Issue 386: Functional identity of E24 Physical Man Made Thing

ID: 
386
Starting Date: 
2018-05-25
Working Group: 
3
Status: 
Done
Closing Date: 
2020-06-26
Background: 

In the 41st joined meeting of the CIDOC CRM SIG and ISO/TC46/SC4/WG9 and the 34th FRBR - CIDOC CRM Harmonization meeting, the sig resolving the issue 191, reviewed the Martin' proposal and accepted that

"the identity and coming into existence of a Physical Man-made thing must not be bound to the fact of an accidental or intentional Modification of any microscale - this can adequately be described as adding a man-made feature to the thing (and if not, it is indeed a production), but must be tied to the functional identity of the thing, in the same way we describe it for aggregates"

The sig  decided to  open a new issue for keeping track the discussion about modification of the scope note of E24 and P31  in order to be harmonized with Martin's proposal.

Lyon, May 2018

Posted by Martin on 24/3/2019

Dear All,

I hope for a vivid discussion! Here my humble attempt to redefine what is man-made

E24 Physical Man-Made Thing

Subclass of:         E18 Physical Thing

                           E71 Man-Made Thing

Superclass of:      E22 Man-Made Object

E25 Man-Made Feature

E78 Collection

            Scope Note:        This class comprises all persistent physical items that are purposely created by human activity.

This class comprises man-made objects, such as a swords, and man-made features, such as rock art. No assumptions are made as to the extent of modification required to justify regarding an object as man-made. For example, a “cup and ring” carving on bedrock is regarded as instance of E24 Physical Man-Made Thing.

Instances of this class may act as carriers of instances of E73 Information Object.

 

New Scope Note:         This class comprises all persistent physical items that are purposely created by human activity. This class comprises, besides others, man-made objects, such as a swords, and man-made features, such as rock art. For example, a “cup and ring” carving on bedrock is regarded as instance of E24 Physical Man-Made Thing.

Typically, physical man-made things do not exhibit similarity with the “raw materials” they are produced from. However, enough instances of this class may be the result of modifying pre-existing physical things, preserving larger parts or most of the original matter and structure, which poses the question if they are new or even man-made, in particular in natural history collections. Therefore, the respective interventions of production made on such original material should be obvious and sufficient to regard that the product has a new, distinct identity and intended function and is man-made. Substantial continuity of the previous matter and structure in the new product can be documented by describing the production process also as instance of E81 Transformation.

Whereas interventions of conservation and repair are not regarded to produce a new man-made thing, the results of preparation of natural history specimen that substantially change their natural or original state should be regarded as physical man-made things, including the uncovering of petrified biological features from a solid piece of stone. On the other side, scribbling a museum number on a natural object should not regarded to make it man-made. This notwithstanding, parts, segments, or features of a physical man-made thing may continue to be non-man-made and preserved during the production process, such as the uncovered traces of the Archaeopterix in the Natural History Museum of Vienna, predating the prepared object.

Instances of this class may act as carriers of instances of E73 Information Object.

Current Proposal: 

In the 43rd joint meeting of the CIDOC CRM SIG and ISO/TC46/SC4/WG9; 36th FRBR - CIDOC CRM Harmonization meeting, the sig reviewed MD’s new definition of E24 Physical Man Made Thing and overall accepted it as a working definitions (it has undergone minor modifications too). 
HW: CEO was assigned to rephrase the definition, taking into account discussion that followed.
The new working definition and details of the discussion can be found here

Heraklion, March 2019
 

Posted by Christian Emil on 20/10/2019

Dear all,

Please find some homework  about issue 386 below

Best,

Christian-Emil

General comment:

The scopenote focus on what may be considered to be objects and can be misleading.  The unfortunate word thing add to this. (Stuff was better). Further, the detailed specification of what make an instance of E18 Physical Thing to an instance of E24 Physical Human-Made Thing is somewhat contradicted by the scopenote of the subclasses.

 E22 Human-Made Object:

“This class comprises physical objects purposely created by human activity. No assumptions are made as to the extent of modification required to justify regarding an object as human-made. For example, an inscribed piece of rock or a preserved butterfly are both regarded as instances of E22 Human-Made Object.”

E25 Human-Made Feature

Scope Note:    This class comprises physical features that are purposely created by human activity, such as scratches, artificial caves, artificial water channels, etc. In particular, it includes the information encoding features on mechanical or digital carriers. No assumptions are made as to the extent of modification required to justify regarding a feature as human-made. For example, rock art or even “cup and ring” carvings on bedrock a regarded as types of E25 Human-Made Feature.

We should consider to revise the scopenotes and at least add a reference to the superclass.

 

Comment to paragraph 1:

Man-made [human-made] in OED:

“Made or caused by human beings (as opposed to occurring or being made naturally); arising from human activity; artificial.”

Human-made in CIDOC-CRM:

“This class comprises all persistent physical items that are purposely created by human activity. This class comprises, besides others, human-made objects, such as a swords, and human-made features, such as rock art. For example, a “cup and ring” carving on bedrock is regarded as instance of E24 Physical Human-Made Thing”

One should be aware that the phrase “purposely created” will exclude many traces of human activity like for example  foot paths and old sunken lanes (hollow ways) from being modelled as instances of E18 Human-Made. The OED definition will include such things.

The text indicates only smaller items. May be we could add something larger like a railroad, a harbor, a city, a formal garden, the Suez channel? I added “of any size”.

Comment to paragraph 2:

There are very much natural history examples. A basket made of straw, a papyrus roll and a sheet of vellum are examples of natural material changed into human-made objects. My suggestion is to delete “in particular in natural history collections. Therefore”. This can be moved to the scope note of E22 Human-Made Objects is so desired.

 

Comment to paragraph 3:

I have suggested an example in fact combining natural history (natural pearl) and jewelry making, see http://samling.nasjonalmuseet.no/no/object/OK-10734 for an actual example. (pearls where not  grown  artificially until the beginning of the 20th c.

Comment to paragraph 4

I have deleted this short paragraph since the domain of  P128 carries (is carried by) is the superclass E18 Physical Thing.

 
E24 Physical Human-Made Thing

Subclass of:          E18 Physical Thing

                               E71 Human-Made Thing

Superclass of:      E22 Human-Made Object

                            E25 Human-Made Feature

                            E78 Collection

Scope Note:         This class comprises all persistent physical items of any size that are purposely created by human activity. This class comprises, besides others, Human-Made objects, such as a swords, and Human-Made features, such as rock art. For example, a “cup and ring” carving on bedrock is regarded as instance of E24 Physical Human-Made Thing.

Instances of Human-Made thing may be the result of modifying pre-existing physical things, preserving larger parts or most of the original matter and structure, which poses the question if they are new or even Human-Made, in particular in natural history collections. Therefore, the respective interventions of production made on such original material should be obvious and sufficient to regard that the product has a new, distinct identity and intended function and is human-made. Substantial continuity of the previous matter and structure in the new product can be documented by describing the production process also as instance of E81 Transformation.

Whereas interventions of conservation and repair are not regarded to produce a new Human-Made thing, the results of preparation of natural history specimen that substantially change their natural or original state should be regarded as physical Human-Made things, including the uncovering of petrified biological features from a solid piece of stone. On the other side, scribbling a museum number on a natural object should not regarded to make it Human-Made. This notwithstanding, parts, sections, segments, or features of a physical Human-Made thing may continue to be non-Human-Made and preserved during the production process, such as the uncovered traces of the Archaeopterix in the Natural History Museum of Vienna, predating the prepared object..for example natural pearls used as a part of an eardrop.

 

Instances of this class may act as carriers of instances of E73 Information Object 

In the 45th joint meeting of the CIDOC CRM SIG and SO/TC46/SC4/WG9; 38th FRBR – CIDOC CRM Harmonization meeting, the sig reviewed CEO’s HW (to rework the definition of E24 Physical Human Made Thing supplied by MD) and accepted them (see here).

Having agreed with CEO’s assessment that the subclasses of E24 Physical Human Made Thing require editing for the sake of consistency with the model, the sig appointed CEO (HW) to come forth with a proposal on what needs changing.

Heraklion, October 2019

Posted by Christian Emil on 19/6/2020

Dear all,

Please, find my HW for the issue attached

Outcome: 

In the 47th joint meeting of the CIDOC CRM SIG and ISO/TC46/SC4/WG9; 40th FRBR - CIDOC CRM Harmonization meeting; CEO presented his HW on how to harmonize the subclasses of E24 Physical Human-Made Thing (E22 Human Made Object, E25 Human Made Feature) with the new scope note for E24. Also some typos in the scope note of E24 were  edited.  The new scope notes can be found here. 

There were comments about the phrase "in an objective way" in the scope note of E22, the sig decided to open a new issue about how to Formulate the philosophical underpinnings of crm and its relation to reality and the objectivity of observations.

This issue closed.

June 2020

Reference to Issues: