The ORM Foundation

Prompted by the recent post of MikeAgius, I'd like to announce the Big Brown Book Club or BBBC for short.

To become a member of the BBBC you must be a registered member of this website and meet three conditions:

A) You must own a copy of The Big Brown Book (aka Information Modeling and Relational Databases: Second Edition.)

If you bought the book after 30 May 2008, you should have bought it via the link from the image below.

B) You must have posted a review of the book on the Amazon.co.uk website

C) You must have posted at least one substantial comment on the book in a reply to this post.

Members of the BBBC are automatically entered in the ORM Foundation BBBC competition which will award PRIZES to contributors to this thread who, in the opinion of the registered members of this website, have made posts that are judged to be "The best two BBBC posters".

The "best " will be established by a voting mechanism that will be made available in this forum on 1 November 2008.
The two winners will be announced at the end of the ORM 2008 workshop on 14 November 2008.
The two prizes will be autographed copies of the Big Brown Book plus two accompanying cash prizes of £50 to pay for the un-autographed copy that you had to buy to become a member of the BBBC.

Let the posting commence!

Ken

 Mine arrives tomorrow.. I am excited! That is all. 

Here's a BBBC button for any members to link from their respective sites haha..

Hi Ken,

I'm not one for leaving reviews on Amazon, but I'm happy to kick this one off with a post here. It's okay if it doesn't include me in the competition though, but I found a section of the book that really took my interest, and I thought I'd share my thoughts.

On page 463 of the BBB, we read...

"When we think of an instance of Person and Car (concrete concepts), we think of an actual person or car. When we think of an instance of CarModel (an abstract concept), we typically think of an abstraction that is essentially a car design [...]" 

I don't disagree with this, and it's a tough one. For instance, I (personally) don't think 'Person' is any more a concrete concept than a 'CarModel'. But that may be because I read the works of Russell. Halpin and Morgan say 'typically' and I am fairly sure that the literature that I read hasn't fallen far from the same tree that warrants its use.

Bertrand Russell (1921, p. 127) grappled with this concept nearly 100 years ago in 'The Analysis of Mind' (1921), and I post a rather large chunk here of copyright free material from the Gutenberg project. I also exit, as the passage speaks for itself and explains why the BBB must say 'typically', and then go on to describe 'HumanPerson' and 'HumanBaby'...[it depends when you are talking about a person]...I leave the rest to Russell...

"The word "Napoleon," we say, "means" a certain person. In saying this, we are asserting a relation between the word "Napoleon" and the person so designated. It is this relation that we must now investigate."

"Let us first consider what sort of object a word is when considered simply as a physical thing, apart from its meaning. To begin with, there are many instances of a word, namely all the different occasions when it is employed. Thus a word is not something unique and particular, but a set of occurrences. If we confine ourselves to spoken words, a word has two aspects, according as we regard it from the point of view of the speaker or from that of the hearer"

[...]

"But in what has been said so far we have not even broached the question of the DEFINITION of a word, since "meaning" is clearly what distinguishes a word from other sets of similar movements, and "meaning" remains to be defined.

[...]

"We commonly imagine, when we use a proper name, that we mean one definite entity, the particular individual who was called "Napoleon." But what we know as a person is not simple. There MAY be a single simple ego which was Napoleon, and remained strictly identical from his birth to his death. There is no way of proving that this cannot be the case, but there is also not the slightest reason to suppose that it is the case. Napoleon as he was empirically known consisted of a series of gradually changing appearances: first a squalling baby, then a boy, then a slim and beautiful youth, then a fat and slothful person very magnificently dressed This series of appearances, and various occurrences having certain kinds of causal connections with them, constitute Napoleon as empirically known, and therefore are Napoleon in so far as he forms part of the experienced world. Napoleon is a complicated series of occurrences, bound together by causal laws, not, like instances of a word, by similarities. For although a person changes gradually, and presents similar appearances on two nearly contemporaneous occasions, it is not these similarities that constitute the person, as appears from the "Comedy of Errors" for example."

[...]

"Thus in the case of a proper name, while the word is a set of similar series of movements, what it means is a series of occurrences bound together by causal laws of that special kind that makes the occurrences taken together constitute what we call one person, or one animal or thing, in case the name applies to an animal or thing instead of to a person. Neither the word nor what it names is one of the ultimate indivisible constituents of the world. In language there is no direct way of designating one of the ultimate brief existents that go to make up the collections we call things or persons. The word "Napoleon" means a certain individual; but we are asking, not who is the individual meant, but what is the relation of the word to the individual which makes the one mean the other. But just as it is useful to realize the nature of a word as part of the physical world, so it is useful to realize the sort of thing that a word may mean. When we are clear both as to what a word is in its physical aspect, and as to what sort of thing it can mean, we are in a better position to discover the relation of the two which is meaning."

Best regds,
Victor
Viev  

Hi Victor,

I'm inclined to agree with your observation that Person, Car & CarModel are all the same kind of thing.
But the question then is "What kind of thing."

For example, is "an abstract concept" a "kind of thing"?
My answer to this question is "insufficient evidence"

Ayer(1936:9) sees "all genuine propositions" as members of one of only two classes:
1: Relations of ideas: Do not make any assertions about the real world - they simply record our determination to use symbols in a certain fashion.
2: Matters of Fact : Hypotheses that can be probable but never certain

Within this context the terms "Person, Car and CarModel" can be seen as simple propositions of the form "X Exists" (e.g. Person Exists, Car Exists and  carModel exists". According to Ayer, these are "matters of fact" which may or may not be true.

The back cover of Ayer's book contains the following passage : 

"There are two kinds of meaningful statement:
           1: analytic statements (as in mathematics) which are true by definition;
              and
           2: statements that can be verified by experience.
But if that is so, a very great deal of traditional philosophy, including ethics, aesthetics and metaphysics - and also theology
is concerned with statements that are literally nonsensical..."

This is a paraphrase of several sections of the book such as the following:  

"No statement which refers to a "reality" transcending the limits of all possible sense experience can possibly have any literal significance;
From which it must follow that the labours of those who have striven to describe such a reality have all been devoted to the production of nonsense." (Ayer 1936:14)

It seems to me that this describes much of Russel's work.
Words are just sets of symbols that only have meaning within a particular context.  

Ken

Reference
Ayer, A J. (1936) Language Truth & Logic,  Penguin Books - republished in 1971 ISBN 0-14-013659-2

Hi Ken,

As I said, I let Russell speak for himself ;).

Best regds
Victor

Hi Ken,

I can't resist now. The temptation is just too great.

I draw a direct parallel between the work of Russell and that of Halpin and Morgan, on invitation by you to provide commentary on the BBB, and you come back with "it must follow that the labours of those who have striven to describe such a reality have all been devoted to the production of nonsense." (Ayer 1936:14)"..."It seems to me that this describes much of Russel's work".

Are you saying that Halpin and Morgan have devoted the better part of their existence to the 'production of nonsense'?

I give myself credit for being sharp and barbarous. With much embarassment and regret. But I swear I would never venture to string that series of sentences together in this forum.

Perhaps I misinterpret. What is it that you 'mean'? All irony aside ;)
If by slight of hand and careful construct of word you take at swipe a 'me', then be prepared, I too can weave words in devilish ways. My mother is English decent;)

Just jokes. Have a good day!! 

Best regds
Victor 

Victor,

It may be true that Russel's work was one of the many antecedents of the BBB but I don't see a "parallell".

Ayer defined "nonsense" as "not verifiable by the senses". So in that context, you might choose to interpret the BBB as nonsense.
However, Ayer's first category is about "analytic statements that are true by definition" and because ORM (and by inference the BBB) falls into this category then it is not required to be validated by sensory experience and is thus not nonsense.

And to clarify my initial post in this thread: By "substantial comment" I intended to start a discussion on the contents of the book with a view to helping people to better understand ORM by illuminating aspects of ORM and immediately related matters to those who choose to read the posts.

Ken

Hi Ken,

Thanks for clearing that up. I think we're going to have to differ on this one then.
I'll leave it to the interested reader that my point is exactly what Ken says, but doesn't see the parallel in...

Best regards
Victor

"The moon is made of cheese therefore it snows in the Sahara" is a proposition of first order logic "true by definition".
Goodnight.