Welcome to my new blog. I am just starting a Master of Research degree at University College London studying taxonomies. I am now getting pretty good at explaining what they are but I’m not going to do that here. Suffice it to say that if you think I am going to write about stuffed animals or the Inland Revenue, you’re in the wrong place!
My first real encounter with taxonomical systems was during the 1990s when I worked as an editor of reference books, working on such titles as the Collins English Dictionary, the Macmillan Encyclopedia, and the Hutchinson Encyclopedia and Almanac. In between learning when to use “which” and “that” and spot a typo at 40 paces, I was assigned to the thesaurus team. Eventually, I was given the wonderful task of devising the structure for a new edition of the UK’s first fully electronically compiled general language thesaurus, for Bloomsbury. Creating a hierarchy of everything was an incredible project and left me fascinated by the grey areas and the concepts that ooze like slime moulds from one category to another.
So, I find your blog via an interest in text mining & ontology; then discover that slime moulds feature on your second entry. Wonderful! It was an interest in Dictyostelium at 17 years old that put me on my path to where I am now.
I don’t think that the link is a good one, however. The two types of slime moulds are biologically distinct, whereas the Kiwi site conflates them somewhat.
Overall, though, I consider that hierarchic taxonomies are not sophisticated enough to effectively describe the universe and its relationships: ontology is needed, with its multivariate levels, multiple relationships and greater sophistication.
Good luck with the Masters.
I took mine after 20 years out – it was one of the best experiences of my life.
I am delighted to see the power of the web working to bring greater precision! I’ll see if I can find a better slime moulds page.
I agree taxonomies are not the most sophisticated of representational devices, but think they still have a place. They can be an easy signposting system, even if they can’t show every relationship. Sometimes you need a scalpel, sometimes a sledgehammer – it depends on what you need to get done.
To get a really sophisticated picture of a large and complex knowledge domain taxonomies alone won’t do, and ontologies have potential for much subtler expression. I’ve noted that companies like Biowisdom list taxonomies and ontologies as “feeder” resources for their intelligent querying systems. I think these are “little” ontologies that map a few relationships in a fairly circumscribed arena. The companies clearly see taxonomies and little ontologies as cogs in a much bigger information “machine” – the overall scope of which sounds more like the “big” ontologies you describe. It’s a fascinating area and I will be watching with interest!
Here are some more slime mould links: Slime moulds, Taxonomy, slime molds, and the questions we ask, and Rethinking Slime Mold Taxonomy.
Another thought on taxonomies and ontologies – I was talking to a very experienced taxonomist from a major news provider who said that often people talk about needing an ontology when what they really want is a way of connecting diverse taxonomies and that perhaps some sort of hypertaxonomies will emerge that are neither exactly taxonomies nor onotologies.