zz: No Right Answer (was: Re: Conjoinment

[Ted Nelson <ted@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Most excellently laid out.  (What, no lymphatic system?
 Or Immune System?  Prob. of interpenetration...)

I think that within the overall loose guidelines, there is
 not likely to be an exact determinate answer.  Systems
 can be built on ZigZag with *additional* rules which
 would make these answers determinate.

Will study this further.

Thanks, T


At 06:47 PM 11/1/98 -0500, you wrote:
>
>> >That's what I was thinking.  Any time someone is going to want to have
>> >a relationship that is one-to-many, they will need to do this.
>> 
>> Well noted.  The question of whether each new dimension
>>  will need its own new conjoined mate is less clear to me.
>
>Each one might not, but I think that many of them will.  d.contents
>and d.inside express hierarchy.  I think whenever the user wants to
>express another hierarchical relation, they will need to create a new
>pair of dimensions that are related in the same way that
>contents-inside are.  Re-using d.inside and d.contents will not always
>work for this.
>
>For example, let's consider a representation of the systems of the
>human body.  (Fig. 1; GIF version attached.)
>
>
>        Body -- Digestive --   Stomach
>                    |             |                   +---> d.???
>                    |          Esophagus              |
>                    |             |                   V d.???
>                    |          Sm. Intestine
>                    |             |
>                    |          Lg. Intestine 
>                    |
>                Nervous   --   Brain        --  Cerebrum
>                    |             |                |
>                    |          Spinal Cord      Cerebellum
>                    |             |                |
>                    |          Periphery        Limbic System
>                    |             |
>                    |          Optic Nerve
>                    |
>                Circulatory -- Heart
>                    |            |
>                    |          Femoral Artery
>                    |
>                 Endocrine  -- Adrenal
>                                  |
>                               Prostate
>                                  |
>                               Liver
>
>
>
>This example has weaknesses, but my main point is that hierarchies
>exist and that any hierarchy will serve as an example here.
>
>This shows the same sort of structure that a contents-inside structure
>has.  For example, the small intestine is part of the digestive
>system.  What are the X and Y dimensions?
>
>I can think of three ways to go here:
>
>1. Use X=d.inside      Y=d.contents.
>
>2. Use X=something new Y=d.contents.
>
>3. Use new dimensions for both X and Y.
>
>1 is no good, becayse it might be inappropriate to use d.inside as the
>X dimension here:
>
>	Digestive -- Stomach -- Ham Sandwich         +---> d.contents
>
>Oops; this is wrong because the sandwich is not part of the digestive system.
>
>Here's what's wrong with plan #2.  The  Y direction in figure 1 is
>d.contents, although the x.direction is something like
>d.bodysystemincludes rather than d.contents.
>
>Consider what happens if you say that the heart is inside the chest.
>Here's another view of the same space: (Fig. 2)
>
>	Chest -- Heart                   +---> d.inside
>                   |                     |
>                 Femoral Artery          V d.contents
>
>
>The (heart-femoral artery) link was present in the previous picture,
>so it has to be here too.  You've just said that the femoral artery is
>inside the chest, which is wrong; it's in the leg.  So plan #2 is no good.
>
>I think the only thing that works is to say that in figure 1, X is
>d.bodysystemincludes and Y is d.bodysystemcontents or some such.  
>
>
>
>
>
>
>mjd@xxxxxxxxx                                             Mark-Jason Dominus
>mjd@xxxxxxxxxx                              Plover Systems, Philadelphia, PA
>
>
>Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\eudora.lt.05.09 stripped\attach\fig1.gif"
>
>Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\eudora.lt.05.09 stripped\attach\fig2.gif"
>
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Theodor Holm Nelson, Visiting Professor of Environmental Information
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Quotation of the day, 98.11.01:
"Life and death are both hereditary."  TN59