National Knowledge Project

In so many cases, as we have all seen, there is a feeling (in my opinion, false) that the problem is found in legacy IT infrastructure. Many say (all the time and continuously) that observed resistance is based on intentions of existing infrastructure stake holders, and that this resistant is the only impediment to taking the next step. This position is made in the above article on LSID.

John Sowa makes this point over and over again in the ONTAG working group. He shares this as his wisdom about where we are at this point of history.

I disagree with John and with this often expressed sentiment.

In this viewpoint, there is no prediction (or anticipation) of any essential change in the available solution sets (addressing data integration, data interoperability and most important the computational analysis of patterns in data). There can be no revolution, only slow turning of incumbent processes in the current entrenchments.

I think the issue is merely one of clarity, or absence of clarity, in the face of pure and reinforced reductionism, AND THE TREMENDOUS VALUE THAT IS REALLY DERIVED FROM REDUCTIONISM IN PRACTICE. (please excuse the "shouting", but I do not wish anyone to suggest that I am saying that the reductionism of the last century has been of no value. The issue is one of allowing alternative viewpoints to be examined (AND FUNDED).)

The next step, in our opinion, is to recognize the difference between natural reality and simple (but complicated) mechanisms and viewpoints about the nature of natural processes. I have written about this, but I am in an extreme minority.

http://www.bcngroup.org/area3/pprueitt/kmbook/Chapter2.htm

LSID concepts reflect the leading thought... such as the work being done by EU's DERI on the OASIS SEE and SOA standards....

SEE is semantic execution environments

SOA is service oriented architecture

Barry Smith (in the cc) worked on a BFO (Basic Formal Ontology) with a primary distinction between span and snap... ie a process the continues to exist over the period of "observation", and instantaneous "state". This is likely the leading complete upper abstract biological ontology in the world (conjecture on my part). BioPAX should examine BFO and take for it valuable lessons learned by Barry and his co-workers. But then we should reflect on the issue of non-locality.

This BFO does not, in my opinion, address issues of non-locality, allosteric control, or indirect control of biological processes. No-local control is not recognized in most scientific circles, in spite the Bell's inequality in quantum mechanics. Some may argue that Bell's inequality is not relevant to modeling business processes (I respectfully disagree), but no one can argue (without rebuttal) from the gene and cell expression literatures that quantum effects play roles, and that these roles are amplified by the biology itself. Pribram talked with me over some months about Redopsin in the retina as a primary example. The so called "perceptual binding problem" (how does the brain function to achieve a single perception of the stimulus in the eye), is opened up by the study of perception. Microtubule conformational changes and emergent pattern propagation can be associated with neuronal assembly expression (Edelman) via the function of CAMs (cellular adhesive molecules), etc...

The scientific literature is complete with these types of control. It is noted that many believe that reductionism will tease out all control to be local. But this is a point of controversy, and clearly scientific markup language and ontology (that is required to make LSID transaction management a reality) should not assume that all control is local.

The next step is not to (pretend one is) over comes the legacy non-interoperability. It is to recognize that natural complexity requires one to step away from the first order formalism , as is being done in the SEE engineering at DERI. This (proposed) next step is to follow what is called "by-pass" theory, where the problem is re-formulated at the axiomatic ("axiomatic" as I use it not as Sowa uses it) level. How to do this? That is an open question for me ... but I know of 25 people in the world who would like to work on this and who know of each other's work.

Now, Barry may have some objections to how I have stated this; so I will forward to the working group his response to this message.

Dr Paul Prueitt

The Taos Research Institute

Taos New Mexico