Part-whole relation

B.C. Patten and Jorgensen S.E., 1995. Complex Ecology the Part-Whole Relation in Ecosystems. Prentice Hall PTR, Endlewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 705 pp. 

A DocumentVersion is a Product that represents a particular version of an entire Document. A DocumentVersion may be decomposed into several Products, as it is indicated by the part-whole relation between these two classes. Similarly, a Document may be aggregated of several VersionSets. Document can be refined through detailed taxonomies like the one shown in Fig. 2.5 to represent the types of documents used in a certain domain or by a particular organization. Analogous to the CoMa model [473] developed by subproject B4, DocumentGroup and Configuration are introduced to denote clusters of interdependent Documents and DocumentVersions, respectively. 

Winston, M., R. Chaffin, and D. Herrmann. 1987. A taxonomy of part-whole relations. Cogn Sci 11 417-44. 

Also as concerns a mental event token and its narrow realizer (what we earlier called its core physical realizer ), he says If an Mi token is realized by a Pj-token, then the Pj-token just is part of the Mi-token (Melnyk, 2003, p. 137). He says nothing in defense of these claims. In fact, it is not the case that if an Mj token is realized by a Pj-token, then the Pj-token just is part of the Mj-token (p. 137). And it is not the case that the narrow realizer of a C-type event is surely a part or constituent of that C-type event (p. 160). The relation that the narrower physical realizer bears to the functional event — namely, the realization relation — is not a part-whole relation. It is, rather, the relation of role-occupancy. Narrow or core realizers are not parts or constituents of functional events. 

It is, of course, open to an NRP theorist to respond by claiming that we should broaden Lewis s notion of distinctness beyond the idea of events that enter into implication relations, figure in part-whole relations, and share parts and that we should count functional events and their realizers as nondistinct events, as well, and so the counterfactual dependence between them as noncausal. But NRP theorists are under a dialectical obligation to make a non-question-be ing case that such complications to the theory are needed. They must make a case that there are functional events — events with functional properties as their constitutive properties or essences. 

These descriptions are often enriched by examples, which supposedly describe paradigmatic cases of reduction (human) pain reduces to C-ftber stimulation, or water reduces to H2O (the latter can be found in (Putnam 1975, 431) (Fodor 1981, 150) and (Kim 1992, 23)). Talk about levels, part-whole relations and explanation suggests directionality towards, or priority of the reducing item. Talk about assimilation and not-existing over and above suggests unity as weU as... 

In addition, Schaffner mentions that part-whole relation might hold between the objects of the reduced and the reducing sciences domains. We shall come back to this later on (Chap. 8). Note that the way Schaffner s model is presented here, all cases of la/b and 2a/b combinations in Schaffner s definition are met. Depending on how we interpret derivability of domain in Schaffner s model, this condition will be the one that does maybe not require cross-theoretic identities (if, say, an extensional relation is sufficient). 

Consider (8), according to which reduction is tied to part-whole relations Insofar as the constitutive structure of entities is to be cashed out in terms of parts of these entities and their properties, as it is in the case of water and H2O, reduction is concerned with part-whole relations. This, however, is not necessarily the case, as examples of Iron and Fe , or pain and C-fiber-activation reveal (see Sect. 5.5). Insofar as our world is such that wholes behave the way they do or are what they are in virtue of their parts, reduction is concerned with parts. However, (i) there are cases where this parallelism brakes down, and (ii) we should not build this empirically interesting result into the notion of reduction. Recall The idealist might use the term reduction just like the materialist, without contradicting herself. Thus, building on the explication of reduction offered here, we can explain why, if materialism is true, reduction often, though not essentially, amounts to a re-description of entities in terms of their parts, and can thus explain why, given materialism, we should expect some actual cases of reduction to accord with condition (8). 

In what follows, we discuss modelling approaches for part-whole relations and connections between components. 

Modelling Part-Whole Relations. Expressing part-whole relations is an important aspect in several domains, most prominently in engineering and life sciences. Typical use cases involve the creation of inventory applications that, given an engineering object, could report all its parts and the subparts of those or applications where the composition of an engineering object is explored one level at a time (i.e., only the direct components of the object are shown at any time). 

The PartOf ODP allows modelling of part-whole relations in a transitive fashion. To that end, it introduces the has Part transitive relation between two Entities, as well as its inverse, isPartOf (also transitive). 

The Componency ODP is a specialization of the PartOf ODP, and offers a solution for modelling part-whole relations in such a way that a distinction can be made between direct and non-direct (i.e., transitively-assessed) parts of an... 

The TimeIndexedPartOf ODP caters for situations, which require modelling of a situation in which an object is part of another for a specified time interval. The pattern relies on n-ary relationships to establish time-based part-whole relations between a part, a whole, and a time interval. 

Besides the patterns described above, other modelling approaches have also been put forward, but their discussion exceeds the scope of this chapter. For example, Rector and Welty (2005) provide five different modeUing patterns, while the modelling of ISO 15926 uses property chains for modelling part-whole relations. While several modelhng solutions are proposed, it is also important to avoid confusing part-whole relations with other relations. Rector and Welty (2005) mention typical confusions with relations such as containment, membership, connections, constituents and subClassOf. For example, constituency refers to a relation without a clear part of relationship (e.g., different types of wood constitute a table) and special ODPs are offered for modelling constituency. ... 

Artale, A., Franconi, E., Guarino, N., Pazzi, L. Part-whole relations in object-centered systems an overview. Data Knowl. Eng. 20(3), 347-383 (1996)... 

Rector, A., Welty, C. Simple part-whole relations in OWL Ontologies. W3C Editor s Draft 11... 

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