Dear Francesco
I find my self troubled by your contention that “One can ask sailors
or informed contemporaries and they will know who the owner of the
ship is”, is in some way an observation of ownership. At best, it is a
statement that an instance of Actor at a particular point in time
expressed an opinion about the ownership of a vessel. This may itself
be of interest of course and may be part of the evidence that we use
to make an estimation of ownership (where proper documentation is no
longer available) but it is not an observation.
Rgds
SdS
Stephen Stead
Tel +44 20 8668 3075
Mob +44 7802 755 013
E-mail ste...@paveprime.com <mailto:ste...@paveprime.com>
LinkedIn Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/steads/
<https://www.linkedin.com/in/steads/>
*From:*Crm-sig <crm-sig-boun...@ics.forth.gr> *On Behalf Of *Francesco
Beretta via Crm-sig
*Sent:* 01 March 2022 09:47
*To:* athinak <athi...@ics.forth.gr>
*Cc:* crm-sig@ics.forth.gr
*Subject:* Re: [Crm-sig] CALL FOR E-VOTE ISSUE 581
Dear Athina,
Thank you for taking of your time and for making explicit the reasons
of your modelling choices and methodology.
As University trained historians, we know that the model of the
information produced by a project generally depends on the research
agenda and the available sources. The model of a project is therefore
not an ontology in the sense of a conceptualisation allowing for
multi-project interoperability. Even the way of modelling a ship's
voyage may change according to the lines of inquiry of different
research projects. For this reason, a strict bottom-up modelling
methodology in the field of historical research, and more broadly in
the social sciences, without foundational analysis, doesn't seem to be
the most appropriate way of producing an ontology for the whole
portion of reality —a quite relevant portion in the cultural heritage
perspective— these disciplines are concerned with.
Regarding the ownership of a ship
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship-owner), which in French is in some
contexts referred to under the technical term 'armement'
(https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armement_(marine) — cf. "registration
activity" below), the_social fact of ownership_ is as such and _in
general —in the sense of ontology— observable_. One can ask sailors or
informed contemporaries and they will know who the owner of the ship
is. There are historical sources, for example correspondence, which
attest to the role of shipowners (/armateurs/) of such and such a
person or company, even if we have lost the shipping registers which
state the events of taking ownership.
In the Sealit project, a methodological choice or stance was adopted
which is certainly legitimate in the project's context, but which one
should avoid to generalize stating e.g. that ship ownership is not
directly observable, as this would be in contradiction with observable
reality. Besides the collective, attested and observable knowledge of
ownership, there are, for other subdomains, written statements about
it. One has to think of the land registry documents
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadastre) which often attest to the
social fact of land ownership, or other rights on land, without
necessarily knowing where it comes from. These rights are observable
and part of reality as evidenced by the recent trials and convictions
of climate activists who have occupied and organised unauthorised
events at the headquarters of private companies, on the basis of
infringement of private property.
So should one intend that social bonds, ownership, etc. are —in
general and as such— not observable does not seem to be very prudent
because the fact of generalising a specific method of modelling whose
foundation and epistemological principles have never really been made
explicit (in their foundational, philosophical aspects) risks
compromising the possibility of adopting such an ontology by entire
scientific communities, such as the social sciences, historical
sciences, etc., whose objects are precisely related the social facts
and immaterial cultural heritage.
I am therefore not at all criticizing the modelling choices of the
Sealit project, which are entirely legitimate in the context of the
project's model. I would simply caution against implicitly accepting
foundational and philosophical modelling principles, such as those we
are called to vote on —e.g. the reference to "empirical _material_
evidence" in the context of an ontology (the CRM) that "only commits
to a unique _material_ reality independent from the observer"—
regarding issues that appear to be merely about innocuous wording, and
by far are not, and should actually be once explicitly formulated,
discussed and accepted.
It is in this sense that I understand this question, as well as the
one raised in issue 581, to fall under issues 504 and 580.
Hoping to have answered your question in this way, with my best regards
Francesco
----
Dr. habil. Francesco Beretta
Chargé de recherche au CNRS,
Chargé d'enseignement à l'Université de Neuchâtel
Axe de recherche en histoire numérique,
Laboratoire de recherche historique Rhône-Alpes
LARHRA UMR CNRS 5190,
MSH LSE,
14, Avenue Berthelot
69363 LYON CEDEX 07
Publications
<https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/search/index/?qa%5bauth_t%5d%5b%5d=Francesco+Beretta&sort=producedDate_tdate+desc>
Le projet dataforhistory.org <http://dataforhistory.org/> – Ontology
Management Environment OntoME <http://ontome.dataforhistory.org/>
Projet "FAIR data" en histoire
<http://phn-wiki.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/doku.php?id=fairdata:accueil>
L’Axe de recherche en histoire numérique
<http://larhra.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/pole-histoire-numerique> du LARHRA
Le projet symogih.org <http://symogih.org/>– SPARQL endpoint
<http://symogih.org/?q=rdf-publication>
Portail de ressources géo-historiques GEO-LARHRA
<http://geo-larhra.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/>
Portail de ressources textuelles
<http://xml-portal.symogih.org/index.html> au format XML
Cours Outils numériques pour les sciences historiques
<http://phn-wiki.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/doku.php?id=intro_histoire_numerique:accueil>
Dépôt GitHub avec documentation des cours et travaux d’étudiant-e-s
<https://github.com/Sciences-historiques-numeriques>
Le 28.02.22 à 11:25, athinak a écrit :
Dear Francesco, dear all,
There may be a misunderstanding regarding the class Legal Object
Relationship, which I explained in the presentation in the last
sig meeting: We defined this class in a sense of a state of
ownership of a ship, which is a kind of information that can be
inferred (implicit knowledge) and not directly observed – it can
be observed by the starting and terminating event of this state.
It is like the soc Bond, which describes social/legal
relationships that cannot be observed.
We strictly follow the modelling principle which refers that we
model from actual information sources that reveal actual
practice- according to the historians of the sealit project, a
ship ownership phase is described as a state with the only
information documented to be about the ship owner, the shares that
may have and the name of the ship, not the dates of this ownership
(which is a quite complex phenomenon to observe since a person e.g
may possess up to 1/48 of a ship, so you can understand how many
ships shares a single person could have in the same time and there
is no documented information on the timespan of this shareholding.
Additionally, the ownership is used to assign a name to a ship and
a ship changes its name under an ownership state. However,
additional temporal information on these names under ownership
states is not documented in the source – the Ownership phase can
be traced by the ship registration activity (that includes
timespan information) that initiates it and by the de-flagging,
both events that are documented. This is material evidence, coming
from the source. If you open a Loyd catalogue, you will find
these information under ship registration without dates on the
owners of the ship.
Another modeling principle that is represented in our decision to
leave Legal Object Relationship as a subclass of E1 CRM Entity is
that we support the progressive improvement of classification
knowledge by IsA hierarchy. Since we don’t have enough knowledge
and we support the open world assumption, which means that new
evidence may change the classification, we prefer to model the
more general (here we classified under E1) and then, when we have
more precise knowledge by instances on the nature of this Legal
Ob.Relationship class, then we can progressively specialize and
refine the E1 and find the superclass under which Legal Object
Relationship fits.
Sealit is a model that is based on data input, it can be refined
and improved based on new knowledge, new instances.
I just wanted to explain this logic under which the model was
constructed and to prove that it is one of the most representative
documentations from material evidence we had, in our experience.
So I am a bit confused how this use case supports raising
philosophical questions regarding issue 581.
My BRs,
Athina
On 2022-02-25 12:29, Francesco Beretta via Crm-sig wrote:
Dear Martin, dear Franco,
I assume that the same question by Franco (Issue 581) is
raised by
page 25 ?
" What goes on in our minds or is produced by our minds is also
regarded as part of the material reality, as it becomes
materially
evident to other people at least by our utterances, behavior and
products. "
" priority of integrating information based on material evidence
available for whatever human experience."
" The CIDOC CRM only commits to a unique material reality
independent
from the observer."
Cf. the new proposition below:
" As “available documented and empirical material evidence” are
regarded all types of material collected and displayed by
museums and
related institutions, as defined by ICOM[1], and other
collections of
things providing evidence about the past, in-situ objects, sites,
monuments and intangible heritage relating to fields such as
social
history, ethnography, archaeology, fine and applied arts, natural
history, history of sciences and technology. "
It seems to me that these 'fussy' questions raise in fact,
once again,
the relevant Issue 504 concerning the philosophical
underpinnings of
CRM.
The consequences of this approach are illustrated by the recently
published Sealit project ontology, class: Legal Object
Relationship
(e.g. property of a ship by some actor): "This class comprises
legal
object relationships of which the timespan and the state (of
these
relationships) cannot be observed or documented. We can only
observe
these relationships through the events that initialize or
terminate
this state of relationship (starting event and terminating
event). "
I'm not sure how many domain experts would agree with this
definition
because ownership of things, as a fact, is attested in written
texts,
or even in minds of living persons and expressed in
utterances, and
these are empirically observable.
The here adopted foundational stance excludes this fact (i.e.
property) from being a subclass of E2 Temporal Entity. Legal
Object
Relationship is declared as subclass of E1 Entity.
But on page 33 of the CRM documentation we can read: "The more
specific subclasses of E2 Temporal Entity enable the
documentation of
events pertaining to individually related/affected material,
social or
mental objects that have been described using subclasses of E77
Persistent Item. "
I must therefore admit that a careful reader is somewhat
confused and
that having an extension, such as CRMsoc, providing additional
classes
to deal with individual intentional and social life, and
dealing with
mental and social facts as empirically observable, intentional
(collective) facts as we propose, could only be an advantage.
This email therefore relates to issues 504 and 580. I'd kindly
ask to
put it there and add there links to the relevant other issues.
All the best
Francesco
On 14.02.22 20:38, Martin Doerr via Crm-sig wrote:
Dear All
Please vote "YES" for accept, "NO" for not accept:
Background
Proposal by Franco Niccolucci (9 January 2022)
With other colleagues, I am translating into Italian the
CIDOC CRM
documentation. This forced me to (or if you prefer, it
gave me the
opportunity of) reading it with great attention to minute
details.
On page 10 of the Introduction I found a couple of things
that may
need to be changed: both are in the bottom of the page
describing
the CRM Intended Scope, where some expressions used in such
description are explained in greater detail.
1. In the first bullet point, the term “scientific and
scholarly
documentation” is explained as compliant to the quality level
“expected and required by museum professionals and
researchers in
the field.” What about archaeologists, architectural
historians
etc.? I would replace this statement with “expected and
required
by heritage professionals and researchers in the field.”,
which
would also expand the “field” beyond museology as implied
by the
other formulation, which is also contradictory with the
much wider
ambit listed in the second bullet.
2. In the second bullet point the meaning of the term
“available
documented and material evidence” is explained. Actually, a
different expression was used in the previous text, being
clarified
here; “available documented and empirical evidence”. When
defining a term, I think it is preferable to avoid using
different
albeit equivalent expressions. Moreover, the equivalence of
“empirical” and “material” is debatable: according to my
Oxford dictionary
empirical = based on, concerned with, or verifiable by
observation
or experience rather than theory or pure logic
material = denoting or consisting of physical objects
rather than
the mind or spirit
I may agree with “empirical” but I am not sure I would agree
with “material”.
As you can see, this is a fussy comment. But the devil is
in the
details... and in this case a naughty commenter (not my
case) might
think that both are Freudian slips :)
3. In the third and fourth bullet points, collections are
addressed.
But the third point considers “cultural heritage collections”
and the fourth “museum collections”, actually in the same
copy-paste sentence. Is this difference intentional, or
again a
slip? I imagine in both cases “cultural heritage collections”
must be used.
-------------------------
PROPOSAL:
OLD:
SCOPE OF THE CIDOC CRM
The overall scope of the CIDOC CRM can be summarised in
simple terms
as the curated, factual knowledge about the past at a
human scale.
However, a more detailed and useful definition can be
articulated by
defining both the Intended Scope, a broad and
maximally-inclusive
definition of general application principles, and the
Practical
Scope, which is expressed by the overall scope of a growing
reference set of specific, identifiable documentation
standards and
practices that the CIDOC CRM aims to semantically describe,
restricted, always, in its details to the limitations of the
Intended Scope.
The reasons for this distinctions between Intended and
Practical
Scope are twofold. Firstly, the CIDOC CRM is developed in a
“bottom-up” manner, starting from well-understood,
actually and
widely used concepts of domain experts, which are
disambiguated and
gradually generalized as more forms of encoding are
encountered.
This aims to avoid the misadaptations and vagueness that can
sometimes be found in introspection-driven attempts to find
overarching concepts for such a wide scope, and provides
stability
to the generalizations found. Secondly, it is a means to
identify
and keep a focus on the concepts most needed by the
communities
working in the scope of the CIDOC CRM and to maintain a
well-defined
agenda for its evolution.
The Intended Scope of the CIDOC CRM may, therefore, be
defined as
all information required for the exchange and integration of
heterogeneous scientific and scholarly documentation about
the past
at a human scale and the available documented and
empirical evidence
for this. This definition requires further elaboration:
· The term “scientific and scholarly documentation” is
intended to convey the requirement that the depth and
quality of
descriptive information that can be handled by the CIDOC
CRM should
be sufficient for serious academic research. This does not
mean that
information intended for presentation to members of the
general
public is excluded, but rather that the CRM is intended to
provide
the level of detail and precision expected and required by
heritage
professionals and researchers in the field.
· As “available documented and material evidence” are
regarded all types of material collected and displayed by
museums
and related institutions, as defined by ICOM[1], and other
collections, in-situ objects, sites, monuments and intangible
heritage relating to fields such as social history,
ethnography,
archaeology, fine and applied arts, natural history,
history of
sciences and technology.
· The concept “documentation” includes the detailed
description of individual items, in situ or within
collections,
groups of items and collections as a whole, as well as
practices of
intangible heritage. It pertains to their current state as
well as
to information about their past. The CIDOC CRM is
specifically
intended to cover contextual information: the historical,
geographical and theoretical background that gives
cultural heritage
collections much of their cultural significance and value.
· The documentation of collections includes the detailed
description of individual items within collections, groups
of items
and collections as a whole. The CIDOC CRM is specifically
intended
to cover contextual information: the historical,
geographical and
theoretical background that gives museum collections much
of their
cultural significance and value. NEW:
SCOPE OF THE CIDOC CRM
The overall scope of the CIDOC CRM can be summarised in
simple terms
as the curated, factual knowledge about the past at a
human scale.
However, a more detailed and useful definition can be
articulated by
defining both the Intended Scope, a broad and
maximally-inclusive
definition of general application principles, and the
Practical
Scope, which is expressed by the overall scope of a growing
reference set of specific, identifiable documentation
standards and
practices that the CIDOC CRM aims to semantically describe,
restricted, always, in its details to the limitations of the
Intended Scope.
The reasons for this distinctions between Intended and
Practical
Scope are twofold. Firstly, the CIDOC CRM is developed in a
“bottom-up” manner, starting from well-understood,
actually and
widely used concepts of domain experts, which are
disambiguated and
gradually generalized as more forms of encoding are
encountered.
This aims to avoid the misadaptations and vagueness that can
sometimes be found in introspection-driven attempts to find
overarching concepts for such a wide scope, and provides
stability
to the generalizations found. Secondly, it is a means to
identify
and keep a focus on the concepts most needed by the
communities
working in the scope of the CIDOC CRM and to maintain a
well-defined
agenda for its evolution.
The Intended Scope of the CIDOC CRM may, therefore, be
defined as
all information required for the exchange and integration of
heterogeneous scientific and scholarly documentation about
the past
at a human scale and the available documented and
empirical evidence
for this. This definition requires further elaboration:
· The term “scientific and scholarly documentation” is
intended to convey the requirement that the depth and
quality of
descriptive information that can be handled by the CIDOC
CRM should
be sufficient for serious academic research. This does not
mean that
information intended for presentation to members of the
general
public is excluded, but rather that the CRM is intended to
provide
the level of detail and precision expected and required by
heritage
professionals engaged in cultural and scientific heritage
and
researchers in these fields.
· As “available documented and empirical material
evidence”
are regarded all types of material collected and displayed by
museums and related institutions, as defined by ICOM[1],
and other
collections of things providing evidence about the past,
in-situ
objects, sites, monuments and intangible heritage relating
to fields
such as social history, ethnography, archaeology, fine and
applied
arts, natural history, history of sciences and technology.
· The concept “documentation” includes the detailed
description of individual items, in situ or within
collections,
groups of items and collections as a whole, as well as
practices of
intangible heritage. It pertains to their current state as
well as
to information about their past. The CIDOC CRM is
specifically
intended to cover contextual information: the historical,
geographical and theoretical background that gives
cultural heritage
collections much of their cultural significance and value.
· Delete the fourth paragraph, it is repeating the third!
-------------------------
[1] The ICOM Statutes provide a definition of the term
“museum”
at http://icom.museum/statutes.html#2 The term “should” is
used
in the sense of a binding recommendation by the standards.
This is
what users adhering to the standard have to do. It
“should” be
consistently used throughout the document.
--
------------------------------------
Dr. Martin Doerr
Honorary Head of the
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
Vox:+30(2810)391625
Email: mar...@ics.forth.gr
Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl
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