Evolutionist, Creationist… Relativist
This quote from Mark Diggory on the OAI-ORE mailing list:
[warning... stereotyping ahead]
This is an argument on a continuum of evolutionism vs. creationism… Evolutionist say, establish the smallest possible set of laws to enforce on a system and see what emergent behavior arises… while the Creationist say, define the entire mechanism, top to bottom, written in stone, and damn all who do not comply. Seems to me, folks that come from the RDF World ascribe to the former and those from XML Schema world tend to the later, both could stand to learn a little from each other.
It’s an interesting quote (other than I bristled a bit about being cast into the ‘creationist’ camp)…
I wonder if a third alternative might be the relativist. The relativist looks at the world from a particular local perspective and codifies it. Unlike the creationist, she does not seek to enforce her structure on everyone else, but sees it as the solution to a particular problem. Unlike the evolutionist, she does believe there is a need to validate her data and confirm that it fits with her worldview.
She’s a relativist because she looks beyond her particular assumptions and perspectives and realizes there are lots of other communities out there (like hers) that have a perceived need for valid data. Rather than say her schema is the one to rule them all she looks at ways to “trade” (share/crosswalk) information with other like communities. It doesn’t mean she wants to share with them all, but just that there are some with which she wants to have a relationship.
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