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# System prepended metadata

title: Meeting Notes - 30.09.2022

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# Meeting Notes - 30.09.2022

**Participants**:
- [x] Casper Welzel Andersen
- [x] Rickard Armiento
- [x] Francesca Lønstad Bleken
- [ ] Matthias Büschelberger
- [ ] Stuart Chalk
- [ ] Kathrin Frei
- [ ] Jesper Friis
- [x] Emanuele Ghedini
- [ ] Luca Ghiringhelli
- [ ] Gerhard Goldbeck
- [ ] Saulius Grazulis
- [x] James Hester
- [ ] Antanas Vaitkus
- [ ] Nathan Daelman
- [x] Francesco Antonio Zaccarini

## New concepts from template

James successfully found time to mess around with the template for generating/defining new ontology concepts as presented by Emanuele at the last meeting.
Link to James' work: https://github.com/jamesrhester/OntologyFramework/blob/crystal-expt/crystals-concept.md

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The discussion started from James' presentation of his split concept definitions of what a crystal is, and different kinds of crystals.
From here Emanuele started [a Miro board](https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPRt6mHY=/?share_link_id=782597087611) to try and explain why a fully "ontological" taxonomy might not be the most scientific approach.
Instead, he suggested to use properties and a "non-ontological" taxonomy to describe (crystal) samples.
The example centered around a-periodic vs. periodic crystals and a single individual, which eventually will be an individual of both kinds of these concept classes based on a semiotic process of two different "experiments" that resolved in the specific sample having the property "Periodicity" be "true" for one experiment and "false" for another.
This allowance of experiments performed using the _same_ sample (related to the same individual) which results in different results on the same property is a fundamental part of the scientific process.
Therefore, the ontology should also allow this situation to exist and if the "AperiodicCrystal" concept class is logically (and ontologically) disjoint with the "PeriodicCrystal" concept class, this scientific process cannot be respected - or rather, the ontology will not allow the same sample to have relations to the "Periodicity" property that are not all of the same boolean value.
However, if the concept classes are _not_ disjoint, i.e., not logically/ontologically defined with relation to each other, but merely as a sub-class of "Crystal", the ontology _will_ allow these experimental disagreements, but will now instead not be a "proper" logical/ontological taxonomy.

Note, this explanation is all with the assumption that the elucidation/definition of aperiodicity versus periodicity are mutually exclusive, which is what would generally be understood by domain experts.

In my (Casper) opinion the loss of logic can be detrimental to the power of the ontology and its usage, but the crystallographic community will definitely be confused if the concept "Periodic crystal" does not exist, while at the same time not allowing the scientific process, i.e., different results emerging from separate experiments on the same sample.

I (Casper) think a conceptual solution will be to simply add "model" to the name or at the very least the elucidation, so that it's clear the semiotic process of performing experiments on a sample, results in good agreement with an individual of a specific _model_ concept (like "PeriodicCrystal(Model)"), while not declaring the sample to forever and always being a periodic crystal.
This solution does not change the setup of what is presented currently in [the Miro board](https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPRt6mHY=/?share_link_id=782597087611), it will only change the labels or elucidation to be more clear that the concept classes are models and not the thing itself.
Hence, the logic aspect will still be lost, but the domain of crystallography (the users) will be satisfied to have valid and usable concepts, while being able to respect the scientific process and declare disputing results for the same sample.
