[tdwg-content] Treatise on Occurrence, tokens, and basisOfRecord [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Paul Murray]

>> What exactly is an individual? A flock? A herd? A breading pair? A  
>> colony? A clonal stand?
> 
> One or more members of a class, for example, the class defined as all  
> members of a taxon.

We'll have to add "individual" to the list of overloaded terms.

In the world of taxonomy and specimen curation, it apparently possibly means various things (perhaps "living things you can count"? "Living things that are identifiably the same thing from one day to another"? The boundaries of individuals are sometimes wobbly.).

In the world of OWL and RDF, an individual is an unspecified something that can be the subject or object of a (object) property. Individuals can be named with URIs.

Perhaps, then, an individual is simply "A living thing that we are sufficiently interested in to identify as an individual". That is: essentially to leave the term undefined and axiomatic.



------
If you have received this transmission in error please notify us immediately by return e-mail and delete all copies. If this e-mail or any attachments have been sent to you in error, that error does not constitute waiver of any confidentiality, privilege or copyright in respect of information in the e-mail or attachments. 



Please consider the environment before printing this email.

------