TY - GEN
T1 - On drawing lines on a map
AU - Smith, Barry
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 1995, Springer-Verlag. All rights reserved.
PY - 1995
Y1 - 1995
N2 - The paper is an exercise in descriptive ontology, with specific applications to problems in the geographical sphere. It presents a general typology of spatial boundaries, based in particular on an opposition between bona fide or physical boundaries on the one hand, and fiat or human-demarcation-induced boundaries on the other. Cross-cutting this opposition are further oppositions in the realm of boundaries, for example between: crisp and indeterminate, complete and incomplete, enduring and transient, symmetrical and asymmetrical. The resulting typology generates a corresponding categorization of the different sorts of objects which (complete) boundaries determine or demarcate. The theory is applied first of all in the areas of geography and of administrative and property law. Indications are then given as to how the typology may be applied also in other fields where physical and fiat boundaries are at work, including the field of cognitive linguistics and the related field of the ontology of truth.
AB - The paper is an exercise in descriptive ontology, with specific applications to problems in the geographical sphere. It presents a general typology of spatial boundaries, based in particular on an opposition between bona fide or physical boundaries on the one hand, and fiat or human-demarcation-induced boundaries on the other. Cross-cutting this opposition are further oppositions in the realm of boundaries, for example between: crisp and indeterminate, complete and incomplete, enduring and transient, symmetrical and asymmetrical. The resulting typology generates a corresponding categorization of the different sorts of objects which (complete) boundaries determine or demarcate. The theory is applied first of all in the areas of geography and of administrative and property law. Indications are then given as to how the typology may be applied also in other fields where physical and fiat boundaries are at work, including the field of cognitive linguistics and the related field of the ontology of truth.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84958059735
U2 - 10.1007/3-540-60392-1_31
DO - 10.1007/3-540-60392-1_31
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84958059735
SN - 3540603921
SN - 9783540603924
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 475
EP - 484
BT - Spatial Information Theory
A2 - Frank, Andrew U.
A2 - Kuhn, Werner
PB - Springer Verlag
T2 - International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT 1995
Y2 - 21 September 1995 through 23 September 1995
ER -