Vocab AND Ontology?

[Rob Seaman]

Ed uttered:

> Actually, it is a real challenge to find missing important terms.

That's why it took 70 years (1857 to 1928) for the first edition of  
the OED.  (Read Simon Winchester's excellent "Meaning of Everything"  
- or anything else he's written.)  One hopes it won't take us that long.

> But, here are some more terms that I dug up, mostly newer terms or  
> broad, top level terms.

I guess I want to know the intent of this exercise.  Wasn't the point  
to generate separate purpose specific vocabularies?

> supergalactic coordinate system

For instance, this seems unlikely to appear in many VOEvent packets.

> primary companion star
> secondary companion star
> tertiary companion star

Surely there must be a generic ontological mechanism for specifying  
such derivative concepts?

> Geometric Quantities: (separate namespace?)

Indubitably separate.  Just because astronomy encompasses the entire  
universe, that doesn't mean we need to include all of mathematics,  
physics and film theory.

> square

Not a lot of squares (celestial, anyway) in astronomy.

(Now we'll have 37 hip messages about squareness.  In fond memory of  
Ted Harrison, let me be first to use today's vocabulary word,  
"polytrope".)

- Rob