Raw

The SUMO folks are giving their merged ontology a makeover, on list was a check of sources so that copyright etc. would be covered. One caught my eye:

- Content that we incorporated from Bishop Wilkins' book from the 1600's is

out of copyright and doesn't need a release.

John Wilkins (1614-1672). Here's the book : John Wilkins - An Essay Toward a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, and here's the top level of his ontology, expressed in SUO-KIF.

I think I spotted a slip in the KIF:

(documentation Relation "Such things as cannot be, or cannot be known,

without a respect to something else; or which may be, or may be understood

of themselves, without any such reference.")

(documentation Absoluteness "Such things as cannot be, or cannot be known,

without a respect to something else; or which may be, or may be understood

of themselves, without any such reference.")

(disjoint Relation Absoluteness)

Those latter cannots should be cans, surely?

FOAF probably needs a tweak too:

(documentation Person "The words assigned for the signifying of several

Things and Notions: to which that common name for the signifying of

particular rational Beings may be annexed, though less properly")

I'm not sure whether or not Wilkins assigned a namespace for his vocabulary, but it seems likely the notion would have occurred to him.

[Danny]