Hi Peter,
since you address me, I have a hard time to refrain from polluting other peoples mailboxes...
I believe that was Linnaeus's original intent. Unfortunately the current system seems to have strayed from this original goal.
Linné believed that species types were objective (they are not, they depend on a species concept, which sadly is usually not mentioned in publications...) and he did not take scientific progress (and the versioning this demands) into account. Versioning is still a challenge for much of scientific communication, I think we do not need to be too self deprecating.
You have a name, lets say Duplictus annoyii. To get information about what that name might be you reference a semantic web service using a URL form of the name. http://example.org/names/Duplictus_annoyii If you a human using a web browser this will return a page that lists all the things it might be. Kingdom Animalia Duplictus annoyii Schmoe 1886 => appears in database in X, Y, Z
Yes, that is name usage indexing, which is very useful.
Eventually the service could also include opinions about which name variants are valid and which are not. Felis concolor => Felis concolor Linnaeus 1771 "Valid" names would include properly formed synonyms so Felis concolor would return Felis concolor Linnaeus 1771.
If you mean nomenclaturally validly formed name, yes, I believe that is a service that IPNI and others should perform.
The associated URLs for each of these forms would be HTML Page http://example.org/names/Duplictus_annoyii.html RDF Page http://example.org/names/Duplictus_annoyii.rdf This service would help map a given genus specific epithet combination to possible full scientific names with authorship.
I think of these names, among possible name variants, as "canonical" names, i.e. names that are formed according to best practice, e.g. as defined by the code (but possible also by others).
In GNUB / GNITE these two URI's could be considered reconciliation groups. http://example.org/recgroups/Animal/Felis_concolor%C2%A0%C2%A0 => PrefName:""Felis concolor Linnaeus 1771" http://example.org/recgroups/Animal/Puma_concolor%C2%A0%C2%A0%C2%A0=%3E PrefName:"Puma concolor (Linnaeus, 1771)" This allows a different service or different groups to make statements about these. http://example.org/recgroups/Animal/Felis_concolor%C2%A0olderSynonymFor http://example.org/recgroups/Animal/Puma_concolor or http://example.org/recgroups/Animal/Felis_concolor%C2%A0isBasionymOf%C2%A0ht...
Whereas the basionym- or replacement-name-relation is homotypic unambiguous, the heterotypic synonym relation is a function of species concepts.
What I try to say about taxon concept management, is that we usually don't have the biological knowledge to document the circumscription of a taxon in an objective way. There are trivial and easy cases, like two morphoforms, long recognized, well understood, that are now understood to be truly only one species with varieties. In practice, this is, in my opinion, rare. More likely is that a new species is now detected. However, now it depends on the phrasing and structure of the identification tools previously used, whether earlier identifications according to a given publications would have included the new species or not. That is, in the light of a new species, every publication that aids identification defines its own taxon concept.
I am rather certain that biologists don't have the resources to investigate this in its full breadth. However, in some important cases, where necessary or particularly interesting, these resources have been found, and opinions about the concept mapping have been expressed. To me the function of managing taxon concepts is to be able to manage this, while still allowing to reason (with greater margin of error) on the "default assumption" that - unless otherwise known - most taxon concepts for most purposes can be "roughly" set equivalent.
This is why I was commenting on the attempt to introduce a single class of taxon-concept URIs for all living things, without contemplating the mismatch of resources to actually document and verify them.
Are interpreted as being statements about the same "thing"
What you describe is the goal!
An interesting question I have is whether I can distinguish reasoning that was made based on those cases where taxon concepts have been investigated, from those based on default nomenclatural equivalence (i.e. homotypic synonyms)?
Also, I think I am missing timelines. If I make the default assumption: "names match" for the last 20 years, I am likely to get good results. If I do this for the last 200 years, I probably end up with garbage only.
One think I have been thinking of: provided I know when a new treatment has been published which is now generally accepted, assuming that it takes 10 years to spread (plenty of counter-examples to that...), then such a timeframe might be used to qualify the quality of inferences. Perhaps...
Also, the quality of inferences on species having been recently lumped versus species has been split is different. In the first case, pretty naive heterotypic synonymy works quite reliably, in the latter case only details (and usually unavailable) study of taxon concept works.
I think the present work of listing the accepted names with their present heterotypic synonymy in CoL will be a big progress. I wonder whether these data can be used to identify validity time periods and information about splitting or lumping changes?
I have no ready solutions to these problems and appreciate all who tackle it!
Gregor