Casey,
You can see physical types in ontologies. There are many ontological
approaches, starting from the religious beliefs of Plato and Aristotle ("one
true essence of things") thru Semantic Web hipe ("one true logic of things") to
the more practical ontological languages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_15926
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gellish
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc
...
Cyc contains some kind of programming DSL (CycL) and used in AI field, two
others are mostly for modeling.
Now I'm working on a software support for ISO 15926, .15926 Browser/Editor.
project community blog at http://dot15926.livejournal.com/ (in russian)
We are using ordinary Python for this project and ontological experience has
good influence on architecture (including ability to keep code base small :)
One of the possible ways of evolution for programming languages is a native
support of ontological features: embedding semantic types, pragmatic types,
facts, etc in a good old code=data way and avoiding logic paradigm at the same
time. When dealing with the real world we need many different logics, not just
one of them.
// Valery Krylov
On 2011-07-27 06:28, Casey Ransberger wrote:
Please forgive - not a physicist.
Ian mentioned something about a Bose-Einstein Condensate for computer
programming once, and this really jumped out at me.
I've seen math and I've seen biology applied, at least in metaphor, to our
problems. I can't think of a lot of stories about applying physics to these
troubles, and I wonder why.
I keep hearing about purely mathematical type systems. I will admit that being focused on
"type" seems to have been a bit of an intellectual digression for me, perhaps
because the Air Force base really wanted me to take classes centered on Ada, and when I
eventually found Smalltalk, I felt almost a sense of relief.
I don't think I've ever seen a set of types that looked anything like #(strong
weak electro slipperyGraviton) asSet. Maybe it's because this is too much like
a type system for an assembly language?
I probably don't have sufficient command of these fields to even ask smart
questions. I'm asking anyway.
With the discussion of "particles and fields" it seems at least topical.
Any takers?
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