Taxonomy issues

[Tony Linde]

A letter in Nature today (Vol 419, 26 Sept, p 337) raises the concern
that creating a 'taxonomy portal' (taxonomy in the sense of species
classification) could lead to the imposition of a standard view of what
an object is or is not, whereas, at the moment, two authors can review
the same evidence and come to different conclusions about the
classification of a species.

I think this is an issue that will come to the fore in the creation of
an AstroOntology which might sit at the core of our VO's registries and
workflow engines. 

Is it possible using DAML+OIL or equivalents to classify the same object
as two apparently contradictory things? I assume not. But both authors
must be allowed to classify an object as different things. So how is
this issue resolved?

Cheers,
Tony. 

__
Tony Linde                       Phone:  +44 (0)116 223 1292
AstroGrid Project Manager        Fax:    +44 (0)116 252 3311
Dept of Physics & Astronomy      Mobile: +44 (0)7753 603356
University of Leicester          Email:  tol at star.le.ac.uk
Leicester, UK   LE1 7RH          Web:    http://www.astrogrid.org