of you will know and who did not report about the
“inscriptions". That language until then was believed to be spoken only in
Veneto by the Veneti. Based on images of the inscriptions that the student brought
to France, Harmatta graduated and published academic studies. Lejeune also published
further work endorsing his student's paper, and a whole corpus was built about the
Veneti of Pannonia. [My comment: this turned the “engraved” stone into heritage, and
the stone entered the Pecs museum holdings]
In the early 1990's two Italian professors, Prosdocimi and Marinetti, went to
Hungary to see first hand the artifacts. Once at the museum of Pecs, they
looked at all the material cited in Harmatta's paper, and there were no
inscriptions!
What had believed to be an inscription were simply natural scratches on the
stone!! It then resulted that Lejeune had never seen the stone, only poor
images of it.
This finding was then indipendently confirmed by Austrian scholars, and is now universally
accepted. (See: A.L. Prosdocimi, Sulle inesistenti iscrizioni venetiche di Pannonia, in
"Rivista di Epigrafia Italica", sezione di "Studi Etruschi" 58, 1992,
pp.315-316).
Thus stone A is “turned" by the first (Harmatta’s) “discovery” into heritage,
the witness of Venetic presence in modern Hungary, and documented as such: E24
Physical Man-made Thing P128 carries E34 Inscription P2 has type E55 Type “Venetic”.
But in 1992 the stone A is “returned” by Prosdocimi to its pristine state of
irrelevant pebble: E19 Physical Thing P56 bears feature E26 Physical Feature
(scratches).
Note that in the meanwhile the stone that we call A is unaware of all these
intellectual twiddles and academic fights, and lies in the Pecs museum in a
happy ataraxia state, as it has done for millennia.
My point is that the first, pre-1992, statement is not factual, as demonstrated by
later research; interpretation should be acknowledged as such. Christian-Emile’s
ontologist should be aware of this, and avoid endorsing dubious interpretations
(actually, interpretations are always dubious) by recording them as facts: “carries
inscription”, are you sure? No, you just trust Harmatta and Lejeune without saying
it, so you should say “carries inscription ACCORDING to Harmatta etc."
However, in most cases the interpretation is stable and pacific, so the
documenter may be content with a synthetic statement, i.e. without mentioning
the whys.
The issue is that the underlying ontology must allow for such specification,
when required, and this leads us in a risky route. Were Harmatta and Lejeune
talking of this stone, the one we call A? Or maybe another one which was
lost/discarded/...
Back to the Pecs stone, or stone A as I call it: it has oscillated between being tangible heritage, and being just rubbish, with two different documentations, both correct at some time, but with no physical change.
Perfect knowledge revision use case.
This shows that the documentation may change with any change in the documented
object, contrarily to what Martin states above.
I didn't say anything that is contrary to that! The ontology itself does
not define the facts, only the language to describe facts.
By "fact", we do not mean something "true", I think here is a
terminological misunderstanding, but a particular, justifiable state of
affairs.
It is the knowledge base which either implicitly claims truth with
respect to the beliefs of the maintainers of the knowledge base or
refers (CRMInf) to who claims that XXX. In the CRM view, documentation
never changes, it is extended. It is a question of maintaining
knowledge bases, which previous beliefs to discard, but we would not
regard it as a good practice. We just describe with CRMInf a new state
of beliefs, brought about by new evidence. This is not a problem of
intangible cultural heritage, but common to all scientific knowledge. A
community as a whole revises its knowledge when better evidence comes
up, at least as long as it is committed to scienctific epistemology.
With CRMInf we can trace the evolution of knowledge consistently.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Second example (real, courtesy of Sorin Hermon). “To be or not to be, that is
the question”
The Venus of Berekhat Ram is a pebble found on the Golan Heights, which by its
discoverer was claimed to be a female figurine, or as it is usually called, a
“Venus”. The artifact dates from Middle Palaeolithic (230.000 BC). It is
significant, because the oldest female figures known so far are dated around
50.000 BC.
Other scholars dispute this claim, as it is unclear:
a) if the scratches on the surface were man-made, and (a’) intentional, i.e.
carvings
b) if such carvings were made with the intention of representing something
c) if the representation concerns a female.
The full story with images is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Berekhat_Ram
So what is this? Heritage or not? Possible heritage? And how do we document it?
a) E19 Physical Thing P56 bears feature E26 Physical Feature P2 has type E55 Type
“scratches"
a') E24 Physical Man-made Thing P56 bears feature E26 Physical Feature P2 has
type E55 Type “carvings”
b) E24 Physical Man-made Thing P65 shows visual item E38 Image
c) E24 Physical Man-made Thing P62 depicts (P62.1 mode of depiction E55 Type
“carvings”) E38 Image P2 has type E55 Type “Venus”
I am a bit confused. The CRM never has modelled an entity or
relationship "heritage". The ontology itself does not deal with states
of belief and confidence, but provides a language to do so. CRMInf would
encapsulate different states of knowledge in "named graphs".
So a, a', b, c have different provenance and belief times. Then, it is a
technical question, how to present, archive, query etc. previous states
in one or more knowledge bases. The conflict only occurs, if you assume
one correct record per object. The CRM or any (good) ontology, however
does not describe data records, but an integrated knowledge base, which
can be fed from records of different provenance at different times.
Therefore, there are no descriptional components, only related items.
But without the Named Graph construct, a correct representation of a
state of scientific knowledge is impossible.
All you describe shows that the definition of what a knowledge base is
in the sense of the CRM is overdue, we are working feverishly on that :-) .
--------------------------------------------------
Third example (fictitious, and a bit joking to relieve you from the pain of
reading up to here; courtesy Lehar for names and plot).
In the National Archaeological Museum of Pontevedro, among the exhibits there is a
stone coming from the archaeological site excavated by Count Danilo. The stone is of
difficult interpretation, however it is considered part of the Pontevedran heritage
as it is kept and exhibited in the national museum [heritage is what museums
consider as such]. After many discussions and coups de theatre, the museum director,
Count Zeta, decides to ask Danilo why they brought that stone to the museum. It
comes up that the archaeological team used that stone just to keep a door open and
avoid that the wind slams it; it was packed with other similar stones, these being
“real" heritage assets, by the movers when the excavation was closed, and when
it arrived at the museum it was part of the “heritage” package, so it went on
display. In the meanwhile, Danilo has fallen in love with Hanna, a rich museum
sponsor, and they marry, what secures funding to archaeology forever - but that’s
another story...
This example shows that being heritage or not may depend on randomness. It is
fictitious, but an example of the opposite case i.e. real heritage
misunderstood as rubbish is reported here:
http://nypost.com/2015/10/27/modern-art-exhibit-mistaken-for-trash-and-thrown-away/.
---------------------------------------------
In conclusion, the moral is that Christian-Emile’s ontologist should not embark
in deciding whether the stone is true heritage or fake one.
That has never been done and never been intended! The ontology cannot
decide the belief in a property encoded with its terms. It is up to the
maintainers of the knowledge base to associate their trust in its
propositions (CRMInf foresees an open vocabulary of trust values). Or,
in other words, there are no knowledge bases. Only information bases.
Knowledge is in the people. Therefore, a "knowledge base" without a
known Actor believing it is just "poetry". Knowledge changes
continuously. It will never be fixed. But if we are good scientists,
knowledge becomes better with the time.
But the underlying ontology should provide tools to convey the expert’s opinion
about it and the documentation activity should also bear in mind - often taking
the liberty of disregarding it for practical reasons - that the nature of
things is not built-in, stamped in the things themselves, as sometimes we are
prone to believe.
Sure, this is exactly why I argued against a stone "turning into"...and
what you describe works with CRMInf, implementation being another
concern;-)
Although men are not (yet) telepathic, Martin, there are methods (e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method) supporting scientific
communication to increase our knowledge and enable reasoning.
Oops, how do I deserve that;-) ? That's exactly what I argue for! My
point is just to develop a clear understanding about the substance and
way of verification for each different kind of evidence. That needs
analysis. That is not "intangible";-) .
If incapable to deal with them, an ontology is just a sophisticated way of
setting up an (uninteresting) inventory of stuff.
As above, ontology is not equal knowledge base. I think we completely
agree :-) ?
The respective documents are overdue for the CRM.
Best,
Martin
Best
Franco
(We could discuss Buddha's footprints next week?).
This is hard to document together with the artifacts. One may have the (perhaps
wrong) impression that the CRM focuses on the tangible details rather than on
the equally important intangible ones.
The CRM focusses on what we find in documentation structures. Surprisingly, museum databases do not
much analyze in formal fields such "intangibles". I rember a workshop on history of art
in Rome. Asking about their concept of "work", participants clearly stated to me that
they do not want to discuss such a concept. In the end, librarians did, and then we modelled it.
There has never been any other judgement of focus in the CRM than data structures maintained by
relevant communities, and the ability to assign an intersubjective identity to the entities we
model, because otherwise they would not integrate with other data.
Of course, if relevant communities do not communicate with us , we miss
relevant foci ;-)
best,
martin
Franco
Prof. Franco Niccolucci
Director, VAST-LAB
PIN - U. of Florence
Scientific Coordinator
ARIADNE - PARTHENOS
Piazza Ciardi 25
59100 Prato, Italy
Il giorno 19 feb 2016, alle ore 14:29, Christian-Emil Smith Ore
<[email protected]> ha scritto:
Intangible cultural heritage has partly become a buzz-word. However, the term is ok.
Documentation of intangible cultural heritage has indeed very long traditions. This is
what scholars in field linguistics, philology, onomasiology etnogragraphy/etnology,
social anthropologists etc etc have been doing for centuries. It is nothing new here. On
should remember that an ontology is used to describe the way we can conceptualise our
understanding of the "intangible" in order to document it.
The UNESCO declaration is also quite clear, see below. In the CRM universe
FRBRoo is the most suitable ontology. Patrick Le Boeuf has given several
presentations on this.
Chr-Emil
1. The “intangible cultural heritage” means the practices, representations,
expressions,
knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural
spaces associated
therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize
as part of their
cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from
generation to generation,
is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their
environment, their
interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of
identity and
continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.
For the
purposes of this Convention, consideration will be given solely to such
intangible cultural
heritage as is compatible with existing international human rights instruments,
as well as with
the requirements of mutual respect among communities, groups and individuals,
and of
sustainable development.
2. The “intangible cultural heritage”, as defined in paragraph 1 above, is
manifested inter
alia in the following domains:
(a) oral traditions and expressions, including language as a vehicle of the
intangible
cultural heritage;
(b) performing arts;
(c) social practices, rituals and festive events;
(d) knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe;
(e) traditional craftsmanship.
-----Original Message-----
From: Crm-sig [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of martin
Sent: Friday, February 19, 2016 12:59 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Crm-sig] Recording Intangible Cultural Heritage
Dear Phil,
"Intangible heritage" is a bit a buzzword. I suggest to identify different
senses:
A) A particular activity, in particular performances. FRBRoo contains a model
for that, but that can be refined. My colleague George Bruseker has worked
on ome issues, may be other crm-sig members have.
B) A type of activity characteristic for a community, culture. Could be
technical know how, ceremonies etc.
This requires a pattern model as in ecology, which "rises" CRM properties to
a "typically..." metalevel. We have examples from biodiversity, may be other
crm-sig members have such models.
Each pattern is supported by evidence by individual events.
C) An oral tradition. These are Information Objects, the carriers being people.
A slight modification of FRBRoo could cover the details.
Comments?
Best,
Martin
On 19/2/2016 12:43 μμ, Carlisle, Philip wrote:
Hi all,
I’m resending this as it didn’t appear to get through.
As you may know the Arches Project has been using the CRM as the
backbone for a cultural heritage inventory system. This is working well and is
being implemented by many projects.
One such project now wants to use Arches to record intangible
heritage and so needs to create resource graphs, based on an ontology, in
order to do this.
Can the CRM be used to represent the intangible heritage? If not
does anyone know of an ontology that can?
Phil
Phil Carlisle
Data Standards Supervisor
Data Standards Unit, Listing Group
Historic England
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Dr. Martin Doerr | Vox:+30(2810)391625 |
Research Director | Fax:+30(2810)391638 |
| Email: [email protected] |
|
Center for Cultural Informatics |
Information Systems Laboratory |
Institute of Computer Science |
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) |
|
N.Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton, |
GR70013 Heraklion,Crete,Greece |
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Dr. Martin Doerr | Vox:+30(2810)391625 |
Research Director | Fax:+30(2810)391638 |
| Email: [email protected] |
|
Center for Cultural Informatics |
Information Systems Laboratory |
Institute of Computer Science |
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) |
|
N.Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton, |
GR70013 Heraklion,Crete,Greece |
|
Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl |
--------------------------------------------------------------
