Everyone,
I'd like to comment on the proposed addition to Darwin Core of an "organism" class (https://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=205). I am one of the submitters of this proposal, but I have some reservations/suggestions/questions about both the definition and the name. Taking them in turn:
The Definition The proposed definition is: "A particular organism or defined group of organisms considered to be taxonomically homogeneous. An organism in the sense used here is defined as OBI:0100026 (http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/OBI_0100026). Instances of the Organism class are intended to facilitate linking of one or more Identification instances to one or more Occurrence instances. Therefore, things that are typically assigned scientific names (such as viruses, hybrids, and lichens) and aggregates whose occurrences are typically recorded (such as packs, clones, and colonies) are included in the scope of this class."
There are a few things to note here: i. The definition of OBI:0100026 is "A material entity that is an individual living system, such as animal, plant, bacteria or virus, that is capable of replicating or reproducing, growth and maintenance in the right environment. An organism may be unicellular or made up, like humans, of many billions of cells divided into specialized tissues and organs." This definition is not internally consistent, since it delineates organisms as being either unicellular or multi-cellular, while at the same time explicitly including viruses, which are acellular.
ii. The reference to OBI:0100026 does not add clarity to the DwC definition, since the DwC definition goes on to include the clarifying aspects of the OBI definition (viruses and lichens are organsims), while leaving out the muddying aspects of the OBI definition (organisms are unicellular or multicellular). The DwC definition also extends the the OBI defintion (to include wolf packs).
iii. The rdf definition of OBI:organism inherits axioms from the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). I've long argued that it's a mistake for TDWG to commit to any particular upper ontology, as there is no consensus upper ontology. (Some scientific communities use Dolce, some use SUMO, and many have deliberately chosen to use none at all.) In general, I like the notion of Darwin Core as a glossary of terms, on top of which various data models can be built. When we import terms that carry with them an abundance of ontological commitment, it raises the stakes for those who choose to use TDWG vocabularies. (In contrast, when Darwin Core imported "Location" from Dublin Core, it did so at no cost, since Dublin Core is not tied to any particular upper world-view.)
The Name There have been multiple debates about a good name for this class, and there was never consensus. (In addition to "Organism", candidates included "Individual", "OrganismalIndividual", "TaxonIndividualOrGroup", "OrganismOrTaxonomicallyHomogenousGroupOfOrganisms", "OccurringThing".) I agree that we're unlikely to agree on a consensus name, but I question why we need a name at all. Although TDWG has traditionally used transparent identifiers for terms, this has been by convention, and is not a requirement. Is it time to test the "opaque identifier" waters? Are there potential problems with having a mix of transparent and opaque identifiers in our vocabularies? If not, could we call this class dwc:12345? Should we?
Thoughts on any of the above?
Many thanks, Joel.