Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Hodges' model: Background - Foreground and the Space Between

If there is one thing that h2cm exemplifies it is distance.
It is after all a four-way signpost.
Seven-way (and more) if we include past, now and future
and wrap these in a spiritual domain.

The novice coming to study and explore the periplus (Cunliffe, 2001) that is health and social care (plus informatics), is presented with a daunting and yet exciting coastline.

The curriculum the new learner must navigate ('negotiate' literally via learning contracts) lies before them the challenge heightened by several vanishing points on several horizons.

Our senses are designed to quantify and our intellect to qualify this thing we call distance. Distance within conceptual spaces and the semantic web is all about semantics: the meaning of the terms we use in everyday and specialised languages.

If it is not a case of begging the question, consider the key concepts that comprise an explanation of h2cm.

Declare one concept, for example, ‘individual’ and we create a semantic singularity (in the sense of conceptual plurality not noun?). As soon as we add another concept, such as 'group' a conceptual space (the h2cm grid or matrix) is created.

The axes of h2cm are not passive.
They provide a spatial and cognitive scaffold.
Like gravity each concept is related to others by an all pervasive force.

The force here while not physical, it is universal in the sense that every concept is associated with the others by virtue of their similarity. Even if not physical in that arc of the diver sense, this similarity can be calculated and can be represented computationally within a computer program or virtual reality environment – the force potentially represented as feedback.

Gardenfors, P. (2000). Conceptual Spaces, MIT Press, London.
Cunliffe, B. (2001). The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek, Penguin.
semantic singularity? I thought of singularity in the astronomical sense at first, but found ...
Levy, P. (2008). Beyond Semantic Web SEMANTIC SPACE
http://www.ieml.org/IMG/pdf/Balisage2008-pierre-levy.pdf
http://www.springer.com/linguistics/semantics/book/978-0-7923-6569-3
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0749596X05000720