What use the AstroOntology

[Anita M. S. Richards]

On Mon, 5 Mar 2007, Ashish Mahabal wrote:

> The aliasing mechanism provides for consistency. We could thereby miss some 
> truths. We can only hope that we do not miss any interesting ones.
>
> Flikr, blogspot are inconsistent systems in that A would define SN as 
> something and B would define SNe as something else, but C may presume them to 
> be the same. All will be happy, but at least one will be wrong.
>

Not necessarily.  I might define a radio supernova, you might define a 
gamma ray burst, she might define optical lines.  Any one of these 
phenomena might be characteristic of SNe, but not uniquely so; having 2 or 
3 definitions together might help to distinguish SNe from AGN etc... Or, 
of course, some might be wrong - but lots of things are wrong in astronomy 
in the sense that we don't yet know everything (otherwise we'd be out of a 
job anyway!).  Similarly, my Seyfert 2 Markarian 348 may be your Grand 
Design spiral NGC 262 (as seen in HI) but they are the same galaxy - 
unless Halton Arp is right and the AGN is an unrelated phenomenon.

There has been a lot of discussion in data modelling about 'sources' v. 
'objects' (i.e. attempting to classify descriptions v. the astronomical 
origins of emission) whch might help, too. I am certainly not equipped to 
know what are the most powerful reasoning methods but I'd be happy to give 
things a go when there is something to test.

all the best

Anita