Tom Munnecke "Beyond the pigeonhole paradigm" at the June 25, 2013 New Health Project Workshop a
Channel: Tom Munnecke
Date: 2013-07-04

Tom Munnecke opens the first day of the New Health Project workshop on RDF as a Universal Health Language http://www.new-health-project.net/2013/06/12/universal-health-exchange-language-workshop-encinitas-june-25-26-2013/ at his home in Encinitas, Ca.

He talks about some of the foundational problems in medical terminology, based on an ancient Aristotean notion of the "law of the excluded middle" and how this has lead to a "pigeonhole paradigm" of "a place for everything, and everything in its place."  An alternative approach, akin to Google's, is to ingest everything and build distinctions as appropriate.  Tom introduces David Ellerman, who addresses the problem with a category theory approach to his notion of "Partition Logic."