Closed l-emele closed 2 years ago
The other option would be to axiomatise this the other way round:
energy 'has origin' some origin
'portion of matter' 'has origin' some origin
After thinking a bit, this seems to be better, as we already have for most subclasses of energy and portion of matter the axioms in that structure.
If we implement as proposed in my last comment, the structure would look like this (two red arrows)[^1].
If we do it, as proposed in the proposed solution of the issue start, we would create a cycle of relations. But according to @jannahastings' Primer on ontologies such cycles should be avoided.
[^1]: For the third red arrow, see #1167
@stap-m : Any thoughts on this? Would be nice to solve this issue soon that we can finalise the picture for the paper.
@l-emele In the older OBO-format ontologies, it was considered best practice to avoid cycles of relationships in order to avoid impacting algorithms that traversed ontologies as graph structures recursively and would be sensitive to such cycles. In the OWL language, this problem does not usually arise with object properties so I think we can certainly use cycles of relationships where they make sense.
Okay, if that is not a problem, than there is also a third option: Axiomatising the relations in both directions by e.g. adding
origin 'has bearer' some ('portion of matter' or energy)
energy 'has origin' some origin
'portion of matter' some origin
The pro is that this would make it easier to understand these concepts for non-ontology experts. The con is that would be a bit more work for further maintenance of the OEO. But I think in this case the pro might weigh more than the con.
Description of the issue
The definitions of
origin
and its subclasses indicate relations between origins and portions of matter and/or energies. However, these are not axiomatised.Ideas of solution
origin 'has bearer' some ('portion of matter' or energy)
anthropogenic 'has bearer' some ('portion of matter' or energy)
synthetic 'has bearer' some 'portion of matter'
geogenic' has bearer' some ('portion of matter' or energy)
fossil 'has bearer' some 'portion of matter'
renewable 'has bearer' some energy'
Workflow checklist
I am aware that