Issue 581: Revise the "Intended Scope" of the CIDOC CRM

Proposal by Franco Niccolucci (9 January 2022)

With other colleagues, I am translating into Italian the CIDOC CRM documentation. This forced me to (or if you prefer, it gave me the opportunity of) reading it with great attention to minute details. 

On page 10 of the Introduction I found a couple of things that may need to be changed: both are in the bottom of the page describing the CRM Intended Scope, where some expressions used in such description are explained in greater detail.

1. In the first bullet point, the term “scientific and scholarly documentation” is explained as compliant to the quality level “expected and required by museum professionals and researchers in the field.” What about archaeologists,  architectural historians etc.? I would replace this statement with “expected and required by heritage professionals and researchers in the field.”, which would also expand the “field” beyond museology as implied by the other formulation, which is also contradictory with the much wider ambit listed in the second bullet.

2. In the second bullet point the meaning of the term “available documented and material evidence” is explained. Actually, a different expression was used in the previous text, being clarified here; “available documented and empirical evidence”. When defining a term, I think it is preferable to avoid using different albeit equivalent expressions. Moreover, the equivalence of “empirical” and “material” is debatable: according to my Oxford dictionary

empirical = based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic
material = denoting or consisting of physical objects rather than the mind or spirit

I may agree with “empirical” but I am not sure I would agree with “material”.

As you can see, this is a fussy comment. But the devil is in the details... and in this case a naughty commenter (not my case) might think that both are Freudian slips :)

3. In the third and fourth bullet points, collections are addressed. But the third point considers “cultural heritage collections” and the fourth “museum collections”, actually in the same copy-paste sentence. Is this difference intentional, or again a slip? I imagine in both cases “cultural heritage collections” must be used. 

4. By the way, in several passages, including one in the first bullet point, the verb “should” is used, If these statements are prescriptive, my rule is

must = to be done in any case with no exceptions
should = preferably to be done, but OK also if not
may = optional, do it if you like

In general, several “should” would need to be replaced with “must”.

Franco

Post by Martin Doerr (14 Feb 2022; 09.38 pm)

Dear All

Please vote "YES" for accept, "NO" for not accept:

Background

Proposal by Franco Niccolucci (9 January 2022)

With other colleagues, I am translating into Italian the CIDOC CRM documentation. This forced me to (or if you prefer, it gave me the opportunity of) reading it with great attention to minute details.

On page 10 of the Introduction I found a couple of things that may need to be changed: both are in the bottom of the page describing the CRM Intended Scope, where some expressions used in such description are explained in greater detail.

1. In the first bullet point, the term “scientific and scholarly documentation” is explained as compliant to the quality level “expected and required by museum professionals and researchers in the field.” What about archaeologists,  architectural historians etc.? I would replace this statement with “expected and required by heritage professionals and researchers in the field.”, which would also expand the “field” beyond museology as implied by the other formulation, which is also contradictory with the much wider ambit listed in the second bullet.
2. In the second bullet point the meaning of the term “available documented and material evidence” is explained. Actually, a different expression was used in the previous text, being clarified here; “available documented and empirical evidence”. When defining a term, I think it is preferable to avoid using different albeit equivalent expressions. Moreover, the equivalence of “empirical” and “material” is debatable: according to my Oxford dictionary

   empirical = based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic
   material = denoting or consisting of physical objects rather than the mind or spirit

   I may agree with “empirical” but I am not sure I would agree with “material”.

   As you can see, this is a fussy comment. But the devil is in the details... and in this case a naughty commenter (not my case) might think that both are Freudian slips :)

3. In the third and fourth bullet points, collections are addressed. But the third point considers “cultural heritage collections” and the fourth “museum collections”, actually in the same copy-paste sentence. Is this difference intentional, or again a slip? I imagine in both cases “cultural heritage collections” must be used.

PROPOSAL:

OLD:

Scope of the CIDOC CRM

The overall scope of the CIDOC CRM can be summarised in simple terms as the curated, factual knowledge about the past at a human scale.

However, a more detailed and useful definition can be articulated by defining both the Intended Scope, a broad and maximally-inclusive definition of general application principles, and the Practical Scope, which is expressed by the overall scope of a growing reference set of specific, identifiable documentation standards and practices that the CIDOC CRM aims to semantically describe, restricted, always, in its details to the limitations of the Intended Scope.

The reasons for this distinctions between Intended and Practical Scope are twofold. Firstly, the CIDOC CRM is developed in a “bottom-up” manner, starting from well-understood, actually and widely used concepts of domain experts, which are disambiguated and gradually generalized as more forms of encoding are encountered. This aims to avoid the misadaptations and vagueness that can sometimes be found in introspection-driven attempts to find overarching concepts for such a wide scope, and provides stability to the generalizations found. Secondly, it is a means to identify and keep a focus on the concepts most needed by the communities working in the scope of the CIDOC CRM and to maintain a well-defined agenda for its evolution.

The Intended Scope of the CIDOC CRM may, therefore, be defined as all information required for the exchange and integration of heterogeneous scientific and scholarly documentation about the past at a human scale and the available documented and empirical evidence for this. This definition requires further elaboration:

• The term “scientific and scholarly documentation” is intended to convey the requirement that the depth and quality of descriptive information that can be handled by the CIDOC CRM should be sufficient for serious academic research. This does not mean that information intended for presentation to members of the general public is excluded, but rather that the CRM is intended to provide the level of detail and precision expected and required by heritage professionals and researchers in the field.
• As “available documented and material evidence” are regarded all types of material collected and displayed by museums and related institutions, as defined by ICOM[1], and other  collections, in-situ objects, sites, monuments and intangible heritage relating to fields such as social history, ethnography, archaeology, fine and applied arts, natural history, history of sciences and technology.
• The concept “documentation” includes the detailed description of individual items, in situ or within collections, groups of items and collections as a whole, as well as practices of intangible heritage. It pertains to their current state as well as to information about their past. The CIDOC CRM is specifically intended to cover contextual information: the historical, geographical and theoretical background that gives cultural heritage collections much of their cultural significance and value.
• The documentation of collections includes the detailed description of individual items within collections, groups of items and collections as a whole. The CIDOC CRM is specifically intended to cover contextual information: the historical, geographical and theoretical background that gives museum collections much of their cultural significance and value.

NEW:

Scope of the CIDOC CRM

The overall scope of the CIDOC CRM can be summarised in simple terms as the curated, factual knowledge about the past at a human scale.

However, a more detailed and useful definition can be articulated by defining both the Intended Scope, a broad and maximally-inclusive definition of general application principles, and the Practical Scope, which is expressed by the overall scope of a growing reference set of specific, identifiable documentation standards and practices that the CIDOC CRM aims to semantically describe, restricted, always, in its details to the limitations of the Intended Scope.

The reasons for this distinctions between Intended and Practical Scope are twofold. Firstly, the CIDOC CRM is developed in a “bottom-up” manner, starting from well-understood, actually and widely used concepts of domain experts, which are disambiguated and gradually generalized as more forms of encoding are encountered. This aims to avoid the misadaptations and vagueness that can sometimes be found in introspection-driven attempts to find overarching concepts for such a wide scope, and provides stability to the generalizations found. Secondly, it is a means to identify and keep a focus on the concepts most needed by the communities working in the scope of the CIDOC CRM and to maintain a well-defined agenda for its evolution.

The Intended Scope of the CIDOC CRM may, therefore, be defined as all information required for the exchange and integration of heterogeneous scientific and scholarly documentation about the past at a human scale and the available documented and empirical evidence for this. This definition requires further elaboration:

• The term “scientific and scholarly documentation” is intended to convey the requirement that the depth and quality of descriptive information that can be handled by the CIDOC CRM should be sufficient for serious academic research. This does not mean that information intended for presentation to members of the general public is excluded, but rather that the CRM is intended to provide the level of detail and precision expected and required by heritage professionals engaged in  cultural and scientific heritage and researchers in these fields.
• As “available documented and empirical material evidence” are regarded all types of material collected and displayed by museums and related institutions, as defined by ICOM^[1], and other  collections of things providing evidence about the past, in-situ objects, sites, monuments and intangible heritage relating to fields such as social history, ethnography, archaeology, fine and applied arts, natural history, history of sciences and technology.
• The concept “documentation” includes the detailed description of individual items, in situ or within collections, groups of items and collections as a whole, as well as practices of intangible heritage. It pertains to their current state as well as to information about their past. The CIDOC CRM is specifically intended to cover contextual information: the historical, geographical and theoretical background that gives cultural heritage collections much of their cultural significance and value.

Delete the fourth paragraph, it is repeating the third!

·    The documentation of collections includes the detailed description of individual items within collections, groups of items and collections as a whole. The CIDOC CRM is specifically intended to cover contextual information: the historical, geographical and theoretical background that gives museum collections much of their cultural significance and value.

^[1] The ICOM Statutes provide a definition of the term “museum” at http://icom.museum/statutes.html#2

The term “should” is used in the sense of a binding recommendation by the standards. This is what users adhering to the standard have to do. It “should” be consistently used throughout the document.

Post by P.M. van Leusen (15 February 2022) [evote]

YES

Post by Francesco Beretta (25 Feb 2022; 12.29 pm) -reply to Martin calling an evote

Dear Martin, dear Franco,

I assume that the same question by Franco (Issue 581) is raised by page 25?

• " What goes on in our minds or is produced by our minds is also regarded as part of the material reality, as it becomes materially evident to other people at least by our utterances, behavior and products. "
• " priority of integrating information based on material evidence available for whatever human experience."
• " The CIDOC CRM only commits to a unique material reality independent from the observer."

Cf. the new proposition below:

As “available documented and empirical material evidence” are regarded all types of material collected and displayed by museums and related institutions, as defined by ICOM[1], and other  collections of things providing evidence about the past, in-situ objects, sites, monuments and intangible heritage relating to fields such as social history, ethnography, archaeology, fine and applied arts, natural history, history of sciences and technology.

It seems to me that these 'fussy' questions raise in fact, once again, the relevant Issue 504 concerning the philosophical underpinnings of CRM.

The consequences of this approach are illustrated by the recently published Sealit project ontology, class: Legal Object Relationship (e.g. property of a ship by some actor): "This class comprises legal object relationships of which the timespan and the state (of these relationships) cannot be observed or documented. We can only observe these relationships through the events that initialize or terminate this state of relationship (starting event and terminating event). "

I'm not sure how many domain experts would agree with this definition because ownership of things, as a fact, is attested in written texts, or even in minds of living persons and expressed in utterances, and these are empirically observable.

The here adopted foundational stance excludes this fact (i.e. property) from being a subclass of E2 Temporal Entity.  Legal Object Relationship is declared as subclass of E1 Entity.

But on page 33 of the CRM documentation we can read: "The more specific subclasses of E2 Temporal Entity enable the documentation of events pertaining to individually related/affected material, social or mental objects that have been described using subclasses of E77 Persistent Item."

I must therefore admit that a careful reader is somewhat confused and that having an extension, such as CRMsoc, providing additional classes to deal with individual intentional and social life, and dealing with mental and social facts as empirically observable, intentional (collective) facts as we propose, could only be an advantage.

This email therefore relates to issues 504 and 580. I'd kindly ask to put it there and add there links to the relevant other issues.

All the best

Francesco

Post by Francesco Beretta (1 Mar 2022; 11.47 am) --reply to Athina

Dear Athina,

Thank you for taking of your time and for making explicit the reasons of your modelling choices and methodology.

As University trained historians, we know that the model of the information produced by a project generally depends on the research agenda and the available sources. The model of a project is therefore not an ontology in the sense of a conceptualisation allowing for multi-project interoperability. Even the way of modelling a ship's voyage may change according to the lines of inquiry of different research projects. For this reason, a strict bottom-up modelling methodology in the field of historical research, and more broadly in the social sciences, without foundational analysis, doesn't seem to be the most appropriate way of producing an ontology for the whole portion of reality —a quite relevant portion in the cultural heritage perspective— these disciplines are concerned with.

Regarding the ownership of a ship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship-owner), which in French is in some contexts referred to under the technical term 'armement' (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armement_(marine) — cf. "registration activity" below), the social fact of ownership is as such and in general —in the sense of ontology— observable. One can ask sailors or informed contemporaries and they will know who the owner of the ship is. There are historical sources, for example correspondence, which attest to the role of shipowners (armateurs) of such and such a person or company, even if we have lost the shipping registers which state the events of taking ownership.

In the Sealit project, a methodological choice or stance was adopted which is certainly legitimate in the project's context, but which one should avoid to generalize stating e.g. that ship ownership is not directly observable, as this would be in contradiction with observable reality. Besides the collective, attested and observable knowledge of ownership, there are, for other subdomains, written statements about it. One has to think of the land registry documents (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadastre) which often attest to the social fact of land ownership, or other rights on land, without necessarily knowing where it comes from. These rights are observable and part of reality as evidenced by the recent trials and convictions of climate activists who have occupied and organised unauthorised events at the headquarters of private companies, on the basis of infringement of private property.

So should one intend that social bonds, ownership, etc. are —in general and as such— not observable does not seem to be very prudent, because the fact of generalising a specific method of modelling, whose foundation and epistemological principles have never really been made explicit (in their foundational, philosophical aspects), risks compromising the possibility of adopting such an ontology by entire scientific communities, such as the social sciences, historical sciences, etc., whose objects are precisely related the social facts and immaterial cultural heritage.

I am therefore not at all criticizing the modelling choices of the Sealit project, which are entirely legitimate in the context of the project's model. I would simply caution against implicitly accepting foundational and philosophical modelling principles, such as those we are called to vote on —e.g. the reference to "empirical material evidence" in the context of an ontology (the CRM) that "only commits to a unique material reality independent from the observer"— regarding issues that appear to be merely about innocuous wording, and by far are not, and should actually be once explicitly formulated, discussed and accepted.

It is in this sense that I understand this question, as well as the one raised in issue 581, to fall under issues 504 and 580.

Hoping to have answered your question in this way, with my best regards

Francesco

Post by Stephen Stead (1 Mar 2022; 02.25 pm) -reply to Francesco (1 Mar 2022; 11.47 am)

Dear Francesco

I find my self troubled by your contention that “One can ask sailors or informed contemporaries and they will know who the owner of the ship is”, is in some way an observation of ownership. At best, it is a statement that an instance of Actor at a particular point in time expressed an opinion about the ownership of a vessel. This may itself be of interest of course and may be part of the evidence that we use to make an estimation of ownership (where proper documentation is no longer available) but it is not an observation.

Rgds

SdS

Post by Francesco Beretta (3 Mar 2022; 12.32 pm) -reply to Steve 

Dear Steve,

I fear that it is reality, rather than me, that is the cause of your trouble. "a statement that an instance of Actor at a particular point in time expressed an opinion about the ownership of a vessel" is precisely the observation of a social fact, i.e. the collective belief (or disbelief) that this person is the owner of this ship. I fear that there is no other substance of ownership, as of any other social fact, that collective belief. And this is observable in human statements, be they written down or just oral.

I also fear that denying the status of observation to such an observation is neither a bottom-up approach, nor the integration of databases, nor anything else but an implicit epistemic position presented as indisputable.

Now, because what is indisputable is, by definition, not debatable, I'll stop arguing.

And take the opportunity to wish you a good day

Francesco

Post by Martin Doerr (1 Mar 2022; 02.44) --reply to (3 Mar 2022; 12.32 pm)

Dear Francesco,

May I object. I maintain that ownership is not observable. All examples you provided are about memories or documents of acquisition, or about those who claim to know those (who know/have known those) who know. The events of acquisition, in whatever form, are the only one that are observable. This does not require a higher conceptual consideration in the first place. Without counterexample, I cannot follow your criticism.

All the best,

Martin

Post by George Bruseker (1 Marh 2022; 04.41 pm) --reply to Martin (1 Mar 2022; 02.44)

Dear all,

Social symbolic events such as acquisitions (not done by force) are also strictly not observable since you can only know that they occur if you share the same social symbolic set and 'conclude' or 'infer' that something has taken place. There is no atomic level at which we see these things and can then say 'and now it is done'! Which atom, at what moment? Of course there are various pieces of evidence you can go looking for and say these are the things you must observe, but it's an obtuse way of looking at things because if you are at the wedding and you are a literate member of the cultural group then you know (barring an evil demon) that when the bride has been kissed (and some books signed) that the event has occured. You 'observed' it.

It is reasonable and natural for how to structure information and how to ask questions to posit an observation acquisition event rather than saying that what is observable is the book, the handshake etc.

This is the same with social institutions. No document need be consulted for an alien anthropologist to land amongst CRM SIG discussion and determine who the leader is. Having read a few background documents about general human culture and observing a set of behaviours amongst a group of people the anthropologist 'observes' M Doerr to be the leader. To say that this is not observable is extremely hard to support (except again if we argue only atomic configurations can be observed). What was observed is not necessarily initiating and ending events (also symbolic, also only knowable beyond physical material evidence), but a number of indicators within a social symbolic system which indicated this to be the case.

It is thus equally natural to say that the social fact is observed although in fact many minute individual observations were made etc. It would be obtuse to ask for these to be listed instead of the fact in the same way it would be for the event because this is not the form of evidence that is typically required in the domain on inquiry.

Francesco points out for the nth time, and I'm not sure why this cannot be heard or acknowledged, that historians usually do not have the kind of evidence you ask for of physical events in space and time that start social states. The historian is not at fault, the historical record is imperfect. It is in this case not for the historian to change his practice but for the ontologist to provide a structure which relates to the kind of reality that the expert tries to describe.

As in observation in the sense of physics, the observer can be wrong.

Best,

George

Post by George Bruseker (1 Mar 2022) --in reply to Martin (1 Mar 2022; 06.14 pm)

Dear Martin,

May be you live in a different world, or make things artificially complex for the sake of providing absolute answers, which do not exist.

Interesting claim.

The CRM method requires research questions.   

My implicit research question is simple: How do I prove that I am married? Please don't tell me by observation.

Just tell me how that works. For this question, for this kind of bond, in Europe today. Please answer explicitly.

Different cultures and different groups at different times set up different systems and methods for initiating, terminating and recognizing different social facts. It depends on the language game that you participate in (late Wittgenstein, check it out).

Is CRM meant to model European culture today or to model cultural historical facts in general?

Then we can discuss, if the distinction I made is practical, common sense and useful for this question or not.

You seem to suggest an event or state exists only if a document exists. This seems far from common sense.

Best,

George