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

[John Wieczorek]

Steve,

Can you add a comment to Issue 69 in which you state the updated term
recommendation for the following?

Definition:
Comment:
Refines:

It might also be a good time to decide if Individual as a term name is
equally offensive to all. Sure, it doesn't capture exactly all of the things
an Individual might be, but the same is true of almost every term name -
people should always consult the definitions, comments, and secondary
documentation.


On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 7:03 AM, Steve Baskauf
<steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu>wrote:

>  OK, I'm going to respectfully disagree here.  dwc:Individual is not
> "overloaded" any more than dwc:class is overloaded.  We know that dwc:class
> does not mean the same thing as "class" in RDF or Java because the term name
> is http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/class, not "class".  We know that the
> proposed dwc:Individual has a specific meaning because it would be
> http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/Individual and not "individual" in the sense
> of OWL or RDF or anything else.
>
> The problem here is not lack of a clear definition for the proposed DwC
> class dwc:Individual .  That thing has been defined to death, having been
> the subject of an entire published paper (Biodiversity Informatics 7:17-44),
> and having its definition restated at least three times in this thread.  The
> problem is people entering the thread without being aware that it's been
> defined or having not read any of the definitions (I'm not trying to be rude
> here, I'm just observing that this has happened several times in the
> thread).  So one last time, I'll define what I intend for dwc:Individual to
> mean ("taxon" here means terminal taxon, species, ssp., or var.):
>
> Layman's definition:  a representative of a single taxon that serves to
> connect one or more dwc:Occurrences to one or more dwc:Identifications.
>
> More technical definition: a resource representing a single taxon that
> serves as a node (sensu RDF) connecting one or more instances of the class
> dwc:Occurrence to one or instances of the class dwc:Identification .
>
> These are functional definitions - they define what dwc:Individual "does"
> not what dwc:Individual "is".  What dwc:Individual "is" is anything that
> fits the definition.  Thus a biological individual can be a dwc:Individual,
> as can a clump of moss.  The mixed-species content of a pitfall trap cannot
> be an individual because it does not represent a single taxon.  Groups of
> biological individuals that are too large to know for sure that they are a
> single taxon probably shouldn't be considered a dwc:Individual.
>
> I would be perfectly happy with changing the term name from "Individual" to
> something else as long as the definition of its purpose doesn't change and
> as long as dwc:individualID and the proposed dwc:individualRemarks are
> changed to match.
>
> Leaving the term undefined and axiomatic is not an option.  We have a
> proposal for a term addition to DwC (
> http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=69) that's been on
> the table for nine months and I've essentially "called for the question" on
> the proposal.  So unless somebody has something to add that's different from
> what has already been discussed at great length, let's move on.
>
> Steve
>
>
> Paul Murray wrote:
>
>  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.
>
>
>
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> --
> Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
> Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
>
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