# Assistant conversation 4ZT88C - Canonical URL: - Resource IRI: - Type: assistant conversation - Mode: chat ## Transcript ### 1. User Import the attached PDF documents. [Uploaded PDFs] - SMIATO-9v1.pdf: Sheaf file #BWZUU3 - Material_Entities.pdf: Sheaf file #K647P7 - DONLANv1.pdf: Sheaf file #2R4452 - BittnerSmithDonnelly.pdf: Sheaf file #2KM3K8 ### 2. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `document_import` ```json { "action": "stage", "file_ids": [ "BWZUU3", "K647P7", "2R4452", "2KM3K8" ], "name": "Import four attached PDFs" } ``` ### 3. Tool result: document_import { "status": { "counts": { "pending": 4 }, "files": [ { "error": null, "status": "pending", "file_id": "2KM3K8", "execution_id": null }, { "error": null, "status": "pending", "file_id": "2R4452", "execution_id": null }, { "error": null, "status": "pending", "file_id": "BWZUU3", "execution_id": null }, { "error": null, "status": "pending", "file_id": "K647P7", "execution_id": null } ] }, "sources": [], "action": "stage", "run_id": "BRYDGF", "file_ids": [ "BWZUU3", "K647P7", "2R4452", "2KM3K8" ], "run_iri": "https://m.sheaf.less.rest/BRYDGF" } ### 4. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `document_import` ```json { "action": "extract", "run_id": "BRYDGF" } ``` ### 5. Tool result: document_import { "status": { "counts": { "completed": 4 }, "files": [ { "error": null, "status": "completed", "file_id": "2KM3K8", "execution_id": "pex_iLoFCP3Zh8uZ" }, { "error": null, "status": "completed", "file_id": "2R4452", "execution_id": "pex_YU67JSzkPBEC" }, { "error": null, "status": "completed", "file_id": "BWZUU3", "execution_id": "pex_q9z7HkDHwRwe" }, { "error": null, "status": "completed", "file_id": "K647P7", "execution_id": "pex_JOBo6s6FOjvF" } ] }, "action": "extract", "completed": 4, "run_id": "BRYDGF", "submitted": 4 } ### 6. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `document_import` ```json { "action": "inspect", "run_id": "BRYDGF" } ``` ### 7. Tool result: document_import { "status": { "counts": { "completed": 4 }, "files": [ { "error": null, "status": "completed", "file_id": "2KM3K8", "execution_id": "pex_iLoFCP3Zh8uZ" }, { "error": null, "status": "completed", "file_id": "2R4452", "execution_id": "pex_YU67JSzkPBEC" }, { "error": null, "status": "completed", "file_id": "BWZUU3", "execution_id": "pex_q9z7HkDHwRwe" }, { "error": null, "status": "completed", "file_id": "K647P7", "execution_id": "pex_JOBo6s6FOjvF" } ] }, "action": "inspect", "files": [ { "status": "completed", "file_id": "2KM3K8", "quality": { "blocks": 223, "pages": 23, "math_expressions": 847, "page_continuations": 6, "block_types": { "Caption": 8, "Equation": 31, "Figure": 7, "ListGroup": 10, "PageFooter": 23, "Picture": 1, "SectionHeader": 18, "Text": 125 }, "empty_equation_blocks": 0, "equation_blocks": 31, "pages_with_math": 20 }, "output_path": "/home/mbrock/sheaf.mikael/var/datalab/BRYDGF/2KM3K8.datalab.json" }, { "status": "completed", "file_id": "2R4452", "quality": { "blocks": 149, "pages": 16, "math_expressions": 89, "page_continuations": 8, "block_types": { "Caption": 1, "Equation": 14, "Figure": 1, "ListGroup": 8, "PageHeader": 15, "SectionHeader": 18, "Text": 92 }, "empty_equation_blocks": 0, "equation_blocks": 14, "pages_with_math": 6 }, "output_path": "/home/mbrock/sheaf.mikael/var/datalab/BRYDGF/2R4452.datalab.json" }, { "status": "completed", "file_id": "BWZUU3", "quality": { "blocks": 146, "pages": 16, "math_expressions": 138, "page_continuations": 7, "block_types": { "Caption": 1, "Equation": 16, "Figure": 1, "ListGroup": 1, "SectionHeader": 23, "Text": 104 }, "empty_equation_blocks": 0, "equation_blocks": 16, "pages_with_math": 11 }, "output_path": "/home/mbrock/sheaf.mikael/var/datalab/BRYDGF/BWZUU3.datalab.json" }, { "status": "completed", "file_id": "K647P7", "quality": { "blocks": 124, "pages": 13, "math_expressions": 23, "page_continuations": 3, "block_types": { "Caption": 3, "Figure": 1, "Footnote": 3, "ListGroup": 8, "PageFooter": 6, "PageHeader": 13, "Picture": 2, "SectionHeader": 17, "Text": 71 }, "empty_equation_blocks": 0, "equation_blocks": 0, "pages_with_math": 2 }, "output_path": "/home/mbrock/sheaf.mikael/var/datalab/BRYDGF/K647P7.datalab.json" } ], "run_id": "BRYDGF" } ### 8. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `document_import` ```json { "action": "import", "run_id": "BRYDGF" } ``` ### 9. Tool result: document_import { "next": "Resolve metadata, rebuild indexes, and validate reader pages.", "action": "import", "documents": [ { "status": "imported", "title": null, "file_id": "2KM3K8", "document_id": "4QQD4A", "document_iri": "https://m.sheaf.less.rest/4QQD4A" }, { "status": "imported", "title": null, "file_id": "2R4452", "document_id": "K6JC2J", "document_iri": "https://m.sheaf.less.rest/K6JC2J" }, { "status": "imported", "title": null, "file_id": "BWZUU3", "document_id": "LRK6E2", "document_iri": "https://m.sheaf.less.rest/LRK6E2" }, { "status": "imported", "title": null, "file_id": "K647P7", "document_id": "9GWUC8", "document_iri": "https://m.sheaf.less.rest/9GWUC8" } ], "run_id": "BRYDGF" } ### 10. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `document_import` ```json { "action": "metadata", "run_id": "BRYDGF" } ``` ### 11. Tool result: document_import { "action": "metadata", "documents": [ { "match": { "reason": "no DOI or ISBN found", "source": "none", "score": 0.0, "accept?": false }, "metadata": { "title": "The logic of systems of granular partitions", "usage": { "cost": { "total": 6.6e-4, "tokens": 6.6e-4, "tools": 0.0, "storage": 0.0, "images": 0.0, "input_cost": 4.35e-4, "output_cost": 2.25e-4, "reasoning_cost": 0.0, "line_items": [ { "count": 1741, "id": "token.input", "kind": "tokens", "component": "token.input", "cost": 4.35e-4, "quantity": 1741 }, { "count": 150, "id": "token.output", "kind": "tokens", "component": "token.output", "cost": 2.25e-4, "quantity": 150 } ] }, "output_tokens": 150, "input_tokens": 1741, "total_cost": 6.6e-4, "reasoning_tokens": 0, "input_cost": 4.35e-4, "output_cost": 2.25e-4, "reasoning_cost": 0.0, "cached_tokens": 0, "total_tokens": 1891, "tool_usage": {}, "image_usage": {}, "cache_creation_tokens": 0 }, "year": "2004", "model": "google:gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview", "notes": "The document does not explicitly state the publication venue, volume, or page numbers for this specific paper, although it refers to [HC04], suggesting a date of 2004 or later.", "issue": null, "pages": null, "authors": [ "Thomas Bittner", "Barry Smith", "Maureen Donnelly" ], "doi": null, "volume": null, "isbn": null, "source_filename": "ba18c543d31ab16cf18b87249a40efd893736627a7cf58eeec9d9d0a0504a6bd.pdf", "publication": "Unknown", "confidence": "medium" }, "document_id": "4QQD4A", "wrote": false }, { "match": { "reason": "no DOI or ISBN found", "source": "none", "score": 0.0, "accept?": false }, "metadata": { "title": "Layers: A New Approach to Locating Objects in Space", "usage": { "cost": { "total": 6.51e-4, "tokens": 6.51e-4, "tools": 0.0, "storage": 0.0, "images": 0.0, "input_cost": 4.44e-4, "output_cost": 2.07e-4, "reasoning_cost": 0.0, "line_items": [ { "count": 1777, "id": "token.input", "kind": "tokens", "component": "token.input", "cost": 4.44e-4, "quantity": 1777 }, { "count": 138, "id": "token.output", "kind": "tokens", "component": "token.output", "cost": 2.07e-4, "quantity": 138 } ] }, "output_tokens": 138, "input_tokens": 1777, "total_cost": 6.51e-4, "reasoning_tokens": 0, "input_cost": 4.44e-4, "output_cost": 2.07e-4, "reasoning_cost": 0.0, "cached_tokens": 0, "total_tokens": 1915, "tool_usage": {}, "image_usage": {}, "cache_creation_tokens": 0 }, "year": "2003", "model": "google:gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview", "notes": "Published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2825", "issue": null, "pages": "50-65", "authors": [ "Maureen Donnelly", "Barry Smith" ], "doi": null, "volume": "2825", "isbn": null, "source_filename": "3c288a30a26b83f54df24a8e107676d4bcabcd709b450d2a2551674ca615196d.pdf", "publication": "Spatial Information Theory: Foundations of Geographic Information Science", "confidence": "high" }, "document_id": "K6JC2J", "wrote": false }, { "match": { "reason": "no DOI or ISBN found", "source": "none", "score": 0.0, "accept?": false }, "metadata": { "title": "A taxonomy of partitions", "usage": { "cost": { "total": 6.06e-4, "tokens": 6.06e-4, "tools": 0.0, "storage": 0.0, "images": 0.0, "input_cost": 4.35e-4, "output_cost": 1.71e-4, "reasoning_cost": 0.0, "line_items": [ { "count": 1741, "id": "token.input", "kind": "tokens", "component": "token.input", "cost": 4.35e-4, "quantity": 1741 }, { "count": 114, "id": "token.output", "kind": "tokens", "component": "token.output", "cost": 1.71e-4, "quantity": 114 } ] }, "output_tokens": 114, "input_tokens": 1741, "total_cost": 6.06e-4, "reasoning_tokens": 0, "input_cost": 4.35e-4, "output_cost": 1.71e-4, "reasoning_cost": 0.0, "cached_tokens": 0, "total_tokens": 1855, "tool_usage": {}, "image_usage": {}, "cache_creation_tokens": 0 }, "year": "2000", "model": "google:gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview", "notes": "Information regarding volume, issue, and pages is not present in the provided document content.", "issue": null, "pages": null, "authors": [ "Thomas Bittner", "Barry Smith" ], "doi": null, "volume": null, "isbn": null, "source_filename": "e3957d5ec161c3a01047b00d115c6d2bbc658dcc817abf0f7948a45ff8b7ed3c.pdf", "publication": null, "confidence": "high" }, "document_id": "LRK6E2", "wrote": false }, { "match": { "reason": "no DOI or ISBN found", "source": "none", "score": 0.0, "accept?": false }, "metadata": { "title": "On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology", "usage": { "cost": { "total": 6.47e-4, "tokens": 6.47e-4, "tools": 0.0, "storage": 0.0, "images": 0.0, "input_cost": 4.35e-4, "output_cost": 2.12e-4, "reasoning_cost": 0.0, "line_items": [ { "count": 1741, "id": "token.input", "kind": "tokens", "component": "token.input", "cost": 4.35e-4, "quantity": 1741 }, { "count": 141, "id": "token.output", "kind": "tokens", "component": "token.output", "cost": 2.12e-4, "quantity": 141 } ] }, "output_tokens": 141, "input_tokens": 1741, "total_cost": 6.47e-4, "reasoning_tokens": 0, "input_cost": 4.35e-4, "output_cost": 2.12e-4, "reasoning_cost": 0.0, "cached_tokens": 0, "total_tokens": 1882, "tool_usage": {}, "image_usage": {}, "cache_creation_tokens": 0 }, "year": "2012", "model": "google:gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview", "notes": "The document is part of the Proceedings of the Third Interdisciplinary Ontology Meeting, Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2012.", "issue": null, "pages": "1-13", "authors": [ "Barry Smith" ], "doi": null, "volume": null, "isbn": null, "source_filename": "1c49b6e0d5d73b3928ea70919db5ac0c73158781d08eea778674b8b54798c986.pdf", "publication": "Interdisciplinary Ontology. Proceedings of the Third Interdisciplinary Ontology Meeting", "confidence": "high" }, "document_id": "9GWUC8", "wrote": false } ], "run_id": "BRYDGF" } ### 12. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `web_search` ```json { "query": "\"The logic of systems of granular partitions\" Bittner Smith Donnelly publication 2004 DOI" } ``` #### Tool call: `web_search` ```json { "query": "\"Layers: A New Approach to Locating Objects in Space\" Donnelly Smith 2003 DOI LNCS 2825" } ``` #### Tool call: `web_search` ```json { "query": "\"A taxonomy of partitions\" Bittner Smith 2000 publication DOI" } ``` #### Tool call: `web_search` ```json { "query": "\"On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology\" Barry Smith 2012 proceedings" } ``` ### 13. Tool result: web_search WEB SEARCH RESULTS Query: "The logic of systems of granular partitions" Bittner Smith Donnelly publication 2004 DOI **No DOI appears to have been assigned** to this work. It is catalogued as an **IFOMIS technical report**, generally dated **2005**, rather than 2004. ([philarchive.org](https://philarchive.org/rec/BITSOG)) **Citation:** Bittner, Thomas, Barry Smith, and Maureen Donnelly. “The Logic of Systems of Granular Partitions.” *IFOMIS Reports*, 2005. A freely available manuscript is hosted by the University at Buffalo. ([ontology.buffalo.edu](https://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/BittnerSmithDonnelly.pdf?utm_source=openai)) Cited sources: - Thomas Bittner, Barry Smith & Maureen Donnelly, The logic of systems of granular partitions - PhilArchive: https://philarchive.org/rec/BITSOG - The logic of systems of granular partitions: https://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/BittnerSmithDonnelly.pdf?utm_source=openai ### 14. Tool result: web_search WEB SEARCH RESULTS Query: "Layers: A New Approach to Locating Objects in Space" Donnelly Smith 2003 DOI LNCS 2825 **DOI:** `10.1007/978-3-540-39923-0_4` **Full citation:** Donnelly, M., & Smith, B. (2003). Layers: A new approach to locating objects in space. In W. Kuhn, M. F. Worboys, & S. Timpf (Eds.), *Spatial Information Theory: Foundations of Geographic Information Science* (LNCS Vol. 2825, pp. 46–60). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-39923-0_4 ([link.springer.com](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-39923-0_4)) Cited sources: - Layers: A New Approach to Locating Objects in Space | Springer Nature Link: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-39923-0_4 ### 15. Tool result: web_search WEB SEARCH RESULTS Query: "A taxonomy of partitions" Bittner Smith 2000 publication DOI The publication appears to be: **Bittner, Thomas, and Barry Smith. “A Taxonomy of Granular Partitions.”** In *Spatial Information Theory: Foundations of Geographic Information Science (COSIT 2001)*, LNCS 2205, pp. 28–43. Springer, **2001**—not 2000. **DOI:** `10.1007/3-540-45424-1_3` ([dblp.org](https://dblp.org/rec/conf/cosit/BittnerS01)) Cited sources: - dblp: A Taxonomy of Granular Partitions.: https://dblp.org/rec/conf/cosit/BittnerS01 ### 16. Tool result: web_search WEB SEARCH RESULTS Query: "On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology" Barry Smith 2012 proceedings The proceedings citation is: **Smith, Barry.** “On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology.” In *Interdisciplinary Ontology: Proceedings of the Third Interdisciplinary Ontology Meeting*, edited by Barry Smith, Riichiro Mizoguchi, and Sumio Nakagawa, 1–13. Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2012. ([ontology.buffalo.edu](https://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/Material_Entities.pdf?utm_source=openai)) **BibTeX** ```bibtex @inproceedings{Smith2012Classifying, author = {Barry Smith}, title = {On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology}, booktitle = {Interdisciplinary Ontology: Proceedings of the Third Interdisciplinary Ontology Meeting}, editor = {Barry Smith and Riichiro Mizoguchi and Sumio Nakagawa}, pages = {1--13}, address = {Tokyo}, publisher = {Keio University Press}, year = {2012} } ``` The author-hosted PDF is available through the University at Buffalo record. ([ontology.buffalo.edu](https://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/Material_Entities.pdf?utm_source=openai)) **Note:** PhilPapers and PhilArchive list the volume as **2010**, whereas Barry Smith’s official publication list, the paper itself, and later scholarly references give **2012**. For most purposes, **2012** is the preferable date. ([ontology.buffalo.edu](https://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/anatomical-parts.htm?utm_source=openai)) Cited sources: - Interdisciplinary Ontology. Proceedings of the Third Interdisciplinary Ontology: https://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/Material_Entities.pdf?utm_source=openai - BARRY SMITH - LIST OF PUBLICATIONS: https://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/anatomical-parts.htm?utm_source=openai ### 17. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "authors": [ "Thomas Bittner", "Barry Smith", "Maureen Donnelly" ], "document_id": "4QQD4A", "kind": "report", "title": "The Logic of Systems of Granular Partitions", "venue": "IFOMIS Reports", "year": "2005" } ``` #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "authors": [ "Maureen Donnelly", "Barry Smith" ], "document_id": "K6JC2J", "doi": "10.1007/978-3-540-39923-0_4", "kind": "book_chapter", "title": "Layers: A New Approach to Locating Objects in Space", "venue": "Spatial Information Theory: Foundations of Geographic Information Science", "year": "2003" } ``` #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "authors": [ "Thomas Bittner", "Barry Smith" ], "document_id": "LRK6E2", "doi": "10.1007/3-540-45424-1_3", "kind": "book_chapter", "title": "A Taxonomy of Granular Partitions", "venue": "Spatial Information Theory: Foundations of Geographic Information Science", "year": "2001" } ``` #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "authors": [ "Barry Smith" ], "document_id": "9GWUC8", "kind": "book_chapter", "title": "On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology", "venue": "Interdisciplinary Ontology: Proceedings of the Third Interdisciplinary Ontology Meeting", "year": "2012" } ``` ### 18. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #4QQD4A: kind, title, authors, year, venue ### 19. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #K6JC2J: kind, title, authors, year, venue, doi ### 20. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #LRK6E2: kind, title, authors, year, venue, doi ### 21. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #9GWUC8: kind, title, authors, year, venue ### 22. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `document_import` ```json { "action": "validate", "run_id": "BRYDGF" } ``` ### 23. Tool result: document_import { "action": "validate", "documents": [ { "title": "The Logic of Systems of Granular Partitions", "valid": true, "document_id": "4QQD4A", "readable_chunks": 194, "reader_path": "/4QQD4A", "source_pages": 23 }, { "title": "Layers: A New Approach to Locating Objects in Space", "valid": true, "document_id": "K6JC2J", "readable_chunks": 126, "reader_path": "/K6JC2J", "source_pages": 16 }, { "title": "A Taxonomy of Granular Partitions", "valid": true, "document_id": "LRK6E2", "readable_chunks": 139, "reader_path": "/LRK6E2", "source_pages": 16 }, { "title": "On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology", "valid": true, "document_id": "9GWUC8", "readable_chunks": 102, "reader_path": "/9GWUC8", "source_pages": 13 } ], "run_id": "BRYDGF", "embedding_status": "completed", "embedding_errors": 0, "search_rows": 13863 } ### 24. Assistant Imported and validated all four PDFs: - *The Logic of Systems of Granular Partitions* — #4QQD4A - *Layers: A New Approach to Locating Objects in Space* — #K6JC2J - *A Taxonomy of Granular Partitions* — #LRK6E2 - *On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology* — #9GWUC8 Bibliographic metadata and DOIs were verified where available. Extraction, reader validation, embeddings, and search indexing completed without errors. ### 25. User let's also import a couple of files that i only uploaded without importing that should be in the document list ### 26. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `list_documents` ```json {} ``` ### 27. Tool result: list_documents FOLDERS - Accounting Algebra & Property Theory - Living Structure, Wholeness & Beauty - Living Structure, Wholeness & Beauty - ontology - Procedural Generation & Co-Creation - Roads, Trails & Movement - Scenario-Based & Behavioral Programming - Technology, Scale & Conviviality - Terrain, Hydrology & Erosion - Water Simulation & Rendering Accounting Algebra & Property Theory (4) - #GANFP9 A Fundamental Duality in the Mathematical and Natural Sciences: From Logic to Biology - 2024 | David Ellerman | 53 pp. Micro abstract: Traces an overlooked subset–partition duality—from logic and category theory through entropy and quantum indefiniteness to selectionist and generative mechanisms in biology. - #NBH3BE Algebraic Models for Accounting Systems - 2010 | Derek J. S. Robinson, José García Pérez, Robert A. Nehmer, Salvador Cruz Rambaud | World Scientific | 255 pp. Micro abstract: Develops accounting theory algebraically: balance vectors as modules, transactions as a group, and whole accounting systems as automata with quotients, homomorphisms, and decision algorithms for audit and control. - #7ESDBJ Economics, Accounting, and Property Theory - 1982 | David P. Ellerman | Lexington Books | 110 pp. Micro abstract: Ellerman's vector-accounting monograph: double entry generalized to property vectors ("accounting without valuation"), grounding a property-theoretic account of appropriation, the firm, and goodwill. - #C8FHDZ On implication and negation in partition logic - 2025 | , David Ellerman | Open Journal of Mathematical Sciences | 9 pp. | doi:10.30538/oms2025.0250 Micro abstract: Develops implication as a refinement-sensitive operation on set partitions, showing how relative negation yields local Boolean cores within the non-distributive algebra of partitions. Living Structure, Wholeness & Beauty (9) - #MH5J8D Beautimeter: Harnessing GPT for Assessing Architectural and Urban Beauty Based on the 15 Properties of Living Structure - 2025 | Bin Jiang | AI | 12 pp. | doi:10.3390/ai6040074 Micro abstract: Presents Beautimeter, a GPT-based tool that scores buildings and urban scenes against Christopher Alexander’s 15 properties of living structure to assess their coherence and beauty. - #XW22YY Generative Codes: The Path to Building Welcoming, Beautiful, Sustainable Neighborhoods - 2005 | Brian Hanson, Christopher Alexander, Maggie Moore Alexander, Michael Mehaffy, Randall Schmidt | Center for Environmental Structure | 21 pp. Micro abstract: Argues that living neighborhoods arise from generative codes: ordered, participatory steps that let buildings and public spaces unfold from local people, land, and context. - #SKRF4C Geography as a Science of the Earth’s Surface Founded on the Third View of Space - 2022 | Bin Jiang | Annals of GIS | 14 pp. | doi:10.1080/19475683.2021.1966502 Micro abstract: Recasts geography around an organismic view of space, using scaling and spatial dependence to understand—and deliberately create—places with greater living structure. - #PXG56P Harmony-Seeking Computations: A Science of Non-Classical Dynamics Based on the Progressive Evolution of the Larger Whole - 2009 | Christopher Alexander | Unpublished manuscript | 66 pp. Micro abstract: Proposes harmony-seeking computation as a creative process that repeatedly strengthens latent centers in a configuration while preserving and deepening the larger whole. - #MJKTBB Living Images: A Recursive Approach to Computing the Structural Beauty of Images or the Livingness of Space - 2023 | Bin Jiang, Chris de Rijke | Annals of the American Association of Geographers | 19 pp. | doi:10.1080/24694452.2023.2178376 Micro abstract: Measures an image’s structural beauty by recursively extracting its nested substructures, revealing a compact hierarchy that also captures visual saliency. - #3XSLTA Structural Beauty: A Structure-Based Computational Approach to Quantifying the Beauty of an Image - 2021 | Bin Jiang, Chris de Rijke | Journal of Imaging | 15 pp. | doi:10.3390/jimaging7050078 Micro abstract: Proposes a quantitative measure of structural beauty based on how many substructures an image contains and how strongly they form a hierarchy across scales. - #ZU8GZV Structure-Preserving Transformations - 2002 | Christopher Alexander | The Nature of Order, Book Two: The Process of Creating Life | 4 pp. | doi:10.2307/j.ctv27ftw6c.5 Micro abstract: Explains structure-preserving transformations: incremental changes that extend the centers and relationships already present in a place rather than weakening its wholeness. - #AULNWD The Nature of Poetic Order - 1998 | Richard P. Gabriel | Warren Wilson Alumni Conference, Mount Holyoke | 99 pp. Micro abstract: Gabriel's slide essay relating poetry's formal order to Christopher Alexander's ideas of generative structure, exploring how constraint and pattern produce living order in creative work. - #BYG3BQ Wholeness as a Hierarchical Graph to Capture the Nature of Space - 2015 | Bin Jiang | International Journal of Geographical Information Science | 14 pp. | doi:10.1080/13658816.2015.1038542 Micro abstract: Models spatial wholeness as a hierarchical graph of mutually reinforcing centers, using PageRank and scaling depth to quantify the life of parts and wholes. ontology (30) - #FQCWKV A Theory of Granular Partitions - 2003 | Barry Smith, Thomas Bittner | Foundations of Geographic Information Science | 33 pp. Micro abstract: Formalizes granular partitions as hierarchical cell systems projected onto reality, combining cognitive selectivity with mereological structure for naming, classifying, mapping, and representation. - #SF7KYZ About the Unreal - 2025 | Barry Smith, Jim Logan, John Beverley | Proceedings of the Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO), Episode XI | 14 pp. Micro abstract: Models fiction, blueprints, simulations, and other information about unreal entities through logical combinations of actual classes, avoiding commitments to nonexistent dummy instances. - #CGE2NC Against Fantology - 2005 | Barry Smith | Experience and Analysis | 22 pp. Micro abstract: Critiques the idea that first-order logic reveals reality’s ontology, tracing its atomism, timelessness, Booleanism, and reductionism before proposing a six-category ontology and an enhanced Davidsonian formal language. - #JZG4PM Against Fantology Again - 2016 | Ingvar Johansson | The Theory and Practice of Ontology | 12 pp. Micro abstract: Extends the critique of fantology through default ontologization, arguing that Quine’s canonical notation is incoherent about classes and excludes intentional phenomena and distinct modes of existence. - #E5CLFY Agglomerations - 1999 | Barry Smith | Spatial Information Theory: Cognitive and Computational Foundations of Geographic Information Science | 16 pp. | doi:10.1007/3-540-48384-5_18 Micro abstract: Defines agglomerations as geographically dispersed yet unified aggregates—populations, cultures, organizations, and diasporas—and develops a realist mereotopology for their boundaries, identity, and change. - #3CCZ4A Bodily Systems and the Spatial-Functional Structure of the Human Body - 2004 | Barry Smith, Igor Papakin, Katherine Munn | Ontologies in Medicine | 26 pp. | doi:10.3233/978-1-60750-945-5-39 Micro abstract: Integrates anatomy and physiology by modeling the body as a nested spatial-functional hierarchy whose parts are demarcated as system elements through the functions they bear and realize. - #7YZU95 Boundaries: An Essay in Mereotopology - 1997 | Barry Smith | The Philosophy of Roderick Chisholm | 32 pp. Micro abstract: Reconstructs and extends the Brentano–Chisholm mereotopology in which dependent, coincident boundaries account for contact and the continuum across points, lines, surfaces, and bodies. - #3TZK66 Capabilities: An Ontology - 2024 | Barry Smith, David Limbaugh, Eric Merrell, John Beverley, Peter M. Koch | Proceedings of the Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO), Episode X | 14 pp. Micro abstract: Defines a capability as a disposition in whose realization an organism or group has or had an interest, placing capabilities between dispositions and functions in Basic Formal Ontology. - #XYERFR Carving Up Reality - 2004 | Barry Smith | Categories: Historical and Systematic Essays | 14 pp. Micro abstract: Explains how context-sensitive, coarse-grained partitions guide reference and perception while preserving transitive parthood and distinguishing fiat demarcations from boundaries grounded in reality. - #88BVY3 Categories in Top-Level Ontologies: Revisiting the Aristotelian Background - Barry Smith, Ludger Jansen | 31 pp. Micro abstract: Reconstructs Aristotle’s categories as the philosophical basis of BFO, extending the ontological square with processes into a six-category framework for continuants, occurrents, dependence, and multiple scientific granularities. - #9G4F42 CLASSIFYING PROCESSES: AN ESSAY IN APPLIED ONTOLOGY - 2012 | Barry Smith | Ratio | 21 pp. | doi:10.1111/j.1467-9329.2012.00557.x Micro abstract: Extends Basic Formal Ontology to scientific process data through process profiles—quality, rate, and cyclical aspects that ground measurements, time-series graphs, and representations of dynamic systems. - #GSLMP8 Diagrams, Documents, and the Meshing of Plans - 2013 | Barry Smith | Visual Learning, vol. 3: How to Do Things with Pictures: Skill, Practice, Performance | 14 pp. Micro abstract: Shows how diagrams and evolving networks of documents mesh plans, obligations, and specialized labor to enable coordinated collective action beyond the limits of linear text. - #M8BQ3S Do Mountains Exist? Towards an Ontology of Landforms - 2003 | Barry Smith, David M. Mark | Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design | 22 pp. Micro abstract: Argues that mountains are object-like in everyday thought but elevation fields in environmental science, motivating a geospatial ontology that supports both perspectives. - #KSESR8 Drawing Boundaries - 2019 | Barry Smith | The Philosophy of GIS | 26 pp. | doi:10.1007/978-3-030-16829-2_7 Micro abstract: Updates the distinction between human-demarcated fiat boundaries and physically grounded bona fide boundaries, tracing its uses in geography, property, ecology, and Basic Formal Ontology. - #56MWAA Environmental Metaphysics - 2001 | Achille C. Varzi, Barry Smith | Metaphysics in the Post-Metaphysical Age: Proceedings of the 22nd International Wittgenstein Symposium | 12 pp. Micro abstract: Develops an ontology of token niches as tenant–medium–retainer structures, using physical and fiat boundaries to explain environmental fit, protection, movement, and niche construction. - #KG5TBB Making space: the natural, cultural, cognitive and social niches of human activity - 2021 | Barry Smith | Cognitive Processing | 11 pp. | doi:10.1007/s10339-021-01049-y Micro abstract: Shows how legal decisions, plans, historical reasoning, and language create fiat spatial and spatiotemporal entities, then draws limits and practical lessons for ontology-supported AI. - #FJ5KCA More Things in Heaven and Earth - 1995 | Barry Smith | Grazer Philosophische Studien | 15 pp. Micro abstract: Develops an ontology of spatial regions and boundaries, arguing that political territories are historically created fiat objects through performative maps while also recognizing vague, overlapping, and incomplete geographic objects. - #KY3Y9U Naïve Physics: An Essay in Ontology - 1994 | Barry Smith, Roberto Casati | Philosophical Psychology | 22 pp. | doi:10.1080/09515089408573121 Micro abstract: Reconstructs naïve physics as a realist ontology of the common-sense world—objects, processes, stuffs, boundaries, media, and values—drawing on Gestalt psychology and phenomenology to broaden AI’s set-theoretic models. - #TQPVBD New Foundations for Qualitative Physics - 1990 | Barry Smith, Jean Petitot | Evolving Knowledge in Natural Science and Artificial Intelligence | 13 pp. Micro abstract: Argues for a scientific ontology of the qualitative common-sense world, using morphological discontinuities to connect physical substrates, sensible qualities, Aristotelian categories, and ecologically constrained cognition. - #B98HVX Objects and Their Environments: From Aristotle to Ecological Ontology - 2001 | Barry Smith | The Life and Motion of Socio-Economic Units | 26 pp. | doi:10.1201/9781482268096-14 Micro abstract: Extends Aristotelian substance–accident ontology into a realist theory of behavioral settings and ecological niches as nested, bounded wholes in which organisms, objects, and activities mutually fit. - #KYQGNH On Credentials - 2020 | Barry Smith, Giuseppe Lorini, Olimpia Giuliana Loddo | Journal of Social Ontology | 21 pp. | doi:10.1515/jso-2019-0034 Micro abstract: Provides a social ontology of credentials as portable, inspectable institutional documents that certify identity or status and give bearers the practical deontic power to exercise rights, with a typology of their forms and functions. - #BV47YZ On Drawing Lines on a Map - 1995 | Barry Smith | Spatial Information Theory: A Theoretical Basis for GIS | 10 pp. | doi:10.1007/3-540-60392-1_31 Micro abstract: Builds a typology of spatial boundaries around the fiat–bona fide distinction, applying it to maps, political and property divisions, scattered objects, linguistic framing, and truthmakers. - #D8LRQM Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information Science - 2004 | Barry Smith, David M. Mark, Max J. Egenhofer, Stephen C. Hirtle | A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science | 8 pp. | doi:10.1201/9781420038330.ch12 Micro abstract: Sets a research agenda for geospatial ontology, linking formal accounts of geographic objects, processes, scale, and vagueness to human concepts, interoperable data, and ontology-driven GIS. - #GN66WW Ontologies of Common Sense, Physics and Mathematics - 2023 | Barry Smith, Jobst Landgrebe | arXiv | 32 pp. | doi:10.48550/arXiv.2305.01560 Micro abstract: Proposes linked upper ontologies for common sense, physics, and mathematics, arguing that classical models connect real magnitudes to mathematics whereas modern physics relates measurements to entities lacking commonsense universals. - #WYP3G6 Ontology and Geographic Kinds - 1998 | Barry Smith, David M. Mark | Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling (SDH ’98) | 7 pp. Micro abstract: Argues that geographic kinds are intrinsically spatial and boundary-centered, requiring mereology and topology to connect physical reality, cultural categorization, cognition, and GIS representation. - #9YMD2E SNAP and SPAN: Towards Dynamic Spatial Ontology - 2004 | Barry Smith, Pierre Grenon | Spatial Cognition & Computation | 35 pp. | doi:10.1207/S15427633SCC0401_5 Micro abstract: BFO's bicategorial framework: SNAP snapshot ontologies of continuants and a SPAN ontology of processes in spacetime, linked by trans-ontological relations to capture change — demonstrated on the ontology of geodynamics. - #2F8T3H Toward a Realistic Science of Environments - 2009 | Barry Smith | Ecological Psychology | 11 pp. Micro abstract: Defends Gibsonian ecological realism: organisms directly perceive affordances in physically real niches, while granular partitions show how different species inhabit perspectives on one world, not separate constructed worlds. - #DT9Y7X True Grid - 2002 | Barry Smith | Spatial Information Theory: Foundations of Geographic Information Science | 17 pp. Micro abstract: Generalizes Alberti’s perspectival grid into a realist theory of projection: pictures, maps, names, concepts, and databases are “true grids” when their cells preserve relevant structure and refer transparently to reality. - #PHAFYA Truth and the Visual Field - 1997 | Barry Smith | Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science | 8 pp. Micro abstract: Uses mereotopology and Gibsonian ecology to treat perception and language as carving transient fiat boundaries in reality, defining a judgment field as the truth-making portion of the world selected by a true sentence. - #XZX6PE Vague Reference and Approximating Judgments - 2003 | Barry Smith, Thomas Bittner | Spatial Cognition and Computation | 20 pp. Micro abstract: Formalizes vague reference as multiple crisp candidate referents within granular partitions, then explains approximation as using familiar spatial or temporal reference grids to constrain vagueness without truth-value indeterminacy. Procedural Generation & Co-Creation (14) - #ABD2B8 Between Tech and Art: The Vegetation of Horizon Zero Dawn - 2018 | Gilbert Sanders, Guerrilla Games | Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2018 | 87 pp. Micro abstract: A production breakdown of Horizon Zero Dawn’s vegetation pipeline, covering global wind simulation, layered foliage motion, coverage-preserving alpha mipmaps, shading, asset LODs, placement, and cascaded shadows. - #4TH488 Explainable AI for Designers: A Human-Centered Perspective on Mixed-Initiative Co-Creation - 2018 | Antonios Liapis, G. Michael Youngblood, Jichen Zhu, Rafael Bidarra, Sebastian Risi | 2018 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG) | 8 pp. | doi:10.1109/CIG.2018.8490433 Micro abstract: Defines explainable AI for game designers, mapping co-creative systems by their explainability, initiative, and domain overlap so explanations serve concrete design tasks. - #9NQ94D Extracting Physics from Blended Platformer Game Levels - 2020 | Adam Summerville, Anurag Sarkar, Joseph C. Osborn, Sam Snodgrass | Joint Proceedings of the AIIDE 2020 Workshops (CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 2862) | 7 pp. Micro abstract: Infers playable jump physics from generated platformer levels, including hybrid physics models for levels that blend the geometry and style of multiple games. - #66Q3W3 Ghost of Tsushima: Procedural Grass - 2021 | Eric Wohllaib, Sucker Punch Productions | Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2021 | 55 pp. Micro abstract: Explains Ghost of Tsushima’s compute-driven grass pipeline, from tiled placement and culling to indirect drawing, cubic Bézier blade geometry, variable LOD, wind animation, and material shading. - #QHMFH2 Improved Alpha Testing Using Hashed Sampling - 2019 | Chris Wyman, Morgan McGuire | IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics | 12 pp. | doi:10.1109/TVCG.2017.2739149 Micro abstract: Develops hashed alpha testing, a stable quasi-random thresholding method that preserves distant alpha-mapped foliage and hair while controlling flicker, anisotropy, and interactions with TAA and alpha-to-coverage. - #7GR3AQ Procedural Content Generation through Quality Diversity - 2019 | Ahmed Khalifa, Antonios Liapis, Daniele Gravina, Georgios N. Yannakakis, Julian Togelius | 2019 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG) | 8 pp. | doi:10.1109/CIG.2019.8848053 Micro abstract: Argues for quality-diversity algorithms in procedural generation, producing broad collections of varied, playable content while exposing the design space for exploration and co-creation. - #CQBDX4 Procedural Content Generation via Machine Learning (PCGML) - 2018 | Aaron Isaksen, Adam Summerville, Amy K. Hoover, Andy Nealen, Christoffer Holmgård, Julian Togelius, Matthew Guzdial, Sam Snodgrass | IEEE Transactions on Games | 15 pp. | doi:10.1109/TG.2018.2846639 Micro abstract: Defines and surveys PCGML: generating functional game content directly from models trained on existing examples, with uses spanning creation, completion, repair, critique, and compression. - #EARFEK Procedural Generation of Villages on Arbitrary Terrains - 2012 | Adrien Bernhardt, Adrien Peytavie, Arnaud Emilien, Eric Galin, Marie-Paule Cani | The Visual Computer | 10 pp. | doi:10.1007/s00371-012-0699-7 Micro abstract: Presents a three-stage procedural model that grows terrain-responsive village roads and settlements, partitions land into plausible parcels, and generates slope-adapted buildings with open shape grammars. - #EDURTK Real-Time GPU Tree Generation - 2025 | Bastian Kuth, Carsten Faber, Dominik Baumeister, Max Oberberger, Pirmin Pfeifer, Quirin Meyer, Seyedmasih Tabaei | High-Performance Graphics – Symposium Papers | 10 pp. | doi:10.2312/hpg.20251168 Micro abstract: Introduces a GPU work-graph pipeline that generates, animates, edits, and continuously LODs detailed seasonal trees every frame, replacing gigabytes of baked geometry with kilobytes of parameters. - #GBXEP3 Realistic Modeling and Rendering of Plant Ecosystems - 1998 | Bernd Lintermann, Matt Pharr, Oliver Deussen, Pat Hanrahan, Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz, Radomír Měch | Proceedings of SIGGRAPH ’98 | 12 pp. | doi:10.1145/280814.280898 Micro abstract: Presents a foundational pipeline for authoring plant ecosystems through terrain design, ecological simulation, procedural plant models, approximate instancing, and efficient rendering of billion-primitive scenes. - #BDBBL6 Real‐time Realistic Rendering and Lighting of Forests - 2012 | Eric Bruneton, Fabrice Neyret | Computer Graphics Forum | 11 pp. | doi:10.1111/j.1467-8659.2012.03016.x Micro abstract: Combines detailed z-field trees with terrain shader-maps to render immense forests in real time, preserving sun, sky, canopy, and ground-lighting effects through seamless, scale-consistent transitions. - #PQ68ZH Responsive Real-Time Grass Rendering for General 3D Scenes - 2017 | Klemens Jahrmann, Michael Wimmer | Proceedings of the 2017 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (I3D ’17) | 10 pp. | doi:10.1145/3023368.3023380 Micro abstract: Renders every grass blade as responsive tessellated geometry on arbitrary 3D surfaces, with per-blade wind, gravity, and collision physics plus aggressive culling that retains dense fields in real time. - #WZ8DHP Runtime Evaluation of Procedural Content Generation in an Endless Runner Game Using Autonomous Agents - 2026 | Rishabh Kar | arXiv | 25 pp. | doi:10.48550/arXiv.2605.01783 Micro abstract: Integrates procedural generation and validation in an endless runner, using aerial and ground agents to detect blocked or unnavigable content before the player reaches it. - #NRBMD5 Towards Friendly Mixed Initiative Procedural Content Generation: Three Pillars of Industry - 2020 | Frederic Fol Leymarie, Gorm Lai, William Latham | Proceedings of the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG '20) | 4 pp. | doi:10.1145/3402942.3402946 Micro abstract: Distills three requirements for industry-friendly co-creative PCG tools: preserve designer control, keep feedback loops short, and fit into existing production pipelines. Roads, Trails & Movement (8) - #G3TBNG A Sequential Two-Step Algorithm for Fast Generation of Vehicle Racing Trajectories - 2016 | J. Christian Gerdes, John Subosits, Nitin R. Kapania | Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control | 12 pp. | doi:10.1115/1.4033311 Micro abstract: Generates near-optimal racing trajectories quickly by alternating between a minimum-time speed profile and a convex path update that reduces curvature. - #B6P8L4 Active walker model for the formation of human and animal trail systems - 1997 | Dirk Helbing, Frank Schweitzer, Joachim Keltsch, Péter Molnár | Physical Review E | 34 pp. | doi:10.1103/physreve.56.2527 Micro abstract: Models trail systems as self-organization: walkers reinforce attractive routes while unused traces fade, producing dendritic ant trails and low-detour pedestrian networks. - #V4TQYB Interactive procedural street modeling - 2008 | Eugene Zhang, Gregory Esch, Guoning Chen, Pascal Müller, Peter Wonka | ACM Transactions on Graphics | 10 pp. | doi:10.1145/1360612.1360702 Micro abstract: Lets designers generate and edit large street networks through tensor fields, combining procedural speed with brush-like global and local control over street patterns. - #UYLTYJ Modelling the Evolution of Human Trail Systems - 1997 | Dirk Helbing, Joachim Keltsch, Péter Molnár | Nature | 11 pp. | doi:10.1038/40353 Micro abstract: Shows how pedestrian trails emerge through feedback between destination-seeking walkers, existing paths, and vegetation recovery, yielding a compromise between directness and shared infrastructure. - #GY93FG Mountain Trail Formation and the Active Walker Model - 2009 | J. P. Hague, S. J. Gilks | International Journal of Modern Physics C | 22 pp. | doi:10.1142/S0129183109014059 Micro abstract: Extends the active-walker model to steep terrain, explaining zigzag mountain trails through slope avoidance, directional persistence, and mutual reinforcement by ascending and descending walkers. - #LXV9AT Principles of Trail Layout and Design - 2019 | California State Parks | California State Parks Trails Handbook | 64 pp. Micro abstract: A field-oriented guide to durable trail design, emphasizing curvilinear alignment, natural drainage, sustainable grades, control points, and close reading of landform and soils. - #XDEFZS Procedural Generation of Roads - 2010 | A. Peytavie, E. Galin, E. Guérin, N. Maréchal | Computer Graphics Forum | 10 pp. | doi:10.1111/j.1467-8659.2009.01612.x Micro abstract: Automatically routes and constructs roads with an anisotropic shortest-path method that weighs slope and obstacles while treating surface segments, bridges, and tunnels consistently. - #ARP5U7 The Topography of Minoan Peak Sanctuaries - 1983 | A. A. D. Peatfield | The Annual of the British School at Athens | 8 pp. | doi:10.1017/s0068245400019729 Micro abstract: Argues that Minoan peak sanctuaries were chosen for visibility and proximity to local settlements, forming a beacon-like sacred network whose contraction tracked settlement abandonment rather than cultic collapse. Scenario-Based & Behavioral Programming (8) - #P2W4J5 Adaptive Behavioral Programming - 2011 | David Harel, Nir Eitan | 8 pp. | doi:10.1109/ictai.2011.109 Micro abstract: Adds reinforcements to live sequence charts and BPJ so scenario-based programs can learn from their environment, specifying goals to pursue and scenarios to avoid, with modular learning decompositions. - #XQ5NKX Challenges in Modeling and Unmodeling Emergence, Rule Composition, and Networked Interactions in Complex Reactive Systems - 2023 | Assaf Marron, David Harel, Guy Frankel, Irun Cohen, Smadar Szekely | 8 pp. | doi:10.5220/0011728900003402 Micro abstract: Position paper on modeling emergence, rule composition, and networked interactions in complex reactive systems, introducing "unmodeling"—explicitly excluding entities and behaviors from model execution. - #D4VB7S Distributing Scenario-Based Models: A Replicate-and-Project Approach - 2017 | Assaf Marron, Daniel Gritzner, David Harel, Guy Katz, Joel Greenyer, Shlomi Steinberg | MODELSWARD 2017 | 16 pp. | doi:10.5220/0006271301820195 Micro abstract: Distributes scenario-based models by replicating the full specification on every component and projecting it per component, mimicking centralized behavior while sharply reducing synchronization. - #CSJARA Enhancing Scenario-Based Modeling Using Large Language Models - 2026 | Assaf Marron, David Harel, Guy Katz, Smadar Szekely | Communications in Computer and Information Science | Springer Nature Switzerland | pp. 43-68 | 26 pp. | doi:10.1007/978-3-031-96841-9_3 Micro abstract: Extended methodology for combining LLM chatbots with scenario-based modeling: iterative generation of stand-alone scenarios checked by analysis and human review, framed as a step toward Wise Computing. - #3JCRAD On Augmenting Scenario-Based Modeling with Generative AI - 2024 | Assaf Marron, David Harel, Guy Katz, Smadar Szekely | MODELSWARD 2024 | 12 pp. | doi:10.5220/0012427100003645 Micro abstract: Outlines a structured method for using generative-AI chatbots in modeling: iteratively generate scenario-based model fragments, then analyze and inspect them to converge on an accurate system model. - #QV3BWZ On tracing reactive systems - 2011 | David Harel, Shahar Maoz | Software & Systems Modeling | 22 pp. | doi:10.1007/s10270-010-0151-2 Micro abstract: Introduces model-based trace visualization and exploration for reactive systems, using scenario-based (LSC) abstractions and the Tracer prototype, demonstrated on a PacMan game. - #TDS4H2 Relaxing Synchronization Constraints in Behavioral Programs - 2013 | Amir Kantor, David Harel, Guy Katz | LPAR 2013 (Logic for Programming, Artificial Intelligence, and Reasoning) | 17 pp. | doi:10.1007/978-3-642-45221-5_25 Micro abstract: Proposes eager execution for behavioral programs: fast b-threads run ahead when synchronization outcomes are predictable, improving performance, modularity, and distributability, shown in a C++ BP framework. - #M5788P Towards Behavioral Programming in Distributed Architectures - 2015 | Amir Kantor, Assaf Marron, David Harel, Gera Weiss, Guy Katz, Guy Wiener | Science of Computer Programming | 58 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.scico.2014.03.003 Micro abstract: Extends behavioral programming to distributed architectures: b-threads as Erlang processes, eager execution to relax synchronization, and modular distributed execution, demonstrated on simulations and a quadrotor. Technology, Scale & Conviviality (2) - #WYH36B The City as Convivial Centre - 1974 | Leopold Kohr | Tract, no. 12 (Gryphon Press) | 18 pp. Micro abstract: Kohr's essay arguing that cities exist for convivial life rather than economic function, and that human-scale size is what lets a city serve as a centre of leisure, culture, and encounter. - #67REFX The Question Concerning Technology - 1977 | Martin Heidegger | The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (Harper & Row) | 23 pp. Micro abstract: Heidegger's essay on the essence of technology as Enframing (Gestell), a mode of revealing that reduces the world to standing-reserve, and on art as a possible saving power. Terrain, Hydrology & Erosion (8) - #NV2YRW FastFlow: GPU Acceleration of Flow and Depression Routing for Landscape Simulation - 2024 | Aryamaan Jain, Bernhard Kerbl, Brandon Finley, Guillaume Cordonnier, James Gain | Computer Graphics Forum | 13 pp. | doi:10.1111/cgf.15243 Micro abstract: A GPU framework for routing surface flow through terrain and its depressions fast enough to make erosion, river, lake, and ecosystem simulations interactive. - #2284QZ From features to fingerprints: A general diagnostic framework for anthropogenic geomorphology - 2019 | Damian Evans, Erle C Ellis, Giulia Sofia, Paolo Tarolli, Wenfang Cao | Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment | 34 pp. | doi:10.1177/0309133318825284 Micro abstract: Integrates geomorphology, archaeology, and high-resolution remote sensing into a framework for reading anthropogenic landforms as landscape-scale sociocultural fingerprints. - #96ZMGK Large Scale Terrain Generation from Tectonic Uplift and Fluvial Erosion - 2016 | Adrien Peytavie, Bedrich Benes, Guillaume Cordonnier, Jean Braun, Marie-Paule Cani, Éric Galin, Éric Guérin | Computer Graphics Forum | 11 pp. | doi:10.1111/cgf.12820 Micro abstract: Generates large, controllable mountain terrains by coupling user-painted tectonic uplift with fluvial erosion, then turning the resulting stream graph into detailed landforms. - #K82AS7 Legacy sediment: Definitions and processes of episodically produced anthropogenic sediment - 2013 | L. Allan James | Anthropocene | 11 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.ancene.2013.04.001 Micro abstract: Broadens legacy sediment to episodically produced anthropogenic alluvium and colluvium, and explains its deposition, storage, and remobilization through sediment delivery–transport capacity dynamics. - #DWXKYQ Physically-based analytical erosion for fast terrain generation - 2024 | Boris Gailleton, Guillaume Cordonnier, Petros Tzathas, Philippe Steer | Computer Graphics Forum | 14 pp. | doi:10.1111/cgf.15033 Micro abstract: Turns the stream power law into an interactive terrain tool, replacing thousands of erosion time steps with analytical solutions and a direct control for landscape age. - #MTDKDE Priority-Flood: An Optimal Depression-Filling and Watershed-Labeling Algorithm for Digital Elevation Models - 2014 | Clarence Lehman, David Mulla, Richard Barnes | Computers & Geosciences | 17 pp. | doi:10.1016/j.cageo.2013.04.024 Micro abstract: Introduces Priority-Flood, a simple, optimal algorithm that removes drainage-blocking depressions from elevation models and can also derive watersheds and flow directions. - #AK7NGE Procedural Riverscapes - 2019 | A. Peytavie, B. Benes, E. Galin, E. Guérin, J. Gain, T. Dupont, Y. Cortial | Computer Graphics Forum | 12 pp. | doi:10.1111/cgf.13814 Micro abstract: Builds editable, animated riverscapes from bare terrain by carving hydrologically plausible channels and blending real-time procedural water primitives instead of simulating fluids. - #DMTA8Y Terrain Generation Using Procedural Models Based on Hydrology - 2013 | Adrien Peytavie, Bedřich Beneš, Jean-David Génevaux, Éric Galin, Éric Guérin | ACM Transactions on Graphics | 10 pp. | doi:10.1145/2461912.2461996 Micro abstract: Generates controllable, multiscale terrain from a sketched drainage network, representing rivers and landforms as an editable hierarchy of continuous procedural primitives. Water Simulation & Rendering (12) - #RBS5K6 A Layered Particle-Based Fluid Model for Real-Time Rendering of Water - 2010 | Daniel Scherzer, Florian Bagar, Michael Wimmer | Computer Graphics Forum | 7 pp. | doi:10.1111/j.1467-8659.2010.01734.x Micro abstract: Renders particle-based water and volumetric foam in real time using perspective-aware surface smoothing, physically guided foam formation, and layered depth compositing. - #C4AY2M A Survey of Ocean Simulation and Rendering Techniques in Computer Graphics - 2011 | B. Crespin, D. Ghazanfarpour, E. Darles, J.-C. Gonzato | Computer Graphics Forum | 17 pp. | doi:10.1111/j.1467-8659.2010.01828.x Micro abstract: Surveys ocean graphics from spectral deep-water models to near-shore fluid simulation, then covers the foam, spray, and light transport needed for convincing rendering. - #WZMZGY Advected river textures - 2009 | Dirk Arnold, Stephen Brooks, Tim Burrell | Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds | 11 pp. | doi:10.1002/cav.288 Micro abstract: Combines a 2D Navier–Stokes solver, hydrostatic pressure columns, and advected procedural textures to render detailed, terrain-responsive rivers at real-time frame rates. - #92XRH7 Lagrangian Texture Advection: Preserving both Spectrum and Velocity Field - 2011 | Qizhi Yu, E. Bruneton, F. Neyret, N. Holzschuch | IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics | 13 pp. | doi:10.1109/tvcg.2010.263 Micro abstract: Advects fluid textures with deformable particle grids, preserving both the input texture’s visual spectrum and exact motion along the velocity field without cumulative stretching. - #8SERGP Real-time Breaking Waves for Shallow Water Simulations - 2007 | Markus Gross, Matthias Müller-Fischer, Nils Thürey, Simon Schirm | 15th Pacific Conference on Computer Graphics and Applications (Pacific Graphics 2007) | 8 pp. | doi:10.1109/PG.2007.33 Micro abstract: Adds real-time overturning waves to shallow-water heightfields by detecting steep fronts and spawning connected particle sheets that collapse into splashes and foam. - #CWC7H9 Real-time Rendering of Enhanced Shallow Water Fluid Simulations - 2013 | Antonio Susín, Jesús Ojeda | Computers & Graphics | 9 pp. Micro abstract: Builds a real-time rendering pipeline for shallow-water simulations, adding fine surface detail, advected foam, photon-based caustics, and screen-space reflection and refraction. - #MVUJ8Z Real-time Rendering of River Networks - 2010 | Quintijn Hendrickx, Rafael Bidarra, Ruben M. Smelik | Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games | 1 pp. Micro abstract: Renders branching river networks efficiently with quadratic Bézier curves, GPU distance fields, and streaming normal maps instead of dense geometry or particle simulation. - #5MGCZ5 Real-time River Representation by Dynamic Control of Data on Waves - 2008 | Makoto Kosugi, Nobuhiko Mukai, Yasuhiro Kato | 4 pp. | doi:10.3169/itej.62.2063 Micro abstract: Dynamically switches river-wave models by viewing distance, preserving nearby reflection and wave detail while retaining wind-driven motion across the full landscape. - #XDESU9 Scalable real‐time animation of rivers - 2009 | Eric Bruneton, Fabrice Neyret, Nicolas Holzschuch, Qizhi Yu | Computer Graphics Forum | 11 pp. | doi:10.1111/j.1467-8659.2009.01363.x Micro abstract: Animates rivers across vast terrains by computing steady flow locally and advecting fine surface detail only where visible, at a screen-space sampling density. - #869NHK Very Fast Real-Time Ocean Wave Foam Rendering Using Halftoning - 2011 | Ian Parberry, Jennifer R. Alford, Mary Yingst | Proceedings of the 6th International North American Conference on Intelligent Games and Simulation (GAMEON-NA) | 7 pp. Micro abstract: Uses a spectrally controlled halftone mask to make texture-based ocean foam dissipate as clumped bubbles that pop, rather than merely fading transparently. - #A2QB8L Water Flow in Portal 2 - 2010 | Alex Vlachos | ACM SIGGRAPH 2010 Course: Advances in Real-Time Rendering in 3D Graphics and Games | 54 pp. Micro abstract: Explains Portal 2’s production-friendly water shader: artist-painted flow maps advect layered normal maps, while offsets and noise suppress repetition and pulsing on limited hardware. - #PBM2TC Water surface wavelets - 2018 | Chris Wojtan, Matthias Müller-Fischer, Miles Macklin, Nuttapong Chentanez, Stefan Jeschke, Tomáš Skřivan | ACM Transactions on Graphics | 13 pp. | doi:10.1145/3197517.3201336 Micro abstract: Represents water waves as spatially varying directional amplitudes, enabling vast interactive simulations with fine detail, moving obstacles, solid coupling, and direct artistic control. Unfiled (7) - #LRK6E2 A Taxonomy of Granular Partitions - 2001 | Barry Smith, Thomas Bittner | Spatial Information Theory: Foundations of Geographic Information Science | 16 pp. | doi:10.1007/3-540-45424-1_3 - #DLY2WP DLY2WP - 26 pp. - #KWFTKJ KWFTKJ - 29 pp. - #K6JC2J Layers: A New Approach to Locating Objects in Space - 2003 | Barry Smith, Maureen Donnelly | Spatial Information Theory: Foundations of Geographic Information Science | 16 pp. | doi:10.1007/978-3-540-39923-0_4 - #3CV92Z moppe - #9GWUC8 On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology - 2012 | Barry Smith | Interdisciplinary Ontology: Proceedings of the Third Interdisciplinary Ontology Meeting | 13 pp. - #4QQD4A The Logic of Systems of Granular Partitions - 2005 | Barry Smith, Maureen Donnelly, Thomas Bittner | IFOMIS Reports | 23 pp. ### 28. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `get_document` ```json { "id": "DLY2WP" } ``` #### Tool call: `get_document` ```json { "id": "KWFTKJ" } ``` ### 29. Tool result: get_document DOCUMENT #DLY2WP Title: Untitled thesis Outline: - 1 #JMYWR6 The Cognitive Geometry of War - 1.1 #T86XAY Abstract - 1.2 #H5833V Introduction - 1.3 #AS6Q3N Force Dynamic Spatial Objects - 1.3.1 #MWQZ6W No 'Territorial Imperative' - 1.3.2 #L5XW5B Prehistory - 1.4 #EZJ5YH The Role of Boundaries - 1.4.1 #S8UYSA Three Types of Spatial Object - 1.4.2 #BPDHDA Three Types of Spatial Boundary - 1.5 #T5TTZ4 The Primacy of Force Dynamic Spatial Objects - 1.6 #3NUFPK The Origin of Fiat Boundaries - 1.6.1 #ZKGSPH Rome - 1.6.2 #RGHJY7 The Middle Ages - 1.6.3 #YMYB3R Towards Fixed and Determinate Fiat Boundaries - 1.7 #CYDJQ9 The Empire of the Habsburgs - 1.8 #4PNSUE Solutions to Inter-Ethnic Conflict - 1.8.1 #D828WE A Modest Proposal - 1.8.2 #HEC5P2 Switzerland - 1.8.3 #87QSKV Objections to the Proposal - 1.9 #S47UU9 God made Ireland; all the rest is the work of man - 1.9.1 #L2BP9U The Duality of Violence - 1.9.2 #LRMX8D The Virtues of Proximity - 1.10 #CPKHQ3 References ### 30. Tool result: get_document DOCUMENT #KWFTKJ Title: Untitled thesis Outline: - 1 #AL4A8L Surrounding SpaceOn the Ontology of Organism-Environment Relations - 2 #XVFDY2 1. Introduction - 3 #47XCCT 2. The Structure of Niches - 4 #LHNYK4 3. The Medium for Life - 5 #2X6P3F 4. Retainers and Fiat Boundaries - 6 #7WBGCU 5. The Structure of Retaining - 7 #9QKJVF 6. Niche Construction - 8 #LX3PCB 7. Niche Interaction - 9 #GL3QHC 8. Beyond Biology - 10 #GBU9UE 9. Concluding Remarks - 11 #F7RZRE Acknowledgements - 12 #33VXRD References ### 31. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `read` ```json { "blocks": [ "JMYWR6", "T86XAY" ], "expand": true } ``` #### Tool call: `read` ```json { "blocks": [ "AL4A8L", "XVFDY2" ], "expand": true } ``` ### 32. Tool result: read DOCUMENT #DLY2WP Untitled thesis SECTION #JMYWR6 The Cognitive Geometry of War EXCERPT #H495Z3 p. 0 Barry Smith EXCERPT #BXS4VV p. 0 Department of Philosophy and Center for Cognitive Science, SUNY Buffalo phismith@acsu.buffalo.edu EXCERPT #WXEZ4G p. 0 From: Peter Koller and Klaus Puhl (eds.), Current Issues in Political Philosophy, Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1997, 394–403. SECTION #T86XAY Abstract EXCERPT #J9TEWQ p. 0 When national borders in the modern sense first began to be established in early modern Europe, non-contiguous and perforated nations were a commonplace. According to the conception of the shapes of nations that is currently preferred, however, nations must conform to the topological model of (approximate) circularity; their borders must guarantee contiguity and simple connectedness, and such borders must as far as possible conform to existing topographical features on the ground. The striving to conform to this model can be seen at work today in Quebec and in Ireland, it underpins much of the rhetoric of the P.L.O., and was certainly to some degree involved as a motivating factor in much of the ethnic cleansing which took place in Bosnia in recent times. EXCERPT #RCN88D p. 0 The question to be addressed in what follows is: to what extent could inter-group disputes be more peacefully resolved, and ethnic cleansing avoided, if political leaders, diplomats and others involved in the resolution of such disputes could be brought to accept weaker geometrical constraints on the shapes of nations? A number of associated questions then present themselves: What sorts of administrative and logistical problems have been encountered by existing non contiguous nations (such as the United States) and by perforated nations (such as Italy, which circumcludes the Vatican and the Republic of San Marino, and South Africa, which circumcludes Lesotho), and by other nations deviating in different ways from the received geometrical ideal? To what degree is the desire for continuity and simple connectedness a rational desire (based for example on well-founded military or economic considerations), and to what degree does it rest on species of political rhetoric which might be countered by, for example, philosophical argument? These and a series of related questions will form the subject-matter of the present essay. SECTION #H5833V Introduction EXCERPT #8UUKG7 p. 1 There are different types of spatial shadows cast by human activities. There is first of all that sort of spatial shadow which is present in the phenomenon which psychologists call 'personal space', a phenomenon illustrated by the behavior of persons at a party, or at a political meeting, or in a queue, who can be observed to adjust their relative positions in order to preserve a certain proper distance from their neighbors. Individuals engaged in such activities can be conceived as contained within spatial bubbles which move with the individuals involved. Such spatial bubbles vary in size, shape and degree of elasticity in reflection of the type and degree of physical separation from other participant individuals that is required by the given activity. The geometry of such personal spaces will differ also as a function of the type (age, social origin, gender, etc.) of the individuals involved (Leibman 1970). EXCERPT #H8H2L3 p. 1 Small groups, too, may have their own personal spaces in this sense, for example on the dance floor. Consider what happens when one stranger says to another 'Shall we dance?' and is greeted with acceptance. Here a plural subject of a new kind is formed, a civil society in microcosm, which has its own personal space of a certain shape, size and elasticity (depending on step, rhythm and culture) and which moves around the dance floor in such a way as to be marked by a certain more or less tacit resistance to penetration or separation in relation to other couples. EXCERPT #PPYDQL p. 1 A different sort of spatial shadow is illustrated in the phenomenon of territoriality, a type of relation between an individual or group and an area of space which is of such a sort that the former will seek to defend the latter against invasion by other individuals or groups. The phenomenon of territoriality involves in each case a relation to some specific portion of space. A territory is 'a fixed area from which intruders are excluded by some combination of advertisement, threat, and attack.' (Brown 1975) SECTION #AS6Q3N Force Dynamic Spatial Objects EXCERPT #F2L563 p. 1 Both territory and personal space are matters of disposition or tendency, of what would happen if something else happened for example of the defensive gestures or withdrawal maneuvers which would be provoked by different sorts of incursions. Exploiting a term coined by the linguist Leonard Talmy (1988), we will call such dispositionally demarcated regions force dynamic spatial objects . Their borders, correspondingly, we shall refer to as force dynamic spatial borders ; they are borders of a peculiar sort, possessed of a certain intrinsic elasticity. It is because of the dispositional character of force dynamic borders that their precise locations are hard to establish in any given case. Force dynamic spatial boundaries may moreover overlap; the resultant areas will then be marked by the existence of twilight zones subject to the dominion of no single individual or group. EXCERPT #88QK58 p. 2 Force dynamic boundaries may shift very rapidly. Consider the problem of modern warfare against rebels: during the day, the army can hold the cities and the road, at night only the cities. This means that the areas under government control change between night and day. Force dynamic boundaries depend also on the means of transportation in relation to which they are determined: if the two groups on both sides of the border do not use the same technology, the boundary is not well fixed. The boundary between Venezuela and Brazil in the jungle, for example, is very different if considered from the perspective of water and road transport with technical means or from the perspective of the network of paths of indigenous peoples. EXCERPT #XQKLYG p. 2 Both territoriality and personal space are standardly a matter of continuous wholes the image of a single, roughly spherical bubble, whether stationary or in motion, is thus normally appropriate. The tendency for individuals and groups to seek to establish for themselves continuous regions of 'home'-space of more or less circular shape is well-justified: as Aristotle noted, the roots of politics lie in friendship, and thus in proximity, and accessibility. Such regions are in addition most easily defended against incursion from without. Where continuity is broken by invasion, measures will accordingly be taken to reconstitute continuous territory. SECTION #MWQZ6W No 'Territorial Imperative' EXCERPT #6J4K4M p. 2 Robert Ardrey, notoriously, has propounded in his book The Territorial Imperative a view according to which a 'hard-wired' territorial instinct applies to phenomena on vastly different scales, including interactions between nation-sized groups. The territorial instinct is according to Ardrey able to explain phenomena as diverse as war, national sovereignty and the workings of the real estate markets, as well as human and animal territorial defense behaviors of more restricted types. The tendency to territorial behavior is certainly a well-attested part of our biological heritage. Anthropologists have shown, however, that the force of territoriality diminishes with increase in group size and in spatial area, and that, in the case of both human and non-human animal species, a nested continuum of types of site must be distinguished. In the first place we have the home range , that area within which the group spends most of its time (including foraging and hunting). Within the home range are various core areas , for example watering holes and other sites where desirable resources are available on a routine basis. Finally there are territories in the narrow sense, and it is only in relation to these, characteristically tiny areas that the occupying individual or group demands exclusive use. (Taylor 1988, pp. 21f.) EXCERPT #DN5R8Q p. 3 Most anthropologists today, therefore, would argue that territoriality in the narrow, biological sense applies only to small (roughly: family-sized) groups. As far as application to larger groups is concerned, they prefer to speak instead of the much weaker and more variegated phenomenon of territorial functioning , defined as EXCERPT #GMU4A3 p. 3 an interlocked system of sentiments, cognitions, and behaviors that are highly place specific, socially and culturally determined and maintaining, and that represent a class of personplace transactions concerned with issues of setting management, maintenance, legibility, and expressiveness. (Taylor 1988, p. 6) EXCERPT #3D4L6D p. 3 Alternatively, they talk of territoriality not in terms of defence and exclusive use but rather in terms of 'the attempt by an individual or group to affect, influence, or control people, phenomena, and relationships, by delimiting and asserting control over a geographic area [the territory].' (Sack 1986, p. 19) EXCERPT #4QUCDT p. 3 The desire for exclusive control over a certain area of land has, certainly, served as a stimulus to war and intergroup violence in many cases. But there are many large groups which live for long periods in territories in which they are interspersed with other groups, and pogroms do not happen all the time. Indeed, the evidence of history tells us that many large groups did not act on the basis of any territorial imperative to seek exclusive occupation of any single continuous area. It is therefore unlikely that the so-called territorial imperative described by Ardrey can be exploited in giving an account of the causes of war. Not only are there successful and long-lasting multicultural and multiethnic societies involving systematic overlapping and intermixing of distinct groups within a single region, there are also and indeed far more commonly than is often presupposed non-contiguous nations (such as the United States) whose sovereign territory is broken up into separate pieces by the interspersed territory of other sovereign nations. EXCERPT #9BH7CM p. 3 Yet some remnants of the desire for exclusive control remain, and may be latent for long periods even when not expressed in action. Such remnants are moreover stimulated by, and are reciprocally a pre-condition for, the forcefulness of certain sorts of rhetorical devices on the parts of tribal elders, historians, poets and religious leaders. They are illustrated for example in phrases such as 'manifest destiny', 'from sea to shining sea', ' Deutschland ist unteilbar! ', and so on. Such rhetorical devices have the power to awaken or reinforce the desire of group members to establish for themselves exclusive occupation of certain territorial regions, often regions of certain desired ('natural', broadly circular) shapes, and marked by correspondingly 'natural' (broadly: topographically determined) frontiers. Poets favor 'natural' borders. The rhetoricians of the Nazi party were exploiting this appeal in their talk of ' Lebensraum ' and in their justification of attempts to establish unification of Germany with the German settlements to the east. EXCERPT #ELLRYP p. 4 Such rhetorical devices have their equal and opposite counterpart in phrases such as 'the Palestinian entity', 'the six-county statelet' designed to diminish the significance of claims to sovereignty on behalf of unfavored groups. These phrases, too, point to the dimension of geometry as a crucial but hitherto neglected factor in the aetiology of wars, and to the tendency on the parts of leaders of national or ethnic groups and of war-propagandists to claim on behalf of their constituent populations rights to territories of certain geometrically favored sorts. Correspondingly, leaders of groups with established territories refer to attempts to dislodge them from control of even peripheral fragments of these territories as amounting to 'balkanisation', 'dismemberment', 'mutilation', 'violation of the motherland' and the like. Thus, to take just one example, in March 1996 Russian Defense Minister General Pavel Grachev referred to Chechnya as 'a testing ground for the strategic enemies of Russia whose main aim is to split the country and annex part of its territory.' (Emphasis added.) EXCERPT #NQ63J5 p. 4 Such devices are clearly illustrated also in the case of Quebec and Ireland, to name just two peculiarly conspicuous examples of the phenomenon I have in mind. Consider the following passage taken from the 'Manifesto' issued by the Bishop of Derry in 1916 in response to the prospect of partition: EXCERPT #4MDJQF p. 4 Blessed by St. Patrick as a nation the children of Erin have clung to the national ideal with a tenacity surpassed only by their loyalty to the Faith that he planted in their breasts. And are the Irishmen of today going to prove themselves degenerate sons of their great and noble forbears? Are we going to surrender even without a national protest the inheritance of a United Ireland handed down to us through the ages of persecution and bloodshed? Are we so indifferent to the memory of our forefathers as to allow the last resting place of St. Patrick and St. Bridgid, the spot dearest on earth to great St. Columbcille, and the Primatial See of Ireland's Father in the Faith, to be included in a new Pale and cut off from the Fatherland? In such an event what a mockery it would be to speak any longer of Ireland a nation! Is not Ireland dearer to us than any little enclave of individuals, however important and indispensable they may seem to themselves? Such rhetorical devices have been instrumental, over and over again in the course of human history since (roughly) the time of the Napoleonic wars, in instigating 'freedom fighters' to give their lives in the cause of establishing borders of certain favored shapes. These devices thus certainly appeal to deep-rooted impulses on the part of the members of those groups towards whom they are directed. Yet, in contrast to what is affirmed by Ardrey and others, the whole phenomenon is primarily a cultural rather than a biological ('hard-wired') affair; it seems to be about as old as the human practice of making maps of fixed boundary-geometries, and has almost certainly enjoyed pervasive influence only since the development of printing and the dissemination of printed maps. EXCERPT #TCVJ5F p. 5 The desire for exclusive occupation of a 'natural' territory does of course in many cases have a rational basis in requirements of defence. This same desire exists today, however in Quebec, again, and also in Ireland in a form where this military dimension is entirely lacking. What is desired in these cases is not defensible territory but rather territory within which a given group can give expression to the peculiarities of its culture and, in tandem therewith, enjoy democratic advantage and control. This same desire was illustrated in the 'bizarre shape' settled upon by the British in their partition of Ireland in 1917; but it is illustrated also in the desire of Irish Republicans to establish 'the whole island of Ireland' as a single, sovereign entity. Gerrymandering can, it seems, lead in different geometrical directions. SECTION #L5XW5B Prehistory EXCERPT #SN94NP p. 5 Examining the history of the very earliest human settlements we encounter the following patterns. Groups, and the regions they occupy, exhibit a tendency to expand until they reach physical obstacles such as coastlines, or until they meet the resistance of an equal and opposite expansion on the part of neighboring groups. Mutual adjustments very similar to those effected spontaneously by bubbles on the surface of a soapy solution are then encountered, and what look like clusters of bubbles can indeed be found on maps depicting tribal expansion in early Africa. EXCERPT #8SSBTJ p. 5 It can lead also to the peaceful merging of groups through intermarriage and through trade and other forms of cooperation. A new, larger group is formed out of the coalescing of smaller groups. (Again, the factor of public rhetoric on the part of poets and other keepers of the tribal memory can both foster such coalescing and also mitigate against it.) EXCERPT #XCVVPL p. 5 There may occur also a splitting off of sub-groups who proceed to establish new, disconnected territories in other regions. (Something like this was involved in the colonization of the American continent.) The splitting off of sub-groups can occur also involuntarily, for example via natural disaster or by conquest leading to enslavement or to the agglomeration of feudal territories into larger constellations of political power. EXCERPT #E9S4J2 p. 6 As the process of expanding and splitting occurs on all sides, not least in response to the pressures on resources created by growth in population, groups become variously dispersed and also interspersed. But interspersation need not be experienced as such. If A's are to the east and to the west, and B's are in the center, then neither the eastern nor the western A's need feel any threat to the territorial integrity of their respective groups. This will occur only if (i) the A's conceive themselves as A's and as thus distinct from B's, and (ii) the entire territory of the A's is conceptualized by the A's as a single 'natural' whole. Only when both of these conditions are met will the B's be seen by the A's as having the status of intruders. As to (i) we shall here leave to one side the in itself important question as to the degree to which human groups of different scales are real unities or to some degree products of beliefs and practices on the part of their members. For it is condition (ii) which is the principal focus of our present investigation. SECTION #EZJ5YH The Role of Boundaries EXCERPT #SPXESE p. 6 We note that the likelihood of satisfaction of condition (ii) is at least increased with the development of modern means of communication and with the spread of the institutions of democracy. Thus in the period of the agglomeration of feudal territories under the ownership of one single lord in early modern Europe, this agglomeration caused no experience of mixing, and hence no 'minorities'. Only with the growth of the modern conception of the nation(-state) do the latter begin to make themselves felt. A group of island dwellers might, for example, in light of this modern conception, come to conceive the whole of the relevant island (Fiji, say) as its natural and rightful home. They then begin to perceive the members of a second group as alien interlopers. A related case involves not the natural borders of an island but rather created, artificial borders of the sort which constitute (most) nations and empires. Such artificial borders are, like maps, a cultural phenomenon, a relatively late product of civilization. 'Artificial', here, can mean either (a) not such as to follow natural borders of a topographical sort (such as coastlines, mountain ranges, rivers) or (b) not such as to reflect existing group divisions on the ground (or some combination of the two). Such artificial borders, too, may create new politico geographical entities within which a dominant group may come to see non-dominant groups (for example Jews for much of European history) as interlopers deserving of exclusion or elimination or isolation in ghettos. The redrawing of artificial borders can also bring it about that formerly dominant majorities become transformed into force dynamic remnants (this happened to the Serbs in Croatia, to the Russians in Ukraine and Lithuania, to the Swedes in Finland, to the 'Protestant Ascendancy' in Ireland). SECTION #S8UYSA Three Types of Spatial Object EXCERPT #XYYWZU p. 7 We have distinguished three types of spatial object, as follows: EXCERPT #A47WE4 p. 7 1. Bona fide spatial objects (for example islands, lakes): objects whose boundaries are intrinsic physical discontinuities in the material constitution of the earth. 2. Fiat spatial objects (for example counties, Indian reservations, state parks): objects whose boundaries exist as a result of human fiat or convention. 3. Force dynamic spatial objects (for example the area of land occupied by a given infantry troop): objects whose boundaries are determined by the actual or potential dynamic actions of their respective constituent parts. EXCERPT #KF36BG p. 7 Under the first type are included spatial objects which would exist, and would be set into relief in relation to their surroundings, even independently of all human intervention, whether physical or cognitive. This type includes also spatial objects such as polders and artificial lakes which are the enduring products of human physical endeavor. EXCERPT #RHLZU3 p. 7 Objects of the second type begin to exist and are sustained in existence only as a result of certain cognitive acts, practices or institutions on the parts of human beings. There are no fiat objects in the extra-human world. Such objects exist through and through as a matter of convention. Consider for example the case of Wyoming and Colorado, which, like many political and administrative spatial objects in the United States, have rectangular shapes (or more precisely: they have shapes constructed on the surface of the earth out of parallels of latitude and longitude). EXCERPT #6K54KA p. 7 Objects of the third type are geopolitical analogues of the small-group territories and personal spaces discussed above. They are characteristically transient, and tend to form systems with other third-type spatial objects in relation to which they are subject to a very high degree of reciprocal dependence in respect of their size, shape, location and degree of elasticity. SECTION #BPDHDA Three Types of Spatial Boundary EXCERPT #G8XQCX p. 7 Corresponding to the tripartite division of spatial objects is a parallel tripartite division of types of spatial boundary: EXCERPT #JBHZN5 p. 8 1. bona fide boundaries, such as the fence around my neighbor's garden or the coastline of New York; 2. fiat boundaries, such as the Mason-Dixon line and the Greenwich Meridian; 3. force dynamic boundaries, such as the boundaries of British, French, Dutch and Spanish influence in the continent of North America in, say, 1670. EXCERPT #6DLFC8 p. 8 Having made this further distinction we can now point to the obvious fact of the existence of mixed cases: spatial objects whose boundaries are combinations of the different elements here distinguished. The boundaries of most modern nations involve a combination of bona fide and fiat elements. Geopolitical entities of earlier eras (such as the Seljuk Kingdom of Iconium or the Khanate of the Golden Horde) involved also force dynamic border-segments. EXCERPT #A6XKSV p. 8 The great system of nations into which the land surface of the earth has been divided in the modern period rests not only upon reciprocal negotiation of shared boundary-stretches between neighboring nations, but also upon a complex balancing act between groups of nations joined together by treaty and pledged to defend each others' boundaries and thus to preserve the equilibrium of the system as a whole. SECTION #T5TTZ4 The Primacy of Force Dynamic Spatial Objects EXCERPT #FTSKC2 p. 8 Historical and anthropological reflection will tell us, now, that objects of the force dynamic type must in every case come first, that force dynamic spatial objects must precede the tidily demarcated fiat and bona fide spatial objects (nations, states, empires) with which we have grown familiar in the course of recent history. As the historian Owen Lattimore expresses it: EXCERPT #KZK6EY p. 8 Frontiers are of social, not geographic origin. Only after the concept of a frontier exists can it be attached by the community that has conceived it to a geographical configuration. The consciousness of belonging to a group, a group that includes certain people and excludes others, must precede the conscious claim for that group of the right to live or move about within a particular territory. (Lattimore 1962, p. 471) EXCERPT #CJMRK4 p. 8 How are we to do justice to these 'frontiers of social origin' and to the processes by which they become attached to specific regions of space? Let us emphasize once more that they do this not singly, but in groups and in more or less harmonious consort. Only in the rarest of cases effectively restricted to certain selected island nations favored by fate do we have the possibility of a unilateral decision as to where the vague and transient force dynamic territorial frontiers of a given social group shall be converted into geopolitical boundaries of the crisp and stable sort. In other cases, at least on those sides where the force dynamic boundaries correspond to no impenetrable topographical features such as deserts or mountain ranges, this determination must be made through a process of sometimes violent reciprocal negotiation between pairs of neighbors. The Thirty Years War is a process of negotiation of this sort, its goal in no small part being one of setting an end to the systematic interfingering and overlapping of force dynamic territories that was a product of differing religious allegiances in continental Europe. Given groups were brought, by degrees, to a position where they could claim to enjoy exclusive occupation of given well-demarcated regions. The results of such negotiation had thereafter to be defended and secured by treaty. The borders needed also, at least in many cases, to be defended against encroachment from within, since new force dynamic territories began to evolve, as groups (such as the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey and the Basques in Spain), whose territorial claims overlapped with those of the successful group, began to bring these claims to expression by more or less violent means. EXCERPT #YSQC8Q p. 9 Corresponding to the three types of spatial object, now, we can distinguish three types of nation, or three models or ideals against which specific nations or nation-building projects may be judged: EXCERPT #QJR7CA p. 9 1. the bona fide nation: this type is illustrated most clearly by the great island nations: Iceland, Japan, Britain (we shall come to Ireland later); 2. the fiat nation, illustrated most clearly by African and Middle-Eastern nations, whose borders are to a large degree the products of colonialism (of colonial fiat). Post-contact native American 'nations' (reservations) would also fall under this heading; 3. the force dynamic nation: this type is illustrated for example by those groups of diaspora Jews, of gypsies, of Saami and Inuit, of Swedes in Finland, of Slovenes in Carinthia, of Poles in the era of partition whose members feel themselves (to different degrees) as one, but who have been denied or have renounced any claim to a physical territory over which they would maintain exclusive jurisdiction. SECTION #3NUFPK The Origin of Fiat Boundaries EXCERPT #BHU5F5 p. 9 We are interested primarily in the spatial objects of the human world: in counties, real estate parcels, nations, empires. How do such objects come into existence? EXCERPT #7HBKT7 p. 9 Bona fide boundaries are, by definition, boundaries we do not create but find there before us; we stumble over them. Fiat boundaries, in contrast, are brought into existence by human cognitive acts and practices, above all by cognitive acts and practices which are linguistic in nature. The American Declaration of Independence is an example of a linguistic initiation of an object of this sort, and fiat objects in general, like many claims, obligations, laws, rights and titles, are tied intrinsically to initiating utterances, to speech acts of precisely appropriate sorts. There are also fiat initiations, belonging to the family of legislatings, contractings, baptisings, ennoblings, and so on, which involve essentially what we might call performative uses of maps. Thus Thomas Jefferson called into being the states of the so-called Northwest Ordinance by drawing off 14 neat checkerboard squares between the boundaries of the Atlantic colonies and the Mississippi River in 1784. Something similar is involved in the creation of parcels of real estate via entries in cadastral registries, and here we might note that again in marked contrast to what was the case in the feudal period such real estate parcels are today standardly continuous and simply connected. EXCERPT #JMYNXX p. 10 The force of artificial borders patterned on this model is illustrated most clearly in Africa, where the colonial powers drew borders in ways which brought it about that different peoples came to be living together within a single legal-political territory. The paradigm instances of fiat nations in our sense (nations carved out via specific acts of human fiat, whose boundaries may be built in whole or in part out of exact geometrical figures, normally straight lines) are associated especially with colonialism. They have borders drawn by governments (in London, Washington, Ottawa, or Mexico City) before they know how things look on the ground. EXCERPT #LG8JHP p. 10 Such borders can be quite stable and peaceful (this applies even to the colonially drawn borders in the sub-Sahara region), in contrast to the carefully drawn boundaries of Europe based on the idea of a 'self-determination of nations'. Nations have however been known to go to war over borders of this artificial sort, sometimes protesting at their very 'arbitrariness'. This is so far example in the case of Iraq, a fiat spatial object formed in 1922 when Sir Percy Cox, the British High Commissioner, drew lines in the sand marking the borders of Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia: EXCERPT #KM7CSG p. 10 The three Ottoman vilayets (districts) of Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul were separated from Turkey, Syria, Trans-Jordan, and Kuwait and were combined into a new Kingdom of Iraq Š under a British League of Nations mandate that lasted until 1932. (Geyer and Green 1992, p. 34) EXCERPT #V6E5MY p. 10 With the ending of the British protectorate in 1961, however, Premier Kassem of the newly independent Iraqi nation announced immediately in Baghdad that 'Kuwait is an integral part of Iraq.' The justification of such pronouncements, then and later, rested not so much on intrinsic features of the land or people; as Sir Anthony Parsons acknowledged some years later: 'We, the British, cobbled EXCERPT #HYVGHQ p. 11 Iraq together. It was always an artificial state; it had nothing to do with the people who lived there.' ( Loc. cit. ) Rather, the Iraqi claim rested on the sheer arbitrariness of the fiat boundaries originally drawn in the sand or in other words on the geometrical ideal of 'natural' bona fide borders. SECTION #ZKGSPH Rome EXCERPT #C2265F p. 11 If the fixed lines of fiat borders are a product of human culture, then it seems reasonable to consider at what point in human history they first appeared. The boundaries of group territories were initially not fixed lines but rather force dynamic zones , to be accounted for not topographically or cartographically but rather by appeal to military, economic and ecological factors. EXCERPT #5WJWZA p. 11 Even as late as, and in relation to as sophisticated a product of human culture as the Roman Empire, it would be wrong to think of outer boundaries as sharp divisions, analogous to lines on a map. Ancient limes are not border lines but rather border lands where different cultures and social groups, for example groups of traders, nomads, farmers, meet and overlap, areas within which outposts of transport, trade and defence are linked together. These are zones of ecological marginality and demographic ambiguity. What explains why frontiers form as and where they do at this stage of human development is the marginality of the land, and in this respect we should bear in mind that the Roman emperors 'had some awareness, however crude, of the marginal costs of imperialism.' (Whittaker 1994, p. 86) This implies further that the frontier wars which, in cumulation, brought about the fall of the Empire are more like minor incursions, minor irritations, than great meetings of armies. Rome fell not by incursions of large enemies, but by a cumulation of pinpricks, by interlopers pretending to be intrinsic parts of the Empire ('multiculturalism'), which then gradually cut themselves off to form separate national groupings. EXCERPT #LZ2C5K p. 11 On the other hand however, as far as internal boundaries of smaller-scale land-parcels are concerned, the Romans instituted very early on the practice of land surveying and of rectangular cadastration. The traditional date given to the terminatio ('the drawing up of boundaries') for the city of Rome goes back to Numa, or in other words to around 680 B.C. The art of land surveying (the art of the gromatici or agrimensio ) was called by Cassiodorus 'this disciplina mirabilis , which could apply fixed reason to unlimited fields'. And as Whittaker points out: EXCERPT #Q2YXS9 p. 11 All rectangular surveys in history have had a strongly utopian character, used in a period of expanding power and colonial foundations as the dream of a distant administration for organized control. The great American Rectangular Land Survey of the eighteenth century was [likewise] designed to bring "order upon the land" at a time of particularly fluid frontiers. (Whittaker 1994, p. 19) EXCERPT #RKR8M9 p. 12 The grand projects of imperial cadastration were thus means of establishing and organizing internal control; they and the corresponding concepts were not as yet applied to the drawing of external frontiers. Again, therefore, we have to recognize two kinds of boundaries: the fixed, fiat boundaries of administered land, within the civitas or area of application of the civil law; and the shifting force-dynamic boundary zones of unadministered land, the area of application of military law. SECTION #RGHJY7 The Middle Ages EXCERPT #FCD332 p. 12 In medieval times, too, the extent of the kingdom was determined not by fixed external frontier (defense) lines marking out a certain territory, but rather by property and allegiance. A kingdom is a king and all the nobles, who were bound by a lien to follow him in battle. Such allegiances are not always stable. The nobles may have powers and ambitions of their own, which may result in the shifting of allegiances with a corresponding redrawing of territories, sometimes in radically different ways from generation to generation. The nobles in their turn had other lower-level noblemen bound to them in chains of allegiance descending downward until ultimately one arrives at farms (which include the peasants living on them) and thus at territory. The area of a 'nation' thus defined need not be any single contiguous region; this area could also quickly move (for example in the case of the Greek lost cities in Italy). Mantua, Pisa, Barcelona, Venice, Genoa, the Knights of Malta, the Hanseatic League, etc., are examples of non-contiguous sovereign political entities of the given sort, marked by frequent adjustment of borders, and there are many further such examples in that patchwork of principalities and bishoprics which was the Holy Roman Empire in, say, 1640. EXCERPT #D6Z5SX p. 12 Artificial borders seem to be absent from the Moslem conception of geopolitics also. The Koran talks instead of a division of the world into an ineluctably expanding Zone of Peace (ruled by Moslems) and a not yet pacified Zone of War. Only provisional and temporary force dynamic frontiers are allowed for in a world thus conceived, and Moslem princes correspondingly viewed the declaration of fiat borders around small or large blocks of territory by their enemies as a declaration of failure and a mark of inferiority. (See Lewis 1993) SECTION #YMYB3R Towards Fixed and Determinate Fiat Boundaries EXCERPT #BSGC4W p. 12 Relics of this same idea are present in Jefferson's vision of a country spanning an entire continent ('from sea to shining sea'). Here, as in the case of the Roman EXCERPT #CR2CDS p. 13 Empire during its period of expansion, there is originally no line, but only a limitless, open territory to expand into, beyond which there are barbarians, a wilderness which has to be brought under the control of civilization. As Whittaker points out, 'countries that are expanding have little interest in the limits to their power' (1994, p. 31). Only the ultimate natural frontier which is the coastline (in the Irish case: the whole island, in the Moslem case: the whole earth) can, according to the internal logic of this principle of manifest destiny, bring the process of expansion to a halt. EXCERPT #4SB3A6 p. 13 The problems with the principle and the ways in which it leads to war and to inter-group conflict are clear: it ignores the role of aboriginal peoples and of other rival groups, and thus it sets aside the normally operative role of reciprocity in the establishing of frontiers. EXCERPT #TTDDPY p. 13 As Whittaker has argued, 'the very idea of a frontier as a line on a map is modern' (1994, p. 71), amounting to the transfer of the idea of internal cadastral boundaries to the realm of external frontiers. It seems, in fact, to have been the French who were primarily responsible for the consolidation and spread of this idea throughout the world, both in theory and in practice. The concept of natural, linear frontiers derives not least from the French fascination with potamologie or the myth of river frontiers as divinely ordained. (See Sahlins 1989, pp. 34ff.) It was from this idea that the popular misconception of the Rhine and Danube as Rome's natural frontiers was retrospectively derived. The French took seriously the idea that existing European frontiers, as defined by rivers, mountains and seas, are divinely ordained. We recall Danton's famous speech of 1793 defining the new French nation: 'Ses limites sont marquées par la Nature; nous les atteindrons toutes des quatre points de l'horizon, du côté du Rhin, du côté l'Océan, du côté des Alpes.' The French central authorities then proceeded to enforce linguistic homogeneity in brutal fashion upon the region thus defined, in such a way as to create a single homogeneous 'modern' state (and we can see how similar patterns followed later in Italy and Germany). It was Napoleon, above all, who proceeded to impose the French ideal upon the rest of Europe. The myth of potamologie encapsulated French ambitions in Europe and in the Maghreb. A relic of this same obsession with fixed linear defenses embracing homogeneous populations is illustrated also in the construction of the Maginot line and, in another guise, in contemporary efforts of the Académie Française to protect the French language from the intrusion of alien anglophone expressions. EXCERPT #HAA7GD p. 13 Hand in hand with the French cadastral ideal of fixed linear external frontiers is the idea of compactness and convexity, an idea according to which the natural shape of a nation is a continuous, broadly spherical (in the French case: hexagonal) bubble. This idea encapsulates the geopolitical dream of the nineteenth century, not only in Europe but also, and more systematically and impressively, in Africa and in post-Jeffersonian America, where whole continents were subjected to a process of geometrical tiling and thus divided into nations and states on the basis of geometries inspired by the French model. Irish 'Republicanism', too, is a still-living product of this model, and of the violence and imperviousness to ground-level complexities with which it was often originally associated. EXCERPT #N7AVQY p. 14 The French ideal of the modern state is one which sees the need to divide each larger continent into geometrically natural constituent wholes (by analogy with a rectangular cadastre), and to ensure homogeneous (especially linguistically homogeneous) populations within each region. The ideal is standardly one according to which all and only the speakers of a given language should co exist within a single continuous region enjoying 'natural' frontiers. (Consider the failed attempt by the authorities in the Irish Free State to enforce Gaelic upon the population of the new Irish nation.) The ideal worked, to a degree, in France, and it was to a degree effective also in Italy, Spain and Germany, though each of these countries has significant indigenous national minorities. But it could not be made to work elsewhere in continental Europe, as is seen above all in the disasters which followed Woodrow Wilson's embrace in 1918 of the principle of 'self determination of nations'. As Kolnai wrote in 1946, reflecting on the regions of Eastern and Central Europe: EXCERPT #NVTDPM p. 14 Human society is not composed of nations ... in the same clear-cut sense in which it is composed of individuals or, for that matter, of sovereign states. The spectrum of nationalities is full of interpenetrations, ambiguities, twilight zones. It follows that the conception of nationalism as a universal principle, the conception of a 'just' or 'natural' order of nation states is in fact and in theory pure utopia. There can be neither an order of states nor of frontiers in which there does not enter to a large extent the factor of arbitrariness, contingency and historical accident. Pretending to 'purify' the body of mankind like other enterprises of a naturalist, pseudo-rationalist sort purporting to lay down 'evident principles' which generally prove to be illusory means to push arbitrariness to its extreme limit (Kolnai 1946, p. 536). SECTION #CYDJQ9 The Empire of the Habsburgs EXCERPT #RK9JTE p. 14 The Habsburg Empire was, as one says, a multinational state, at times perforated, at times non contiguous, composed of a plurality of 'historicopolitical entities' ( historisch-politische Individualitäten ), as one called the different kingdoms, archduchies, duchies, margravates, principalities, etc., in Austrian constitutional law. These several entities were themselves far from being ethnically homogeneous. Bohemia and the western part of the Kingdom of Hungary, and in particular the area including Buda and Pest, had substantial German populations. There were both German and Rumanian populations in eastern Hungary. The region of Trieste was inhabited by a mixture of Italians, Germans and Slovenes. Galicia was populated by a mixture of Poles, Ruthenians and Jews and one could extend this list still further. EXCERPT #9HDE8W p. 15 The different nationalities were scattered throughout the Monarchy, so that no single ethnic or national group was confined to any one enclave or locality. Some of the problems raised by these mixtures of populations are still with us today, for example in Bosnia and in Transylvania. The problems were made still more complex by the fact that a similar diversity was present also in the religious life of the Empire, which encompassed Catholics, Uniates, Protestants (among them Lutherans, Hussites, Calvinists and others), Muslims and Jews, as well as practitioners of the Orthodox religion, separated by lines or zones of division often running skew to the lines and zones of division separating different national and ethnic groups within the Empire. EXCERPT #VXHKLS p. 15 This complexity of intervolvements led to some of the most striking political alliances and divisions in the Monarchy. In Moravia, Germans and Slavs lived in close interrelation, brought together most of all by the Catholic Church and by a widespread bilingualism both of which served also to temper nationalist feelings in the population of Moravia as a whole. The Moravians indeed conceived their political allegiance almost entirely in dynastic and Austrian terms, and were hardly susceptible to extraneous Pan-Slavist or Pan-Germanic influences. The inhabitants of Brno/Brünn, the Moravian capital, tended to take their cultural bearings from Vienna, rather than from Prague, all ethnic and linguistic differences notwithstanding. EXCERPT #LGTR2N p. 15 In Bohemia, on the other hand, Germans and Czechs intermingled hardly at all, the national (ethnic) division largely coinciding with a difference in religion and in social class. There were, accordingly, a significant number of Czech intellectuals in Bohemia, particularly after the Austrian Compromise with Hungary, who readily embraced Pan-Slavist ideology as a counterbalance to what they conceived to be an unjust treatment of the Czechs by the new Austro-Hungarian authorities. Such intellectuals then formed the nuclei of political movements which, under the influence of France and England to which they became increasingly susceptible, served as important dissolutionary forces within the Empire. EXCERPT #FNT4B2 p. 16 It was therefore not merely a complex congeries of nationalities which made up the manifold character of the Austrian Empire. There were also shared allegiances among different social groups, allegiances cutting across national boundaries and making of Austria a political organism of a quite peculiar sort. One expression of this fact is that, again, it is impossible to speak of 'minorities' within the Empire, which was still in this respect a product of the feudal, dynastic era of early modern Europe EXCERPT #VG7T9D p. 16 The twilight zones of Eastern and Central Europe arose in virtue of the fact that a combination of different factors is at work in determining borders, factors which may yield conflicting results. Czechoslovakia, in 1918, was awarded the whole of the Sudetenland, in spite of the latter's predominantly ethnic German population, because the Sudetenland had belonged within the historical frontiers of 'Bohemia.' SECTION #4PNSUE Solutions to Inter-Ethnic Conflict EXCERPT #4SWYQK p. 16 As Hayden has pointed out: EXCERPT #RBTJNU p. 16 When the majority is mobilized on ethnic grounds, minorities are incompatible with the definition of the state, and those that form a local majority are likely to try to secede, particularly when they can anticipate acceding to a neighboring state under the control of their ethnic confreres. This is the situation of Serbs and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Russians in Ukraine and Moldova, Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia, Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, Kurds in Turkey, Iran and Iraq, Tamils in Sri Lanka, and Muslim Kashmiris in India. (Hayden 1995, p. 65) EXCERPT #UBL2UM p. 16 Ethnic mobilization, as is all too clear, can yield urgent problems calling for diplomatic, political or in some cases military solution. The range of 'solutions' to such problems which have standardly been considered include: EXCERPT #8MZRJY p. 16 1. extermination or 'ethnic cleansing' (of Jews and Gypsies by Germans in the Nazi era, of Moslems by Serbs in Bosnia); 2. expulsion (by Turkey of Armenians from Turkey and of Greeks from Northern Cyprus; by Czechoslovakia and Poland of Germans after 1944); 3. enforced or economically supported relocation (by Austria of Germans in the successor territories after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire; by Stalin of Jews, Cossacks, Tartars, Germans and other groups); 4. enforced or economically supported isolation (by the United States of native Americans; by Germans, Russians, Poles and others at various times of Jews); 5. military rule (by India in Kashmir, by Israel on the West Bank, by Serbia in Kosovo); EXCERPT #7JAUR3 p. 17 6. external imposition of authority (by the British under United Nations mandate in Cyprus or Palestine, by NATO forces under the Dayton agreement in Bosnia); 7. negotiated settlement leading to amicable distribution of democratic rights within a single territory (by the citizens of Canada at this writing in relation to Quebec; by the Finns and Swedes in relation to Åland); 8. negotiated settlement leading to a splitting of territories (in Pakistan with the formation of Bangladesh; in Czechoslovakia with the formation of the Czech and Slovak Republics). SECTION #D828WE A Modest Proposal EXCERPT #7UV6DN p. 17 All but the first of these solutions are clearly to be favored on the minimal ground of respect for human life. Alternatives 4. to 8. are to be favored further, however, in virtue of the fact that they do justice to the feelings people have for their homes and for their land, for inherited rights of occupation, for established households and communities. The thesis to be considered here is that the range of these favored alternatives, and above all the range of available alternatives under 7. and 8., can be increased, if ways can be found to relax the geometrical constraints associated with the French ideal of nationhood and of the acceptable shapes of nations. The advocacy of non contiguous and of perforated nations is designed to be fully consistent with the fundamental principles of international law which dictate, for each given state, exclusive jurisdiction over its national territory and over the permanent population living there together with a duty of non intervention in the areas of exclusive jurisdiction of all other states. The suggested adjustment relates exclusively to the shapes of national territories that are to be made available as alternative outcomes of diplomatic negotiations designed to lead to settlement of inter-group disputes. EXCERPT #LFE2U9 p. 17 The imposition of new fiat boundaries is often recommended also outside Europe as a solution to the tribal intermixings that were brought about by colonial fiat boundaries. The onward march of political liberalization in Africa is likely to encourage further moves of this sort moves towards ethnic determination of territorial boundaries. Such moves, if they are possible at all given existing constraints, would have the advantage of involving no relocation of (or warfare between) peoples. They amount, at least initially, to a mere abstract reconfiguration of the pattern of fiat boundaries. But they will likely cause problems no less serious than those currently faced by the populations of Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia, and so on, and we are not advocating such moves here. Indeed we believe that the idea of national self-determination, to the degree that it presupposes that no intermixing obtains, is deeply flawed in relation to the world as currently constituted. Even leaving aside mixed populations, land is rarely capable of being cleanly divided according to any single principle too many obstacles stand in the way, including resistant topography, existing property rights and dynastic allegiances, existing lines of communication and patterns of trade, as well as territorial divisions based on religious and other affiliations. What we are suggesting, rather, is that, where a point of irretrievable breakdown has in any case been reached between ethnic or other groups living within a single territory , the range of geometric alternatives brought forward for consideration in the division of the territory should be seen as being wider than is dictated by the French model based on the geometrical ideal of symmetric tiling. Geometrical alternatives should be included which deviate from this model to the extent that they serve the end of doing maximal justice to existing (land and community) rights in such a way that rights of autonomy (and even of sovereignty) should be granted to those who do not wish to relocate. We would thus encourage efforts to find ways of ensuring that diplomats and others involved in negotiations designed to lead to the resolution of inter-group disputes to embrace in their deliberations a wider array of geometrical alternatives than is at present allowed including 'bizarre shapes', perforated territories, and above all non-contiguous territories. EXCERPT #JY2STS p. 18 Our proposal should not be confused with the advocacy of new 'soft forms of union between national communities divided by international frontiers.' As Schroeder points out, such proposals amount, in effect, to the suggestion 'that nations skip a step in historical development. History teaches that it is rarely possible to skip a step in this fashion. Soft boundaries can only be established between states made up of peoples who have achieved the identity, self-esteem, and dignity that flows from having established a traditional nation state.' (Schroeder 1994, p. 161) Such proposals underestimate the human emotional force of exclusive occupation and the efficacy of the principle according to which 'good fences do good neighbors make'. Moreover they stoke up trouble for the success of democratic decision-making in the future. EXCERPT #LS4AWT p. 18 The formation of ethnically homogeneous states may in addition have certain intrinsic advantages. Schroeder, for example, has argued that democracy presupposes a degree of ethnic homogeneity. and that the problems in the former Yugoslavia derive from the fact that the process of modern state formation was delayed there by 500 years of Turkish rule and 50 years of communism. We are not endorsing these advantages here. Rather we wish to point out only that, if they do exist, then efforts should be made to investigate the degree to which they can be realized without resort to ethnic cleansing or relocation. SECTION #HEC5P2 Switzerland EXCERPT #37GNXR p. 19 Our proposal is similar to what is sometimes referred to as 'Cantonization', an idea which served as the basis of the 'Careful Jigsaw' of the Vance-Owen Peace Plan put forward in 1992. This plan was rejected by President Clinton on (we would argue) geometric grounds of just the sort described above. Had the Vance-Owen Plan been put into effect in Bosnia in 1992 (and had it succeeded) it would have saved 200,000 lives. EXCERPT #544R9S p. 19 There are many examples of non-contiguous nations across the face of the earth: practically all island nations are non-contiguous in the sense here at issue. Our more radical proposal countenances non-contiguous nations whose constituent parts would be separated not by water but by land and by other jurisdictions (as Alaska is separated from the rest of the Continental United States by Canada). Switzerland, in dividing its cantons, has whether consciously or not worked exactly according to the principles of unconstrained geometry outlined above. The Swiss Canton of Fribourg contains several portions which are completely surrounded by the Canton of Vaud, which is, like several other cantons, a perforated spatial object. Switzerland itself is perforated in that it circumcludes inter alia the German town of Busingen on the Rhine, so that citizens of Busingen who work in Germany must daily pass through eight national borders on their journey to and from work. Switzerland in this respect reveals its origins in the feudal order of early modern Europe. (The Campione d'Italia is a similar isolated enclave of Italy surrounded entirely by Switzerland. There are 38 such enclaves (exclaves: see Catudal 1979) between Belgium and Holland in Baarle and the Spanish commune of Llivia in the Cerdanya region of Catalonia is entirely surrounded by France.) The Swiss have learned that borders can be oddly shaped, and that the exploitation of bizarre shapes can be a way of doing justice in peaceful fashion to inherited religious, linguistic, ethnic or dynastic divisions. (The 'bizarre shapes' of some of the cantons in Switzerland are a product of all of these factors.) EXCERPT #P8ZV8M p. 19 A similar idea might be applied also in relation to the Irish problem. One idea to be brought forward for consideration might be that of ceding to the Republic certain Catholic areas, even areas within the interior of Northern Ireland as presently constituted, whose populations overwhelmingly desire rule from Dublin. To establish the coherence of this idea would require investigation of the logistical difficulties which would arise in relation to the administration and government of the correspondingly non-contiguous and perforated jurisdictions which would result. In Quebec, similarly (and under the assumption that the dispute between the Francophone separatists and other groups has become truly irreconcilable), solutions to be considered might include the secession to (re-)Canada of native Canadian territories and of some predominantly anglophone regions of Quebec, followed by the secession of a correspondingly perforated (rest) Quebec from Canada as a whole. SECTION #87QSKV Objections to the Proposal EXCERPT #74YFUN p. 20 We shall not go into detail here in giving an account of possible objections to the proposals here advanced for consideration. One issue to be addressed is the degree to which, in the Quebec case, the resultant perforated state would be seen as doing justice to what we might call 'the honor of the French.' Perforated nations prick pomposity (though we recall, once again, that Italy has survived throughout its history as a perforated nation). A perforated state may not do justice, either, to the native Canadian groups within Quebec, who may have no wish to secede from Quebec and who seem to have prior rights. EXCERPT #4TDZYW p. 20 The notion of loose geometry would not find easy acceptance on the side of the Irish Republican Army either, who want the 'whole island of Ireland'. In each of these cases it is a matter of debate whether the likely unwillingness to accept perforated or non-contiguous borders rests on genuine grounds (for example pertaining to defence or supply considerations) of a sort which would have been operative in previous centuries, or whether their force derives rather from rhetorical devices of the sort that might be countered, at least in principle, by rational argument. EXCERPT #6SBJEM p. 20 Further problems which would arise through the embrace of non-continuous nations turn for example on the fact that such countries would require roads through the sovereign territory of other nations. Rights of access can however be guaranteed by treaty (as the rights of access to embassies, those odd examples of perforations within sovereign territory which currently exist throughout the globe, have been successfully guaranteed by treaty for many generations). The Vance-Owen Peace Plan involved an 'International Access Authority' to be established to guarantee freedom of movement in Bosnia. And just as Alaska can communicate without problem with the rest of the United States, so also, we might suppose, anglophone portions of Canada surrounded by sovereign regions of a newly perforated Quebec might be similarly in a position to communicate without problem with the remainder of Canada. The degree to which problems might arise in connection with such arrangements is, however, a matter for investigation. SECTION #S47UU9 God made Ireland; all the rest is the work of man EXCERPT #6M44KC p. 20 The Irish case differs in one respect from the other cases which have been dealt with thus far, in that the rhetoric of Irish nationalism presupposes a thesis according to which a genuine (free and sovereign) nation is one whose boundaries are not merely (a): such as to comprehend a single connected region (a region equivalent, topologically, to a circle), but also (b): entirely physical in nature in the strong sense of encompassing the entirety of the relevant surrounding area of land. 'Ireland cannot shift her frontiers. The Almighty traced them beyond the cunning of man to modify.' EXCERPT #9S2KVY p. 21 We recall also the first two articles of the Constitution of the Republic of Ireland: EXCERPT #F76EE9 p. 21 Article 1. The Irish nation hereby affirms its inalienable, indefeasible, and sovereign right to choose its own form of Government, to determine its relations with other nations, and to develop its life, political, economic and cultural, in accordance with its own genius and traditions. EXCERPT #5VEFQ2 p. 21 Article 2. The national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas. EXCERPT #CHJLQL p. 21 Note, however, that even the unitary Ireland that is represented in the mental maps of Irish Republicans is not a bona fide entity in the sense defined in the foregoing. For we are not here dealing with a single land-mass with autonomous physical frontiers, but rather with a complex product of human demarcation. Ireland is not a single 'whole island' but rather a super-unitary entity built up in fiat fashion out of non-contiguous parts (such as Inishkea, Inishmore, Inishbofin, Gorumna Island, and so on), and in such a way as to exclude other non-contiguous parts such as the Isle of Man in other ways comparable. EXCERPT #UL4SV7 p. 21 The overwhelming majority of geopolitical entities across the surface of the globe are indeed such as to fall short of the topological perfection of the bona fide spatial object, either because (like Russia and the United States) they are super-unitary entities comprehending non-contiguous parts, or because (like France and Germany, England and Scotland, Ulster and Eire) they are sub unitary entities, the result of a carving out of smaller fiat portions within some larger bona fide whole. Were Poland, say, to embrace the logic of the Irish, and demand autonomous coastal frontiers of her own, then Polish freedom fighters could not rest until they had occupied the entire Eurasian landmass. EXCERPT #NWSPT6 p. 21 The attitude according to which (against so many established precedents) geopolitical unities should approximate as closely as possible to the compact topology of the circle is incidentally illustrated not only in Irish Republicanism but also in the arguments of those American politicians and Supreme Court Justices who would have it that newly drawn African American and other minority Congressional districts should be ruled out as illegitimate already on geometrical grounds, because of their 'bizarre shapes'. As Justice O'Connor expressed it, praising 'compactness, contiguity, and respect for political subdivisions': 'Appearances do matter'. But why do (geometrical, topological) appearances matter? Are aspersions to be cast also on Denmark, or Norway, or Malaysia, or the Canton of Vaud, or indeed on the United States itself, on equivalent grounds? SECTION #L2BP9U The Duality of Violence EXCERPT #Y7A6K6 p. 22 There are, it should by now be clear, those who would go to war, or would deliver their sons to war, in order to institute a geometrical perfection of a certain sort. The other side of this same coin, now, is a geometrically motivated reluctance to defend territories or territorial appendages which are not attached in appropriate fashion to the relevant home territory. It is for geometrical reasons that Great Britain defends her compatriots in Ulster less than enthusiastically (and thus justifies on the part of the Irish Republican Army a certain faith in the ultimate victory of its cause). For Northern Ireland is not a connected part of British territory (any more than was India, Aden, Malta, Suez, Rhodesia). The English desire to preserve the union with Wales and Scotland is stronger than her desire to preserve the union with Northern Ireland, precisely because Scotland and Wales do form with England a natural (organic, continuous) whole. Secessionist movements in Wales and Scotland have on the other hand and for the same reason proved less strong than have their counterparts in Ireland. SECTION #LRMX8D The Virtues of Proximity EXCERPT #XBVVBP p. 22 Any form of political activity is a priori likely to involve a principle of proximity or neighborhood. That is to say, political concerns are most likely to be directed to people and states of affairs with which one is familiar, and political activity is the more likely to be effective the more it is directed at what is proximate. But, and this is one central argument of this essay, there are different types and principles of proximity. The simplest type of proximity is spatial, and conceiving and drawing boundaries on the basis of spatial proximity can yield benefits in terms of efficiency and community (as well as benefits of a military sort, where these are relevant). But there are many cases in human history where spatial proximity has been overridden by other types of proximity (and the recent phenomenal expansion of electronic communication is clearly bringing about an entirely new sort of proximity, whose implications for the sorts of issues treated here are still entirely unclear). The principle of proximity for Australians was for a long time Anglo-Saxon culture ('Home'). This is now being replaced by a principle which emphasises geographical proximity and economic effectiveness ('Asia'). It is not only for the cause of spatial proximity that wars are fought. The investigation of different types and principles of proximity is nonetheless to be recommended, since it would seem to have a multiplicity of different sorts of light to throw on the causes of war, and on the methods for the avoidance of war, in the future. SECTION #CPKHQ3 References EXCERPT #ZSTRKX p. 23 Ardrey, Robert 1966 The Territorial Imperative. A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations , New York: Dell. EXCERPT #KL9K6D p. 23 Black, Jeremy (ed.) 1987 The Origins of War in Early Modern Europe , Edinburgh: John Donald. EXCERPT #GJJESB p. 23 Bowman, John 1982 De Valera and the Ulster Question 1917/1973 , Oxford: Clarendon Press. EXCERPT #34MWY3 p. 23 Brown, J. L. 1975 The Evolution of Behavior , New York: Norton. EXCERPT #FB342E p. 23 Catudal, Honore Marc 1979 The Exclave Problem of Western Europe , University of Alabama Press. EXCERPT #4CGV86 p. 23 Coakley, John 1983 "National Territories and Cultural Frontiers: Conflicts of Principle in the Formation of States in Europe", in Malcolm Anderson, ed., Frontier Regions in Western Europe , London: Frank Cass, 3449. EXCERPT #UWJM7E p. 23 Geyer, Alan and Green, Barbara G. 1992 Lines in the Sand. Justice and the Gulf War , Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press. EXCERPT #G2Y5L7 p. 23 Gottlieb, Gidon 1994 "Nations Without States", Foreign Affairs , 73 (May/June). EXCERPT #EKVFU6 p. 23 Gilbert, Margaret 1993 "Group Membership and Political Obligation", The Monist , 76, 119/131. EXCERPT #AHFUVC p. 23 Glassner, Martin Ira and de Blij, Harm J. 1980 Systematic Political Geography , 3rd edition, New York: John Wiley and Sons. EXCERPT #6DAY8S p. 23 Hayden, Robert 1995 "Constitutionalism and Nationalism in the Balkans. The Bosnian 'Constitution' as a Formula for Partition", East European Constitutional Review , 4: 4, 5968. EXCERPT #HAW8XM p. 23 Hertz, Frederick 1944 Nationality in History and Politics: A Psychology and Sociology of National Sentiment and Nationalism , London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. EXCERPT #RWUUEC p. 24 Kolnai, Aurel 1946 "Les ambiguïtés nationales", La nouvelle Relève (Montreal), 5, 53346, 6, 644-55. EXCERPT #FQETEN p. 24 Lattimore, Owen 1962 Studies in Frontier History , Oxford: Oxford University Press. EXCERPT #HHSAX5 p. 24 Leibman, M. 1970 "The Effects of Sex and Race Norms on Personal Space", Environment and Behavior , 2, 208-246 EXCERPT #AFEX5E p. 24 Lewis, Bernard 1993 Islam and the West , Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. EXCERPT #RTHGQH p. 24 Malmberg, T. 1980 Human Territoriality: Survey of Behavioral Territories in Man with Preliminary Analysis and Discussion of Meaning , New York: Mouton. EXCERPT #YT9H5G p. 24 Monmonier, Mark 1991 How to Lie With Maps , Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. EXCERPT #HMNMXF p. 24 Owen 1995, David 1995 Balkan Odyssey , New York/San Diego/London: Harcourt Brace. EXCERPT #N8X89J p. 24 Prescott, J. R. V. 1978 Boundaries and Frontiers , London: Croom Helm, Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield. EXCERPT #3J2MB9 p. 24 Sack, Robert D. 1986 Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. EXCERPT #9BUUZL p. 24 Sahlins, Peter 1989 Boundaries. The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees , Berkeley/Los Angeles/Oxford: University of California Press. EXCERPT #FTAPFM p. 24 Schroeder, William A. 1994 "Nationalism, Boundaries and the Bosnian War: Another Perspective", Southern Illinois University Law Journal , 19, 153163. EXCERPT #64SE3F p. 24 Smith, Barry 1994 "Fiat Objects", in N. Guarino, L. Vieu and S. Pribbenow (eds.), Parts and Wholes: Conceptual Part-Whole Relations and Formal Mereology , 11th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Amsterdam, 8 August 1994, Amsterdam: European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence, 1523. EXCERPT #ZWBGGZ p. 24 Smith, Barry 1995 "On Drawing Lines on a Map", in Andrew U. Frank and EXCERPT #EE3ZRU p. 25 Werner Kuhn (eds.), Spatial Information Theory. A Theoretical Basis for GIS (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 988), Berlin/Heidelberg/New York, etc.: Springer, 475484. EXCERPT #2QADWU p. 25 Smith, Barry 1996 "More Things in Heaven and Earth", Grazer Philosophische Studien , 50, in press. EXCERPT #NGTE8S p. 25 Stea, David, Blaut, James M. and Stephens, Jennifer 1996 "Mapping as a Cultural Universal", in J. Portugali (ed.), The Construction of Cognitive Maps , Dordrecht: Kluwer, 345-360. EXCERPT #Y8H6DP p. 25 Talmy, Leonard 1988 "Force Dynamics in Language and Cognition", Cognitive Science , 12, 49 100. EXCERPT #XAJ2MW p. 25 Taylor, Ralph B. 1988 Human Territorial Functioning. An Empirical, Evolutionary Perspective on Individual and Small Group Territorial Cognitions, Behaviors and Consequences , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. EXCERPT #U5U5D3 p. 25 Whittaker 1994, C. R. 1994 Frontiers of the Roman Empire. A Social and Economic Study , Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. DOCUMENT #DLY2WP Untitled thesis SECTION #T86XAY Abstract EXCERPT #J9TEWQ p. 0 When national borders in the modern sense first began to be established in early modern Europe, non-contiguous and perforated nations were a commonplace. According to the conception of the shapes of nations that is currently preferred, however, nations must conform to the topological model of (approximate) circularity; their borders must guarantee contiguity and simple connectedness, and such borders must as far as possible conform to existing topographical features on the ground. The striving to conform to this model can be seen at work today in Quebec and in Ireland, it underpins much of the rhetoric of the P.L.O., and was certainly to some degree involved as a motivating factor in much of the ethnic cleansing which took place in Bosnia in recent times. EXCERPT #RCN88D p. 0 The question to be addressed in what follows is: to what extent could inter-group disputes be more peacefully resolved, and ethnic cleansing avoided, if political leaders, diplomats and others involved in the resolution of such disputes could be brought to accept weaker geometrical constraints on the shapes of nations? A number of associated questions then present themselves: What sorts of administrative and logistical problems have been encountered by existing non contiguous nations (such as the United States) and by perforated nations (such as Italy, which circumcludes the Vatican and the Republic of San Marino, and South Africa, which circumcludes Lesotho), and by other nations deviating in different ways from the received geometrical ideal? To what degree is the desire for continuity and simple connectedness a rational desire (based for example on well-founded military or economic considerations), and to what degree does it rest on species of political rhetoric which might be countered by, for example, philosophical argument? These and a series of related questions will form the subject-matter of the present essay. ### 33. Tool result: read DOCUMENT #KWFTKJ Untitled thesis SECTION #AL4A8L Surrounding SpaceOn the Ontology of Organism-Environment Relations EXCERPT #8B24R3 p. 0 Barry Smith EXCERPT #AEG8C2 p. 0 Department of Philosophy and Center for Cognitive Science, SUNY Buffalo, NY EXCERPT #BBTT9Z p. 0 Achille C. Varzi EXCERPT #652DW3 p. 0 Department of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York, NY EXCERPT #QEDPHS p. 0 [Published in Theory in Biosciences 120:2 (2002), 139–162] EXCERPT #SA9J2Q p. 0 Abstract. The history of evolution is a history of development from less to more complex organisms. This growth in complexity of organisms goes hand in hand with a concurrent growth in complexity of environments and of organism-environment relations. It is a concern with this latter aspect of evolutionary development that motivates the present paper. We begin by outlining a theory of organism-environment relations. We then show that the theory can be applied to a range of different sorts of cases, both biological and non-biological, in which objects are lodged or housed within specific environments, or niches. Biological science is interested in types —for example in genotypes, phenotypes, and environment types—in regularities that can serve as the basis for the formulation of laws or general principles. Types, however, can exist only through their corresponding tokens. Our theory of token environments is meant to plug this gap and to provide a first step towards a general theory of causally relevant spatial volumes. DOCUMENT #KWFTKJ Untitled thesis SECTION #XVFDY2 1. Introduction EXCERPT #G4CUU4 p. 0 The history of evolution is, very roughly, a history of development from the less to the more complex. Philosophers who have turned their attentions to these matters have concentrated almost exclusively on the growth in complexity of organisms. (In this, of course, they have followed most biologists.) As Richard Lewontin [21] points out, however, the growth in complexity of organisms goes hand in hand with a concurrent growth in complexity of environments and thus of organism-environment relations. Organisms select their environments, but they also determine and modify the environmental features which are most relevant to their own survival. It is this latter aspect of evolutionary development that concerns us here. EXCERPT #PSRSFK p. 0 Consider the armchair in which you are now sitting. This is an artefact; an object of a special sort which is to be understood, on standard views, in terms of its function or in terms of the intentions of its creator. Yet there is an aspect of your armchair which it shares with non-artefactual entities such as the hollow in the ground in which an ape might shelter from the wind, or the cave in which a bear might make its home. Briefly, the armchair, the hollow, and the cave are all what we shall call niches , they are environments into which an organism fits . 1 This fitting relation is pervasively exemplified not only in the realm of biological phenomena more narrowly conceived, but also in the realms of technology and culture. Indeed artefacts in general can themselves be divided into two sorts: those which are designed to serve in the fitting relation such as armchairs, rooms, parks, circus-tents; and those which are not so designed. Even the latter are in many cases standardly applied to the construction or embellishment of artefacts of the former type. This is true, for example, of carpenters' tools and of paintings or lampstands. EXCERPT #BL4B2N p. 0 EXCERPT #5B9SFW p. 1 In [31], drawing primarily on biological examples, we defended a view of the relation of fit between a niche and its tenants as a relation capable of being specified with the aid of basic concepts of formal ontology—of mereology, topology, and the theory of location. The theory there presented was synchronic only. That is to say, we were concerned exclusively with the formal structure exemplified whenever a tenant is in a niche at a given time . In such circumstances a niche is analogous to a topological neighborhood surrounding its tenant. In the present paper we extend this theory by providing a first step towards a theory of niche dynamics, a theory of life, motion, and growth, via a more detailed account of the internal structures of niches and of the causal relations between niches and their surroundings. By adding this dynamic dimension we shall be in a position to throw light on the ways in which evolution involves simultaneous and mutually reinforcing processes of natural selection and niche construction. EXCERPT #G7RZQ7 p. 1 Intuitively, a niche may or may not be occupied by a tenant. The tenant may leave its niche, as when the kangaroo joey leaves the pouch of its mother. Or the tenant may move from one niche to another, as when the whooping crane migrates from its breeding grounds in Alberta to its winter EXCERPT #RLVXAB p. 1 1 Dictionaries distinguish two senses of the term 'niche': an architectural sense, which means a crevice or hole, a place into which something fits, and a functional sense, which means a role or option within a space of alternatives. The relation between these uses of the term from an ecological perspective will be addressed below. EXCERPT #FQ7J85 p. 1 EXCERPT #6VX4GT p. 2 home in the Gulf of Mexico. A theory of niche dynamics must therefore make room not only for a theory of the niche as occupied (i.e., of the tenant-niche relation), but also for a theory of the vacant niche and of the passage from one niche to another. We thus begin our remarks with an account of what vacant and occupied niches have in common. As in the earlier paper, we shall concentrate primarily on biological examples. The niche structures with which we deal will in the first place be those that are instantiated where organisms or groups of organisms are housed within their surroundings, whether natural (the hollow or cave) or artefactual (the armchair, a house, a circus tent). Later, however, we will show that the theory of such structures can be applied to a wide range of different sorts of cases in which objects, including inanimate objects, are lodged or housed within environmental settings. ### 34. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `web_search` ```json { "query": "Barry Smith \"The Cognitive Geometry of War\" 1997 DOI Current Issues in Political Philosophy" } ``` #### Tool call: `web_search` ```json { "query": "Barry Smith Achille Varzi \"Surrounding Space\" \"Theory in Biosciences\" 120 2 DOI" } ``` ### 35. Tool result: web_search WEB SEARCH RESULTS Query: Barry Smith "The Cognitive Geometry of War" 1997 DOI Current Issues in Political Philosophy **No DOI appears to have been assigned** to this 1997 conference-proceedings chapter. The relevant identifier is the book’s ISBN: **978-3-209-02434-3** (ISBN-10: **3-209-02434-0**). ([alws.at](https://www.alws.at/alws/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Festschrift-2017.pdf?utm_source=openai)) **Full citation:** Smith, Barry. “The Cognitive Geometry of War.” In *Current Issues in Political Philosophy: Justice in Society and World Order*, edited by Peter Koller and Klaus Puhl, 394–403. Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1997. ([philarchive.org](https://philarchive.org/archive/SMITCGv1)) **APA:** Smith, B. (1997). The cognitive geometry of war. In P. Koller & K. Puhl (Eds.), *Current issues in political philosophy: Justice in society and world order* (pp. 394–403). Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky. Cited sources: - 40x Internationales Wittgenstein Symposium: https://www.alws.at/alws/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Festschrift-2017.pdf?utm_source=openai - : https://philarchive.org/archive/SMITCGv1 ### 36. Tool result: web_search WEB SEARCH RESULTS Query: Barry Smith Achille Varzi "Surrounding Space" "Theory in Biosciences" 120 2 DOI **DOI:** `10.1078/1431-7613-00053` **Citation:** Smith, Barry, and Achille C. Varzi. “Surrounding Space: The Ontology of Organism-Environment Relations.” *Theory in Biosciences* **121**(2), 2002, pp. 139–162. ([sciencedirect.com](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S143176130470052X?utm_source=openai)) Cited sources: - Surrounding Space – The Ontology of Organism-Environment Relations - ScienceDirect: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S143176130470052X?utm_source=openai ### 37. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "authors": [ "Barry Smith" ], "document_id": "DLY2WP", "folder": "ontology", "kind": "book_chapter", "micro_abstract": "Examines how ideals of contiguous, compact national territory shape political conflict and argues that perforated or non-contiguous borders can support more peaceful settlements.", "title": "The Cognitive Geometry of War", "venue": "Current Issues in Political Philosophy: Justice in Society and World Order", "year": "1997" } ``` #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "authors": [ "Barry Smith", "Achille C. Varzi" ], "document_id": "KWFTKJ", "doi": "10.1078/1431-7613-00053", "folder": "ontology", "kind": "journal_article", "micro_abstract": "Develops a formal ontology of niches as spatial environments structured by tenants, media, and retainers, extending the account to niche dynamics and construction.", "title": "Surrounding Space: The Ontology of Organism-Environment Relations", "venue": "Theory in Biosciences", "year": "2002" } ``` ### 38. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #DLY2WP: kind, title, authors, year, venue, folder, micro_abstract ### 39. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #KWFTKJ: kind, title, authors, year, venue, doi, folder, micro_abstract ### 40. Assistant Found the two previously extracted but untitled files, completed their metadata, and placed them in **ontology**: - *The Cognitive Geometry of War* — #DLY2WP - *Surrounding Space: The Ontology of Organism-Environment Relations* — #KWFTKJ The second document’s DOI was also verified and added. ### 41. User great, let's now write good microabstracts for all these and generate distinctive art, and put them all in the ontology folder! ### 42. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `get_document` ```json { "id": "4QQD4A" } ``` #### Tool call: `get_document` ```json { "id": "K6JC2J" } ``` #### Tool call: `get_document` ```json { "id": "LRK6E2" } ``` #### Tool call: `get_document` ```json { "id": "9GWUC8" } ``` ### 43. Tool result: get_document DOCUMENT #4QQD4A Title: The Logic of Systems of Granular Partitions Outline: - 1 #VVCH2P The logic of systems of granular partitions - 1.1 #U3FVY5 Abstract - 1.2 #YHG9C8 1 Introduction - 1.3 #CWP9T7 2 Individual objects, cell trees, and types of objects - 1.4 #TFZZ9U 3 Typed and labeled granular partitions - 1.4.1 #RJ3EWJ 3.1 Granular partitions - 1.4.2 #EUX57R 3.2 Labeling - 1.4.3 #86K739 3.3 Typed granular partitions - 1.5 #76NSHB 4 Refinement relations between granular partitions - 1.5.1 #35ZJUV 4.1 Refinement as ordering - 1.5.2 #SX8VBZ 4.2 Refinement vs. extension - 1.5.3 #EDXEGA 4.3 Counterparts - 1.6 #JXJLC8 5 Partition logic - 1.6.1 #RJRPBC 5.1 Semantics - 1.6.2 #Q2JNUH 5.2 Valid principles - 1.6.3 #AKMGAE 5.3 The theory - 1.7 #48B7M9 6 Conclusions - 1.8 #ML5ST5 References ### 44. Tool result: get_document DOCUMENT #K6JC2J Title: Layers: A New Approach to Locating Objects in Space Outline: - 1 #3WT43K Layers: A New Approach to Locating Objects in Space - 1.1 #XZE2GL 1. The Problem - 1.2 #AXU58S 2. Region-Based Approaches - 1.3 #2VKZB5 3. Mereotopology - 1.4 #3J6RF9 4. Examples of Layers - 1.4.1 #XM2KE8 Example 1 - 1.4.1.1 #BNC5A3 6 Maureen Donnelly and Barry Smith - 1.4.2 #4Q5PC2 Example 2 - 1.4.3 #TJ5M79 Example 3 - 1.4.4 #UYSEWN Example 4 - 1.4.5 #DUK6QE Example 5 - 1.5 #7EZJVQ 5. General Extensional Mereology - 1.6 #ZMUQ2H 6. Adding Layers - 1.7 #ZXRLF4 7. The Region Layer - 1.8 #86AZGB 8. Layered Mereotopology - 1.9 #RQ7XTG 9. Time and Change - 1.10 #R72GGN 10. Conclusions - 1.11 #GWDNAJ Bibliography ### 45. Tool result: get_document DOCUMENT #LRK6E2 Title: A Taxonomy of Granular Partitions Outline: - 1 #T5AX2N A taxonomy of partitions - 1.1 #L5C6TM 1 Introduction - 1.2 #344SV5 2 Partitions as system of cells - 1.2.1 #DHBY9A 2.1 Partitions - 1.2.2 #SSS9XX 2.2 Trees - 1.2.3 #5HUQ4L 2.3 Partition-theoretic sum and maximal cells - 1.3 #LUBMXE 3 Partitions in their projective relation to reality - 1.3.1 #MJWMAB 3.1 Projection - 1.3.2 #GWHAKM 3.2 Location - 1.3.3 #HZFX5K 3.3 Recognizing and preserving mereological structure - 1.3.4 #XUZC23 3.4 Granularity - 1.4 #29FPE8 4 Varieties of transparent partitions - 1.4.1 #SDBYVV 4.1 Functionality constraints - 1.4.2 #9P5HEV 4.2 Structural constraints - 1.4.3 #86MMAX 4.3 Completeness and exhaustiveness - 1.4.4 #M3373H 4.4 Redundancy - 1.5 #A8Q3M9 5 Partitions of geographic space - 1.5.1 #J6DM8J 5.1 The perfect cadastre - 1.5.2 #4VMJX6 5.2 Categorical coverages - 1.5.3 #DZJSHP 5.3 A partition recognizing water bodies - 1.6 #VCGW8Z 6 Summary and conclusions - 1.7 #5VZSS8 Acknowledgements - 1.8 #MA9RT3 Bibliography ### 46. Tool result: get_document DOCUMENT #9GWUC8 Title: On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology Outline: - 1 #R3ZTH8 On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology - 1.1 #RVYUE8 1 Introduction - 1.2 #6AGD85 2 Continuant - 1.3 #PWWRJ5 3 Material entity - 1.4 #KCTEZX 4 Object - 1.4.1 #GL4M8F 4.1 Natural and engineered units of matter - 1.4.2 #MCU2BM 4.2 Three focal examples - 1.4.2.1 #2QYSRV CU1: Causal unity via physical covering - 1.4.2.2 #GBAQSZ CU2: Causal unity via internal physical forces - 1.4.2.3 #KNXK3W CU3: Causal unity via engineered assembly of components - 1.4.3 #HH2GYF 4.3 Objects can have other objects as parts - 1.4.4 #BT93NX 4.4 Conjoined twins - 1.5 #2U9457 5 Object aggregate - 1.6 #9D446H 6 Fiat object part - 1.7 #QCN4RH 7 Treatment of Problem Cases - 1.8 #584H4S Acknowledgments - 1.9 #3DFD6X References ### 47. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `read` ```json { "blocks": [ "U3FVY5", "48B7M9" ], "expand": true } ``` #### Tool call: `read` ```json { "blocks": [ "XZE2GL", "R72GGN" ], "expand": true } ``` #### Tool call: `read` ```json { "blocks": [ "L5C6TM", "VCGW8Z" ], "expand": true } ``` #### Tool call: `read` ```json { "blocks": [ "RVYUE8", "PWWRJ5", "KCTEZX", "QCN4RH" ], "expand": true } ``` ### 48. Tool result: read DOCUMENT #4QQD4A The Logic of Systems of Granular Partitions SECTION #U3FVY5 Abstract EXCERPT #V2RCPU p. 0 The theory of granular partitions is designed to capture in a formal framework important aspects of the selective character of common-sense views of reality. It comprehends not merely the ways in which we can view reality by conceiving its objects as gathered together not merely into sets, but also into wholes of various kinds, partitioned into parts at various levels of granularity. We here represent granular partitions as triples consisting of a rooted tree structure as first component, a domain satisfying the axioms of Extensional Mereology as second component, and a mapping (called 'projection') of the first into the second as a third component. We define ordering relations among granular partitions the resulting structures are called partition frames. We then introduce an axiomatic theory which sentences are interpreted in partition frames. DOCUMENT #4QQD4A The Logic of Systems of Granular Partitions SECTION #48B7M9 6 Conclusions EXCERPT #LALGES p. 19 In this paper we continued our work on the formalization of granular partitions which we started in [BS03]. We represented granular partitions as triples consisting of a rooted tree structure as first component, a domain satisfying the axioms of Extensional Mereology as second component, and a (projection) mapping of the first component (the cell tree) into the second component (the target domain) as a third component. We then assigned labels and types to the cells of the cell tree such that if the cell z projects onto the object x in the target domain, then the label assigned to z is the name of x and the type assigned to z is the type of x . The resulting structures are called labeled typed granular partitions. EXCERPT #BYBTPP p. 19 EXCERPT #8JSHV8 p. 20 We defined an ordering (refinement) relation, \preceq among labeled typed granular partitions and a counterpart relation, C , which holds between cells in distinct granular partitions that project onto the same object in reality. We proved that \preceq is reflexive and transitive and that C is reflexive, symmetric and transitive. Partition frames are structures formed by a set of labeled typed granular partitions, refinement relations between the partition in this set, and counterpart relations among cells of the granular partitions. EXCERPT #RZSW87 p. 20 We then introduced the formal language \mathcal{L} in which we can express sentences like: ‘Partition \Gamma_x recognizes that there exists an object named ‘Fred’s body’ of type human body’, ‘All partitions in context \Pi recognize that human bodies have right human arms as parts’, ‘Partition \Gamma_x does not recognize an object named ‘Fred’s left hand’’, ‘An object named ‘Fred’s left hand’ is absent in partition \Gamma_x ’. EXCERPT #99UVRH p. 20 We gave a formal semantics of \mathcal{L} with respect to the interpretation in partition frames, provided a formal system for \mathcal{L} that facilitates formal reasoning, and showed that reasoning within this system is sound with respect to the given semantics. EXCERPT #ZDHUU9 p. 20 Important properties of the formal system are: EXCERPT #LCPHNK p. 20 • \mathcal{L} is not interpreted directly in reality but in cell structures of granular partitions that have a projective relationship to reality; • \mathcal{L} is a modal predicate logic of type S4; • granular partitions are treated as worlds in the sense of the standard multiple world semantics of modal logic and the refinement relation between granular partitions is treated as an accessibility relation between worlds; • the underlying semantics is an ‘actualist’ semantics in the sense that quantification is restricted to the cells of the granular partition with respect to which a quantified formula is evaluated; • since distinct granular partitions do not share cells we establish counterpart relations between cells in distinct granular partitions that project onto the same object in reality; • the negation in \mathcal{L} is rather weak: \sim \alpha means that a given partition does not recognize that \alpha is the case; • in \mathcal{L} we can express facts about the absence of certain objects and relations between them. EXCERPT #WWJ4AU p. 20 To further explore the expressive and reasoning power of \mathcal{L} and to firmly show its usefulness in practical applications such as bio-medicine or geographic information science is subject of ongoing research. EXCERPT #ZZ3LE3 p. 20 ### 49. Tool result: read DOCUMENT #K6JC2J Layers: A New Approach to Locating Objects in Space SECTION #XZE2GL 1. The Problem EXCERPT #PLUCGP p. 0 Suppose you are a conservation biologist whose job it is to keep track of vulnerable species in a large national park. You develop a system of map layers representing not only the topography of the park region, the soil-types and vegetation zones, the system of roads and other man-made geographic objects, but also the most important habitats for each species. Your GISystem then needs to be able to use the results of your layer-making efforts in order to answer questions like: Which of the four most vulnerable species live in riparian zones? Do Chiricahua leopard frogs live in the same vegetation zones as shovel-nosed snakes? How do climate changes in the elevated regions of the park affect long-term patterns of declining populations of scimitar-horned oryx? And so forth. EXCERPT #6SU89Z p. 0 Standard methods for dealing with map overlays in GIS were developed in the 1970s and have been incorporated into commercial GISystems software for more than two decades. Such systems can comfortably represent objects with crisp boundaries by describing the positions of their boundaries, and they can handle multiple objects which share the same footprint wherever the objects in question occupy the same regions of space. But such approaches are static in nature, and they have no direct facility for dealing with moving objects in space. With the increasing availability of temporally indexed geospatial information comes the ever more pressing need on the part of GISystems to solve the problems which arise when we need to deal with those complex interactions among different sorts of dynamic phenomena which arise in areas such as conservation biology, or predator tracking, or in the building of early warning systems for chemical hazards. For such purposes, however, we need a framework within which we can distinguish objects from the regions they occupy at successive points in time. EXCERPT #DVA4L9 p. 1 DOCUMENT #K6JC2J Layers: A New Approach to Locating Objects in Space SECTION #R72GGN 10. Conclusions EXCERPT #UZ6LD8 p. 13 The framework presented in this paper allows mereotopological relations to apply directly to all spatial entities, including spatial regions, material objects, and holes. We saw that the framework can be extended to yield a mereotopological treatment of four-dimensional entities such as motions of sparrows as well as of the spatio-temporal regions in which such processes occur. Our framework thus allows us to do justice to the expressive possibilities encapsulated in the idea of map layers while at the same time incorporating the resources of a rich and naturalistic ontology of geospatial dynamics. EXCERPT #ECV7ZJ p. 13 Acknowledgement: This work was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation under the auspices of its Wolfgang Paul Program, and also by the National Science Foundation under grant BCS-9975557: Geographic Categories: An Ontological Investigation. Our thanks go to David Mark for helpful comments. EXCERPT #2J5QW8 p. 14 ### 50. Tool result: read DOCUMENT #LRK6E2 A Taxonomy of Granular Partitions SECTION #L5C6TM 1 Introduction EXCERPT #AVQEQ4 p. 0 Imagine that you are standing on a bridge above a highway checking off the makes and models of the cars that are passing underneath. Or that you are a postal clerk dividing envelopes into bundles or a laboratory technician sorting samples of bacteria into species and sub-species. Or imagine that you are making a list of the fossils in your museum or of the guests in your hotel on a certain night. In each of these cases you are employing a certain grid of cells, and you are recognizing certain objects as being located in those cells. We shall call such a grid of cells a partition , and we shall argue that partitions are involved in all listing, sorting, cataloguing and mapping activities. EXCERPT #2MNXYN p. 0 Partitions are ways of structuring and understanding reality. Some partitions are flat: they amount to nothing more than a mere list. Other partitions are hierarchical: they consist of cells and subcells, the latter being contained within the former. Some partitions are built in order to reflect independently existing divisions on the side of objects in the world (the subdivision of the animal kingdom into species, the subdivision of heavenly bodies into galaxies, stars, planets, moons). Other partitions – for example the partitions created by nightclub doormen or electoral redistricting commissions – are themselves such as to create the necessary divisions on the side of their objects, and sometimes they create those very objects themselves. EXCERPT #ZWPRYY p. 0 In Smith and Brogaard (2000) the notion of partition is introduced as a generalization of David Lewis's (1991) conception of classes as the mereological sums of their singletons. Given its set-theoretical roots, our basic formal ontology of partitions will have two parts: A. a theory of the relations between cells and the partitions in which they are housed, and B. a theory of the relations between cells and objects in reality. The counterpart of A in a set-theoretic context would be the study of the relations among subsets of a single set; the counterpart of B would be the study of the relations between sets and their members. EXCERPT #W9CEZA p. 1 Division into units, counting and parceling out, listing, sorting, pigeonholing, cataloguing are activities performed by human beings in their traffic with the world. Partitions are the cognitive devices designed and built by human beings to fulfill these various purposes. As will be clear from what follows, the notion of partition that is hereby implied is only distantly related to the more familiar notion of a partition defined in terms of equivalence classes. EXCERPT #NY857C p. 1 The paper is structured as follows. We start with a discussion of properties of partitions as systems of cells in the sense of theory A. We then consider partitions in their projective relation to reality in the sense of theory B. This provides us with the means to define what it means to say that a partition truly projects onto reality. In Section 4 we provide a classification of partition by characterizing various properties of the correspondence between partition and reality. We consider three classes of partitions that are relevant in the geographic domain in Section 5. DOCUMENT #LRK6E2 A Taxonomy of Granular Partitions SECTION #VCGW8Z 6 Summary and conclusions EXCERPT #NG5BE7 p. 13 This paper is a contribution to the formal ontology of partitions. We defined master conditions that need to be satisfied by every partition. These master conditions fall into two groups: (A) master conditions characterizing partitions as systems of cells, and (B) master conditions describing partitions in their projective relation to reality. EXCERPT #RFQ94S p. 13 At the level of theory (A) partitions are systems of cells that are partially ordered by the partition-theoretic subcell relation. Such systems of cells are such that they can be always represented as trees, i.e., they are finite, have a unique maximal element, and they do not have cycles in their graph representation. But partitions are more than just systems of cells. They are cognitive devices that are directed towards reality. At the level of theory B we take this feature into account and characterize partitions using the relations of projection and location. Cells in partitions are projected onto objects in reality. Objects are located at cells when projection succeeds. We then say that a partition recognizes the objects that are located at its cells. EXCERPT #V486CW p. 14 Partitions do not only recognize objects, they are also capable of reflecting the mereological structure of the objects they recognize in the mereological structure of their cell array defined in theory A. This does not mean that all partitions actually do reflect the mereological structure of the objects they recognize, however, for it is an important feature of partitions that they are also capable of tracing over mereological structure. There are, for example, large classes of partitions that simply list objects without caring about how these objects hang together mereologically. In fact there are only very few partitions that completely represent the mereological structure of the objects they recognize. EXCERPT #98ZEN9 p. 14 Our discussion of granularity showed that partitions have two ways of tracing over mereological structure: (1) by tracing over mereological relations between the objects (wholes) which they recognize; (2) by tracing over parts. The tracing over of parts is (unless mereological atomism is true) a feature manifested by every partition, for partitions are in every case coarse grained . EXCERPT #B2PGSZ p. 14 We classified partitions along three essentially orthogonal axes: (a) degree of correspondence to objects; (b) degree of structural fit; and (c) degree of completeness and exhaustiveness. Along axis (a) we characterize partitions according to properties that the relations of projection and location have or lack: both may be functional relations, meaning that cells never project onto more than one object and that objects are never located at more than one cell. Along axis (b) we characterize partition according to the degree to which they reflect or trace over the mereological structure of the objects they recognize. We distinguished mereological monotony, mereological ignorance, and partitions that reflect some but not all mereological structure. Along axis (c) we characterized partitions by considering conditions under which every cell in a partition is projected onto some object and under which every object in a given domain is located at some cell. If projection or location relations are also functions, then we can recover in these terms the usual mathematical distinctions between partial, total, onto, and into mappings. EXCERPT #9C5UPR p. 14 Three classes of partitions play an important role in spatial information science: cadastral partitions, categorical coverages, and partitions that we find in folk categorizations of geographic reality. We showed that partition theory can be used as a framework in whose terms the different properties of those partitions can be specified. Partition theory thus provides a formal-ontological foundation for understanding human partitioning activity in the geographic domain. ### 51. Tool result: read DOCUMENT #9GWUC8 On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology SECTION #RVYUE8 1 Introduction EXCERPT #JVVWEV p. 0 BFO is one of three leading public domain upper-level ontologies used in scientific and other contexts, 1 alongside DOLCE (the Domain Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering) [Gangemi et al. 2002] and SUMO (the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology) [Niles and Pease 2001]. BFO differs from the latter, however, in being a strict upper level ontology. Unlike DOLCE and SUMO, it does not contain its own representations of physical, chemical, biological, psychological, or other types of entities which would properly fall within the domains of the special sciences. BFO is therefore, in contrast to these other ontologies, very small, and thus more manageable as an artifact designed for purposes of ontological engineering. As will become clear, however, even a small ontology can bring large challenges from a logico-metaphysical point of view. EXCERPT #32U3AK p. 0 BFO is concerned only with what exists (which means in practice: only with those sorts of entities for which we have good – for example empirical-scientific reason to believe that they exist; thus not with unicorns, sprites, or absent fingers). BFO then adopts an approach to ontology which sees what exists as being divided along three orthogonal dimensions. EXCERPT #DEB2T2 p. 0 First, BFO recognizes a dichotomy between occurents and continuants . The former are either processual entities (events, actions, procedures ...) which unfold over a EXCERPT #L8D9HM p. 0 1 The BFO website at http://www.ifomis.org/bfo/ contains a list of some 98 projects and research groups using BFO as a top-level ontology to support semantic interoperability. EXCERPT #VJBFQX p. 1 EXCERPT #RTLK4G p. 1 span of time from their beginning to their ending, or they are the beginnings and endings themselves (their process boundaries) or the spans of time (and of spacetime) which such entities occupy. The latter are the participants in such processes, entities that endure during the period of their existence, and the spatial boundaries of such entities, as well as the spatial regions in which they are located. EXCERPT #NRBG54 p. 1 Second, BFO recognizes a dichotomy between independent and dependent entities. Cells and organs are independent continuants; a quality of a cell (for example: its mass or volume) is a dependent continuant – this mass and this volume are dependent on the cell in the sense that, should the latter cease to exist, then so also would the former. EXCERPT #6CMGQP p. 1 Third, BFO rests on a distinction between instances (individuals, tokens, particulars) and universals (generals, types, kinds). It furnishes formal specifications for the high-level formal universals (called ‘categories’ in what follows) which can be defined in terms of these three dichotomies, and also of a set of relations which link them [Smith et al. 2005]. The terms in BFO and in the domain ontologies based on BFO consist of preferred labels representing what is general in reality. Universals are most clearly illustrated by considering the general terms – such as ‘electron’ or ‘cell’ – employed by scientific theories in the formulation of general truths [Smith and Ceusters 2010]. However, universals include also the general entities referred to by general terms employed in domains such as engineering, commerce, administration and intelligence analysis. BFO was designed to work with entities within the province of the natural sciences, especially biology, its coverage domain embraces also social and psychological entities such as military units and counterinsurgency operations, mortgage contracts and relations of ownership, poems and experimental protocols. EXCERPT #APY4MK p. 1 We use ‘universal’ and ‘type’ in what follows as synonyms. Universals exist at various levels of generality, starting at the most general and domain-neutral level treated of by BFO, and proceeding from there to less general universals such as person , vehicle , disease , and so forth. DOCUMENT #9GWUC8 On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology SECTION #PWWRJ5 3 Material entity EXCERPT #NM8A7H p. 3 The most important sub-category of continuants, for BFO, is that of material entities, which are continuants that include some portion of matter as part, where ‘portion of matter’ is understood in the broadest possible sense to include also undetached portions of matter such as your head and scattered portions of matter such as the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra. Every material entity is localized in space. Every material entity can move in space. Every entity which has a material entity as part is a material entity. EXCERPT #LPMVW4 p. 3 A portion of matter is anything that includes elementary particles among its proper or improper parts: quarks and leptons, including electrons, as the smallest particles thus far discovered; baryons (including protons and neutrons) at a higher level of granularity; atoms and molecules at still higher levels, forming the cells, organs, organisms and other material entities studied by biologists, the portions of rock studied by geologists, the fossils studied by paleontologists, and so on. EXCERPT #UTNY2P p. 3 BFO allows material entities to have immaterial entities as parts; for example the interior (or ‘lumen’) of your small intestine is a part of your body, your left nasal cavity is a part of your nose, the interior of the railway carriage is a part of the train. EXCERPT #3A65M2 p. 3 In what follows we define three children of ‘material entity’ – namely ‘object’, ‘object aggregate’; and ‘fiat object part’. This is intended not as an exhaustive classification of material entities, but rather as a selection of three subtypes of particular importance in many areas of natural and social science. DOCUMENT #9GWUC8 On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology SECTION #KCTEZX 4 Object SECTION #GL4M8F 4.1 Natural and engineered units of matter EXCERPT #J6Q6U5 p. 3 BFO rests on the presupposition that at multiple micro-, meso- and macroscopic scales reality exhibits certain stable, spatially separated or separable material units, combined, or combinable, into aggregates of various sorts (for example organisms into what are called ‘populations’). Such units play a central role in almost all domains of natural science from particle physics to cosmology. Many scientific laws govern the units in question, employing general terms (such as ‘molecule’ or ‘planet’) referring to the types and subtypes of units, and also to the types and subtypes of the processes through which such units develop and interact. The division of reality into such natural units is at the heart of biological science. So too is the fact these units may form higher-level units (as cells form multicellular organisms) and that they may also form aggregates of units, for example, as cells form portions of tissue and organs form families, herds, breeds, species, and so on. EXCERPT #43KXLV p. 3 At the same time, the division of certain portions of reality into engineered units (manufactured artifacts) is the basis of modern industrial technology, which rests on the distributed mass production of engineered parts through division of labor and on their assembly into larger, compound units such as cars and laptops. The division of portions of reality into units is one starting point for the phenomenon of counting . EXCERPT #VYYVSZ p. 3 EXCERPT #JDBGK3 p. 4 EXCERPT #G34QCZ p. 4 Examples of units of special importance for the purposes of natural science include: atom, molecule, organelle, cell, organism, grain of sand, planet, star. These material entities are candidate examples of what are called ‘objects’ in BFO 2.0. Such units are sometimes referred to as ‘grains’ [Jansen and Schulz 2011], and are associated with specific ‘levels of granularity’ in what is seen as a layered structure of reality, with units at lower and more fine-grained levels being combined as parts into grains at higher, coarse-grained levels. Our proposals here are consistent with, but are formulated independently of such granularity considerations. SECTION #MCU2BM 4.2 Three focal examples EXCERPT #P5SFQJ p. 4 The following elucidation documents a set of conditions to be used when deciding whether entities of a given type should be represented as objects in the BFO sense. It rests on three candidate groups of focal examples, namely: EXCERPT #U88CXR p. 4 1. organisms, cells and biological entities of certain other sorts, including organs 2. portions of solid matter such as rocks and lumps of iron 3. engineered artifacts such as watches and cars. EXCERPT #PMCMSB p. 4 Material entities under all of these headings are all causally relatively isolated entities in Ingarden’s sense [Ingarden 1970, Smith and Brogaard 2003]. This means that they are both structured through a certain type of causal unity and maximal relative to this type of causal unity. EXCERPT #5XY8H8 p. 4 We first characterize causal unity in general. We then distinguish three types of causal unity corresponding to the three candidate families of objects listed above (cells and organisms, solid portions of matter, machines and other engineered artifacts). We then describe what it is for an entity to be maximal relative to one or other of these types, and formulate in these terms an elucidation of what BFO means by ‘object’. EXCERPT #2Z9SQ4 p. 4 a is causally unified means: a is a material entity such that its material parts are tied together in such a way that, in environments typical for entities of the type in question, EXCERPT #P2YZAG p. 4 • if b is a part a in the interior of a at t that is larger than a certain threshold size (which will be determined differently from case to case, depending on factors such as porosity of external cover) and if b is moved in space to be at t' at a location on the exterior of the spatial region that had been occupied by a at t , then either a ’s other parts will be moved in coordinated fashion or a will be damaged (be affected, for example, by breakage or tearing) in the interval between t and t' . • causal changes in one part of a can have consequences for other parts of a without the mediation of any entity that lies on the exterior of a . EXCERPT #PYP7SJ p. 5 EXCERPT #3UJXJ8 p. 5 Material entities with no proper material parts (some smallest microparticle) would satisfy these conditions trivially. Candidate examples of types of causal unity for material entities of more complex sorts are as follows (this is not intended to be an exhaustive list): SECTION #2QYSRV CU1: Causal unity via physical covering EXCERPT #MYJXA3 p. 5 Here the parts in the interior of the unified entity are combined together causally through a common membrane or other physical covering – what the FMA refers to as a ‘bona fide anatomical surface’ [Rosse and Mejino 2007]. The latter points outwards toward and may serve a protective function in relation to what lies on the exterior of the entity. EXCERPT #JNA4B9 p. 5 Note that the physical covering may have holes (for example pores in your skin, shafts penetrating the planet’s outer crust, sockets where conduits to other entities are connected allowing transport of electric current or of liquids or gases). The physical covering is nonetheless connected in the sense that (a) between every two points on its surface a continuous path can be traced which does not leave this surface, and also (b) the covering serves as a barrier preventing entities above a certain size threshold from entering from the outside or escaping from the inside. EXCERPT #Y4W6QY p. 5 Some organs in the interior of complex organisms manifest a causal unity of this type. Organs can survive detachment from their surroundings, for example in the case of transplant, with their membranes intact. The FMA defines ‘organ’ as follows: EXCERPT #ABL3DK p. 5 An anatomical structure which has as its direct parts portions of two or more types of tissue or two or more types of cardinal organ part which constitute a maximally connected anatomical structure demarcated predominantly by a bona fide anatomical surface. Examples: femur, biceps, liver, heart, skin, tracheobronchial tree, ovary. [Rosse and Mejino 2007] SECTION #GBAQSZ CU2: Causal unity via internal physical forces EXCERPT #N4DQ9T p. 5 Here the material parts of a material entity are combined together causally by sufficiently strong physical forces, for example, by fundamental forces of strong and weak interaction, by covalent or ionic bonds, by metallic bonding, or more generally by forces of a type which makes the overall sum of forces strong enough to act in such a way as to hold the object together relative to the strength of attractive or destructive forces in its ordinary environmental neighborhood. (Few solid portions of matter in our everyday environment would survive very long on the face of a neutron star, but luckily that is not our everyday environment.) In the case of larger portions of matter the constituent atoms are tightly bound to each other in a geometric lattice, either regularly (as in the case of portions of metal) or irregularly (as in an amorphous solid such as a portion of glass). Examples: atoms, molecules, grains of sand, lumps of iron. SECTION #KNXK3W CU3: Causal unity via engineered assembly of components EXCERPT #KX52RU p. 5 Here the material parts of a material entity are combined together via mechanical assemblies joined for example through screws or other fasteners. The assemblies often involve parts which are reciprocally engineered to fit together, as in the case of dovetail joints, balls and bearings, nuts and bolts. A causal unity of this sort can be interrupted for a time, as when a watch is disassembled for repair, and then recreated in its original state. The parts of an automobile, including the moving parts, constitute an object because of their relative rigidity: while these parts may move with respect to each other, a given gear cannot move e.g., 10 ft., while the other parts do not. EXCERPT #Q4D75L p. 5 EXCERPT #VQ9PTE p. 6 EXCERPT #7KGDWQ p. 6 We can now elucidate what it means for a material entity to be maximal relative to one or other of these three types of causal unity as follows: EXCERPT #QL4GXF p. 6 To say that a is maximal relative to some criterion of causal unity CU_n means: EXCERPT #BEA6QU p. 6 a is causally unified relative to CU_n at t & if (for some t and b , a is a part of b at t & b is causally unified relative to the same CU_n ) then ( a and b are identical) EXCERPT #Z5WRSZ p. 6 Examples of maximality relative to the causal unity criterion CU_1 are: a cell or organism is maximal; your lower torso falls short of maximality; a pair of cells exceeds maximality; relative to CU_2 : a continuous dumbbell-shaped lump of iron is maximal; the connecting portion falls short of maximality; a pair of such dumbbell-shaped lumps exceeds maximality; and relative to CU_3 : an armored vehicle is maximal; the portions of armor of an armored vehicle falls short of maximality; a pair of armored vehicles exceeds maximality. SECTION #HH2GYF 4.3 Objects can have other objects as parts EXCERPT #DS4CF6 p. 6 We cannot define ‘object’ in BFO simply by asserting that an entity is an object if and only if it is maximal relative to some causal unity criterion, however. This is because objects under all three of the identified headings may have other, smaller objects as parts. A spark plug is an object; when inserted into a car to replace a defective plug, it remains an object, but ceases to be maximal. Importantly, however, the spark plug as installed still instantiates a universal many instances of which are maximal. This suggests that we define object as follows: EXCERPT #39LUAJ p. 6 a is an object =Def. a is a material entity which manifests causal unity of one or other of the types CU_n listed above & is of a type instances of which are maximal relative to this criterion of causal unity. EXCERPT #49QPX6 p. 6 Objects can be joined to other objects, not only through engineering but also in biology, as for example in Fig. 2. EXCERPT #N5VLNU p. 7 EXCERPT #7S8YMM p. 7 Diagram of cell-cell and cell-matrix junctions. The diagram shows two adjacent cells with various junctional complexes. From top to bottom: Tight junction (green rings), Adhesion belt (pink rings), Desmosome (blue filaments), Gap junction (narrow channels), Integrin (blue Y-shapes), Selectin (red Y-shapes), and CAM (cyan Y-shapes). At the bottom, Focal adhesion (red filaments) and Hemidesmosome (blue filaments) are shown connecting the cell to the extracellular matrix. A Membrane proteoglycan (blue Y-shape) is also shown on the right side of the cell membrane. EXCERPT #KZFSQF p. 7 Fig. 2. An example of cell adhesion 2 EXCERPT #L33BJ7 p. 7 Each object is such that there are entities of which we can assert unproblematically that they lie in its interior, and other entities of which we can assert unproblematically that they lie in its exterior. This may not be so for entities lying at or near the boundary between the interior and exterior. This means that two objects – for example the two cells depicted in Fig. 2 – may be such that there are material entities crossing their boundaries which belong determinately to neither cell. Something similar obtains in certain cases of conjoined twins (see below). EXCERPT #2M34A8 p. 7 Some instances of any given BFO: object universal – for example cell or organism or laptop – are separated by spatial gaps from other instances of this same object universal. The spatial gaps may be filled by a medium, for example of air or water. (There are cells not attached to other cells; there are spatially separated organisms, such as you and me. Peas in a pea pod are initially attached to the interior of the pea pod covering. Sperm initially float freely from each other; some sperm become fused with oocytes through a membrane fusion process.) EXCERPT #RAY3C6 p. 7 Objects may contain other objects as part, for example: EXCERPT #K4C2L7 p. 7 • by containing atoms and molecules as parts; • by containing cells as parts, for instance the collection of blood cells in your body; • by containing objects which are bonded to other objects of the same type in such a way that they cannot (for the relevant period of time) move separately, as in the case of the cells in your epithelium or the atoms in a molecule; EXCERPT #P6CHM7 p. 7 2 http://php.med.unsw.edu.au/cellbiology/index.php?title=File:Cell_adhesion_summary.png EXCERPT #6U5CY7 p. 7 EXCERPT #869MSQ p. 8 EXCERPT #V5273U p. 8 • by containing objects which are connected by conduits or tracts which may themselves have covering membranes. SECTION #BT93NX 4.4 Conjoined twins EXCERPT #5Z7FSS p. 8 Some objects may change type from one time to the next (a fetus becomes a baby, which in turn becomes a child). Objects may also fuse or be separated. Two boats may be combined to form a single multihulled boat. Conjoined twins may be successfully separated. EXCERPT #THZ65W p. 8 Whether each one of a pair of conjoined twins is or is not an object is not a trivial question, and the treatment of this case ontologically should be viewed as an experimental matter, with different alternatives tested to see which yield the most coherent solution for different sorts of cases. Different types of conjoined twins will need to be treated differently, and in cases where twins do not share vital organs an identification of each one of the pair as an object will yield a workable solution. Certainly, the maximal CU_1 -causally unified material entity here is the whole which they together form; accepting each twin as an object even prior to separation – thus as an instance of the material universal human being – is, however, consistent with our elucidation of BFO:object . DOCUMENT #9GWUC8 On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology SECTION #QCN4RH 7 Treatment of Problem Cases EXCERPT #PAA2M2 p. 10 Examples viewed by some as problematic cases for the trichotomy of fiat object part , object , and object aggregate include: EXCERPT #JFS3QB p. 10 a mussel on (and attached to) a rock, a slime mold, a pizza, a cloud, a galaxy, a railway train with engine and multiple carriages, a clonal stand of quaking aspen 3 , a bacterial community (biofilm), a broken femur. EXCERPT #YM85KW p. 10 Note that, as Aristotle already clearly recognized, such problematic cases – which lie at or near the penumbra of instances defined by the categories in question – need not invalidate these categories. The existence of grey objects does not prove that there are not objects which are black and objects which are white; the existence of mules does not prove that there are not objects which are donkeys and objects which are horses. It does, however, show that the examples in question need to be addressed carefully in order to show how they can be fitted into the proposed scheme – that the scheme requires additional subdivisions or amendments of other sorts. Where users of BFO need to annotate EXCERPT #ENUVXN p. 10 3 http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/08/what_is_an_individual.php EXCERPT #VXV562 p. 11 EXCERPT #XEJJEJ p. 11 data pertaining to such problematic cases, then they may in every case use BFO: material entity in formulating the corresponding annotations. EXCERPT #DSSF77 p. 11 Already it is clear that BFO or its conformant domain-ontologies will in due course need to recognize also other sub-universals of material entity , in addition to object , object aggregate and fiat object part – for instance: aggregate of fiat object parts [Vogt 2010, Vogt et al. 2012]. EXCERPT #DZ5CNK p. 11 Thus the treatment of material entity in BFO 2.0 should not be associated with any closure axiom pertaining to the three distinguished categories, and the existing treatment of the three identified sub-universals should not be associated with any claim to exhaustivity. ### 52. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `generate_image` ```json { "prompt": "Distinctive editorial book-cover artwork for a formal ontology paper on systems of granular partitions. A deep indigo field contains several translucent rooted cell-trees, each made of nested geometric compartments, projecting downward as fine luminous threads onto the same rugged three-dimensional terrain of objects. Some trees are coarse, others finely refined; matching cells across trees glow with the same amber color, suggesting counterpart relations. Precise mathematical-diagram sensibility fused with elegant abstract art, crisp vector geometry, restrained palette of indigo, ivory, amber, and cyan, strong central composition, generous negative space, no words, no letters, no formulas, portrait orientation." } ``` #### Tool call: `generate_image` ```json { "prompt": "Distinctive editorial cover art for a geospatial ontology paper titled conceptually around layers and locating moving objects. Show a stack of semi-transparent map layers hovering in perspective: terrain contours, river habitat, vegetation patches, roads, and luminous animal trajectories, all pierced by a vertical spatial axis linking material objects to occupied regions through time. Rich naturalistic yet diagrammatic style, emerald, river blue, ochre, and charcoal on warm paper, subtle depth and motion, sophisticated scientific illustration, no words or labels, portrait orientation." } ``` #### Tool call: `generate_image` ```json { "prompt": "Distinctive editorial cover artwork about a taxonomy of granular partitions. An ivory museum-cabinet-like grid transforms from a flat checklist at the top into a branching hierarchy of nested cells below, each cell projecting a narrow beam onto a miniature landscape containing cars, water bodies, parcels, and specimens. Some cells fit reality exactly while others overlap, omit, or coarsen it. Bauhaus-inflected scientific collage, vermilion, cobalt, black, and cream, crisp edges, tactile paper texture, no text, no letters, portrait orientation." } ``` #### Tool call: `generate_image` ```json { "prompt": "Distinctive editorial cover art for Basic Formal Ontology and the classification of material entities. Center a triptych of causally unified objects: a living cell enclosed by a luminous membrane, a crystalline iron mass held by lattice forces, and a finely assembled mechanical watch joined by engineered components. Around them, faint outlines show an aggregate and a fiat-cut part, all nested across micro, meso, and macro scales. Museum-quality scientific surrealism, graphite black background with copper, teal, and pearl highlights, precise and contemplative, no words, no labels, portrait orientation." } ``` #### Tool call: `generate_image` ```json { "prompt": "Distinctive editorial cover artwork for an essay on the cognitive geometry of war. A weathered political map is divided by sharp straight borders, but those lines loosen into overlapping elastic zones and then recompose as peaceful perforated and non-contiguous territories like interlocking islands. No weapons or combat; emphasize the tension between rigid geometric ideals and lived, mixed populations through small clustered lights. Dramatic cartographic abstraction, muted earth, burgundy, slate blue, and gold leaf, thoughtful rather than militaristic, no words or labels, portrait orientation." } ``` #### Tool call: `generate_image` ```json { "prompt": "Distinctive editorial cover art for an ontology of organism-environment relations and surrounding space. A small organism rests inside a luminous nested niche composed of three visible structures: tenant at center, flowing medium around it, and a protective retaining boundary; the niche opens into larger nested environments while subtle arrows suggest movement, growth, and niche construction. Organic scientific illustration blending ecological cross-section and topological diagram, moss green, coral, ultramarine, and warm cream, intricate but serene, no words, no labels, portrait orientation." } ``` ### 53. Tool result: generate_image GENERATED IMAGE #NK4WTE URL: /images/NK4WTE Model: gpt-image-2 Prompt: Distinctive editorial book-cover artwork for a formal ontology paper on systems of granular partitions. A deep indigo field contains several translucent rooted cell-trees, each made of nested geometric compartments, projecting downward as fine luminous threads onto the same rugged three-dimensional terrain of objects. Some trees are coarse, others finely refined; matching cells across trees glow with the same amber color, suggesting counterpart relations. Precise mathematical-diagram sensibility fused with elegant abstract art, crisp vector geometry, restrained palette of indigo, ivory, amber, and cyan, strong central composition, generous negative space, no words, no letters, no formulas, portrait orientation. ### 54. Tool result: generate_image GENERATED IMAGE #KSFFTD URL: /images/KSFFTD Model: gpt-image-2 Prompt: Distinctive editorial cover art for a geospatial ontology paper titled conceptually around layers and locating moving objects. Show a stack of semi-transparent map layers hovering in perspective: terrain contours, river habitat, vegetation patches, roads, and luminous animal trajectories, all pierced by a vertical spatial axis linking material objects to occupied regions through time. Rich naturalistic yet diagrammatic style, emerald, river blue, ochre, and charcoal on warm paper, subtle depth and motion, sophisticated scientific illustration, no words or labels, portrait orientation. ### 55. Tool result: generate_image GENERATED IMAGE #K99A64 URL: /images/K99A64 Model: gpt-image-2 Prompt: Distinctive editorial cover artwork about a taxonomy of granular partitions. An ivory museum-cabinet-like grid transforms from a flat checklist at the top into a branching hierarchy of nested cells below, each cell projecting a narrow beam onto a miniature landscape containing cars, water bodies, parcels, and specimens. Some cells fit reality exactly while others overlap, omit, or coarsen it. Bauhaus-inflected scientific collage, vermilion, cobalt, black, and cream, crisp edges, tactile paper texture, no text, no letters, portrait orientation. ### 56. Tool result: generate_image GENERATED IMAGE #M8N6M2 URL: /images/M8N6M2 Model: gpt-image-2 Prompt: Distinctive editorial cover art for Basic Formal Ontology and the classification of material entities. Center a triptych of causally unified objects: a living cell enclosed by a luminous membrane, a crystalline iron mass held by lattice forces, and a finely assembled mechanical watch joined by engineered components. Around them, faint outlines show an aggregate and a fiat-cut part, all nested across micro, meso, and macro scales. Museum-quality scientific surrealism, graphite black background with copper, teal, and pearl highlights, precise and contemplative, no words, no labels, portrait orientation. ### 57. Tool result: generate_image GENERATED IMAGE #YA33SQ URL: /images/YA33SQ Model: gpt-image-2 Prompt: Distinctive editorial cover artwork for an essay on the cognitive geometry of war. A weathered political map is divided by sharp straight borders, but those lines loosen into overlapping elastic zones and then recompose as peaceful perforated and non-contiguous territories like interlocking islands. No weapons or combat; emphasize the tension between rigid geometric ideals and lived, mixed populations through small clustered lights. Dramatic cartographic abstraction, muted earth, burgundy, slate blue, and gold leaf, thoughtful rather than militaristic, no words or labels, portrait orientation. ### 58. Tool result: generate_image GENERATED IMAGE #4PSWV8 URL: /images/4PSWV8 Model: gpt-image-2 Prompt: Distinctive editorial cover art for an ontology of organism-environment relations and surrounding space. A small organism rests inside a luminous nested niche composed of three visible structures: tenant at center, flowing medium around it, and a protective retaining boundary; the niche opens into larger nested environments while subtle arrows suggest movement, growth, and niche construction. Organic scientific illustration blending ecological cross-section and topological diagram, moss green, coral, ultramarine, and warm cream, intricate but serene, no words, no labels, portrait orientation. ### 59. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "cover_image_id": "NK4WTE", "document_id": "4QQD4A", "folder": "ontology", "micro_abstract": "Builds a sound S4-style modal logic for labeled, typed granular partitions, modeling refinement and cross-partition counterparts so differently selective views can reason about the same mereologically structured reality." } ``` #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "cover_image_id": "KSFFTD", "document_id": "K6JC2J", "folder": "ontology", "micro_abstract": "Extends mereotopology with layers that distinguish material objects, holes, and processes from the spatial and spatiotemporal regions they occupy, supporting dynamic geospatial reasoning beyond static map overlays." } ``` #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "cover_image_id": "K99A64", "document_id": "LRK6E2", "folder": "ontology", "micro_abstract": "Formalizes partitions as tree-structured cognitive devices projected onto reality, then classifies how accurately, structurally, and completely their cells recognize objects, with applications to cadastral and geographic data." } ``` #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "cover_image_id": "M8N6M2", "document_id": "9GWUC8", "folder": "ontology", "micro_abstract": "Clarifies BFO’s material entities by distinguishing objects, aggregates, and fiat object parts, and analyzes objects through causal unity by covering, physical forces, or engineered assembly without claiming exhaustivity." } ``` #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "cover_image_id": "YA33SQ", "document_id": "DLY2WP", "folder": "ontology", "micro_abstract": "Argues that modern ideals of compact, contiguous national territory help drive conflict, and proposes perforated, non-contiguous, and geometrically flexible borders as alternatives to displacement and ethnic cleansing." } ``` #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "cover_image_id": "4PSWV8", "document_id": "KWFTKJ", "folder": "ontology", "micro_abstract": "Develops a formal ontology of token niches as tenant–medium–retainer structures, extending static organism–environment fit into a dynamic account of vacant niches, movement, interaction, and niche construction." } ``` ### 60. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #4QQD4A: cover_image_id, folder, micro_abstract ### 61. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #K6JC2J: cover_image_id, folder, micro_abstract ### 62. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #LRK6E2: cover_image_id, folder, micro_abstract ### 63. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #9GWUC8: cover_image_id, folder, micro_abstract ### 64. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #DLY2WP: cover_image_id, folder, micro_abstract ### 65. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #KWFTKJ: cover_image_id, folder, micro_abstract ### 66. Assistant Completed all six documents: - #4QQD4A — cover #NK4WTE - #K6JC2J — cover #KSFFTD - #LRK6E2 — cover #K99A64 - #9GWUC8 — cover #M8N6M2 - #DLY2WP — cover #YA33SQ - #KWFTKJ — cover #4PSWV8 Each now has a corpus-grounded microabstract, distinctive cover art, and placement in the **ontology** folder.