Skip to main content

User account menu

  • Log in
Home
CIDOC CRM

Cidoc Horizontal Menu

  • Home
    • About & Info
    • Use & Learn
    • Issues
    • Mappings
    • Compatible Models
    • Use Cases
    • Best Practices
  • Activities
  • Resources
  • Community
  • News

MODEL RELATED MATERIAL

  • Versions of the CIDOC-CRM
  • Figures & Diagrams
  • Data examples
  • References
  • Presentations
  • Technical Papers
  • Tutorials
  • Critics
  • Important Theories
  • Publications
  • Mappings
  • Compatible Models
  • Translations

MEETING PRODUCTS

  • Minutes
  • Issues
  • CRM SIG archive
  • Meeting Contributions

GUIDELINES & TEMPLATES

  • Templates
  • Assisting Translations

Choose a shortcut

Compatible models & Collaborations
Link to old CIDOC CRM website
Next meeting
Use cases
CIDOC CRM Tutorial
CIDOC CRM Website designs and logos 
CRM SIG mailing list
Editorial Suggestions
Site Support

 

Identifiable Individuals and Reality

Data of historical and ideographic sciences, such as cultural heritage studies, geography, geological evolution, biodiversity, but also experimental data of nomothetic natural sciences, are increasingly documented and published in information systems compatible with predicate-logic that refer to things in reality by unique identifiers (or “keys” most likely to be unique in some context). This can only work as a method of sharing and integrating knowledge beyond the spatial and temporal context of local projects, if the referred features or phenomena of reality are distinct and can diachronically be identified by independent observers in the same way and without a clarifying dialogue between them. In this paper, we argue that only a smaller part of the features in our environment are sufficiently distinct over a useful time-span in order to form such “identifiable individuals”. Ontological categories should each provide specific criteria for the so-called ontological individuation, i.e., about how parts of reality can be subdivided into identifiable individuals that are useful for modelling their behaviour and interactions in reality for answering specific scientific questions, obeying evidential constraints as a result of applying these criteria in observations. We motivate by several examples that there are always cases in which the individuality of such an instance may be undecidable basically within all such ontological categories and that all ontological categories are more or less effective approximations of reality. We argue that effective knowledge sharing by information systems using formal ontologies is only possible if these limitations of applicability and precision to real world phenomena are well understood and taken into account.

Doerr, M. (2025) ‘Identifiable Individuals and Reality. Describing the Past by Formal Propositions.’, Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage [Preprint]. doi:https://doi.org/10.1145/3715011.
Martin Doerr
Identifiable Individuals and Reality
2025-02-24

THE MODEL

  • About & Info
  • Short Intro
  • Scope
  • Recommendations
  • References
  • Critics
  • Important Theories
  • Use&Learn
  • Short Intro
  • User Guidance
  • Methodology
  • Tutorials
  • Functional Overview
  • Last Official Release
  • Concept Search
  • Issues
  • Short Intro
  • Issue Formulation
  • Issue Processing
  • CRM SIG Archive
  • Mappings
  • Short Intro
  • Mapping Methods
  • Mapping Tools
  • Mapping Memory
  • Reports about Mappings
  • Compatible Models
  • Short Intro
  • Models
  • Use Cases
  • Short Intro
  • Use Cases

RESOURCES

  • Related Activities
  • Versions
  • References
  • Presentations
  • Technical Papers
  • Tutorials
  • Critics
  • Important Theories
  • Publications
  • Mappings
  • Compatible Models
  • Translations
  • Best Practices
  • Meeting Contributions
  • Minutes
  • Issues
  • CRM SIG Archive
  • Meeting Contributions

ACTIVITIES

  • Short Intro
  • SIG Meetings
  • Minutes
  • Workshops
  • Related Activities

PEOPLE

  • Short Intro
  • Related Stakeholders
  • SIG Members
  • Hosts

NEWS

HOME

 

 

Copyright © 2025 Company Name - All rights reserved

Developed & Designed by Alaa Haddad