Task: Class Definition Understanding (ontology: Arts_Media_Entertainment/CIDOC_CRM)

Which of the following definitions best describes 'E77 Persistent Item'?

A. Scope note:
This class comprises items that have persistent characteristics of structural nature substantially related to their identity and their integrity, sometimes known as “endurants” in philosophy. Persistent Items may be physical entities, such as people, animals or things, conceptual entities such as ideas, concepts, products of the imagination or even names. 
Instances of the concept may be present or be part of interactions in different periods or events. They can repeatedly be recognized at disparate occasions during their existence by characteristics of structural nature. The respective characteristics need not be exactly the same during all the existence of an instance of the concept. Often, they undergo gradual change, still bearing some similarities with that of previous times, or disappear completely and new emerge. For instance, a person, from the time of being born on, will gradually change all its features and acquire new ones, such as a scar. Even the DNA in different body cells will develop defects and mutations. Nevertheless, relevant characteristics used should be sufficiently similar to recognize the instance for some substantial period of time. 
The more specific criteria that determine the identity of instances of subclasses of the concept may vary considerably and are described or referred to in the respective scope notes. The decision about which exact criteria to use depends on whether the observable behaviour of the respective part of reality such confined conforms to the reasoning the user is interested in. For example, a building can be regarded as no longer existing if it is dismantled and the materials reused in a different configuration. On the other hand, human beings go through radical and profound changes during their life-span, affecting both material composition and form, yet preserve their identity by other criteria, such as being bodily separated from other persons. Similarly, inanimate objects may be subject to exchange of parts and matter. On the opposite, the identity of a (version of a) text of a scientific publication is given by the exact arrangement of its relevant symbols. 
The main classes of objects that fall outside the scope of the the concept class are temporal objects such as periods, events and acts, and descriptive properties. 
An instance of the concept does not require actual knowledge of the identifying features of the instance being currently known. There may be cases, where the actual identifying features of an instance of the concept are not decidable at a particular state of knowledge.

Examples:
- Leonardo da Vinci (E21) (Strano, 1953)
- Stonehenge (E24) (Pryor, 2016)
- the hole in the ozone layer (E4) (Hufford and Horwitz, 2005)
- the First Law of Thermodynamics (E89) (Craig and Gislason, 2002)
- the Bermuda Triangle (E53) (Dolan, 2005)

In First Order Logic:
- E77(x) ⇒ E1(x)
B. Scope note:
This class comprises all phenomena, such as the instances of E4 Periods and E5 Events, which happen over a limited extent in time. This extent in time must be contiguous, i.e., without gaps. In case the defining kinds of phenomena for an instance of the concept cease to happen, and occur later again at another time, we regard that the former instance of the concept has ended and a new instance has come into existence. In more intuitive terms, the same event cannot happen twice.
In some contexts, such phenomena are also called perdurants. This class is disjoint from E77 Persistent Item and is an abstract class that typically has no direct instances. the concept is specialized into E4 Period, which applies to a particular geographic area (defined with a greater or lesser degree of precision), and E3 Condition State, which applies to instances of E18 Physical Thing.

Examples:
- Bronze Age (E4) (Childe, 1963)
- the earthquake in Lisbon 1755 (E5) (Chester, 2001)
- the Peterhof Palace near Saint Petersburg being in ruins from 1944 to 1946 (E3) (Maddox, 2015)

In First Order Logic:
- E2(x) ⇒ E1(x)
C. Scope note:
This class comprises people, either individually or in groups, who have the potential to perform intentional actions of kinds for which they can be held responsible.

Examples:
- London and Continental Railways (E74)
- the Governor of the Bank of England in 1975 (E21)
- Sir Ian McKellen (E21) (Gibson, 1986)

In First Order Logic:
- E39(x) ⇒ E77(x)
D. Scope note:
This general class comprises discrete, identifiable, instances of E77 Persistent Item that are documented as single units, that either consist of matter or depend on being carried by matter and are characterized by relative stability. 
They may be intellectual products or physical things. They may, for instance, have a solid physical form, an electronic encoding, or they may be a logical concept or structure.

Examples:
- my photograph collection (E78) (fictitious)
- the bottle of milk in my refrigerator (E22) (fictitious)
- the Riss A1 plan of the Straßburger Münster (French: Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg) (E29) (Liess, R., 1985)
- the the concept on the top of Otto Hahn’s desk (E19)
- the form of the no-smoking sign (E36)
- the cave of Dirou, Mani, Greece (E26) (Psimenos, 2005)

In First Order Logic:
- E70(x) ⇒ E77(x)

Answer: Scope note:
This class comprises items that have persistent characteristics of structural nature substantially related to their identity and their integrity, sometimes known as “endurants” in philosophy. Persistent Items may be physical entities, such as people, animals or things, conceptual entities such as ideas, concepts, products of the imagination or even names. 
Instances of the concept may be present or be part of interactions in different periods or events. They can repeatedly be recognized at disparate occasions during their existence by characteristics of structural nature. The respective characteristics need not be exactly the same during all the existence of an instance of the concept. Often, they undergo gradual change, still bearing some similarities with that of previous times, or disappear completely and new emerge. For instance, a person, from the time of being born on, will gradually change all its features and acquire new ones, such as a scar. Even the DNA in different body cells will develop defects and mutations. Nevertheless, relevant characteristics used should be sufficiently similar to recognize the instance for some substantial period of time. 
The more specific criteria that determine the identity of instances of subclasses of the concept may vary considerably and are described or referred to in the respective scope notes. The decision about which exact criteria to use depends on whether the observable behaviour of the respective part of reality such confined conforms to the reasoning the user is interested in. For example, a building can be regarded as no longer existing if it is dismantled and the materials reused in a different configuration. On the other hand, human beings go through radical and profound changes during their life-span, affecting both material composition and form, yet preserve their identity by other criteria, such as being bodily separated from other persons. Similarly, inanimate objects may be subject to exchange of parts and matter. On the opposite, the identity of a (version of a) text of a scientific publication is given by the exact arrangement of its relevant symbols. 
The main classes of objects that fall outside the scope of the the concept class are temporal objects such as periods, events and acts, and descriptive properties. 
An instance of the concept does not require actual knowledge of the identifying features of the instance being currently known. There may be cases, where the actual identifying features of an instance of the concept are not decidable at a particular state of knowledge.

Examples:
- Leonardo da Vinci (E21) (Strano, 1953)
- Stonehenge (E24) (Pryor, 2016)
- the hole in the ozone layer (E4) (Hufford and Horwitz, 2005)
- the First Law of Thermodynamics (E89) (Craig and Gislason, 2002)
- the Bermuda Triangle (E53) (Dolan, 2005)

In First Order Logic:
- E77(x) ⇒ E1(x)