From: Jerry Hobbs (hobbs@ISI.EDU)
Date: 03/11/03
Anthony, > A number of people working on space and time, particularly > in reference to geographical processes, have advocated a > four-dimensional ontology based on space-time chunks. I > think there may be something to be said for this approach > in some situations, particular when modelling complex > phenomena that simultaneously manifest both object-like and > process-like aspects, depending on how they are viewed > (e.g., a hurricane can be tracked like a moving object in > satellite images, but from the point of view of someone on > the ground, in its path, it's more like an event - so it > might be useful to have an underlying representation from > which both these cases arise as different projection, as it > were). In order to take this view of the phenomena, one > presumably also needs an integrated 4D ontology of > spatio-temporal locations - so alongside your two lists for > Space and Time, there could be a third list, for > Space-Time. (Some enthusiasts for this point of view would > say that the third list should *replace* the first two, but > more conservatively we might at least want it co-existing > with them - though of course that also implies that we need > to sort out the relationships between elements in the > Space-Time list and corresponding elements in the other two > lists ...) I'm not one of those enthusiasts. You'd hate to be saddled with a space-time ontology if all you are doing is a calendaring tool. But your suggestion is a good one. It is probably a good desideratum to keep in mind in doing a space ontology that it should support a space-time ontology as well, in some sense of "support". -- Jerry
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