Happy New Year of Formal Ontology!
alex.shkotin
On the victory of formalism: celebrating the New Year according to the Gregorian calendar is a pure formality, devoid of any objective reality! If we celebrated the New Year more ontologically, it would be celebrated on the longest night, but as it is, the only ontological element is midnight, the formal transition from December 31st to January 1st; nothing special happens at that moment! And as always with formalisms, there are many, and one becomes generally accepted—at least, all educated people know it.
Happy New Year and success in formalizing knowledge!
And happy 20th anniversary of the Ontology Summit 🎉
Alex
James Davenport
My workload obliges me to work, and send e-mails, outside working hours, but I don’t expect recipients to respond outside their working hours
Sent: 31 December 2025 10:52
To: ontolog-forum <ontolo...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [ontolog-forum] Happy New Year of Formal Ontology!
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hpo...@verizon.net
Interesting that the Date Line, as you say, is pretty eccentric, but the Prime Meridian is not. It’s also curious that the Date Line is 180 degrees (more or less) out of phase with the Prime Meridian. One would think that they would be pretty much aligned with each other. Then again, the British were an odd people, but did a lot to tie the world together.
Happy New Year to all
Hans
John F Sowa
Sent: 12/31/25 9:19 AM
To: <ontolo...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [ontolog-forum] Happy New Year of Formal Ontology!
hpo...@verizon.net
Correct, except that the prime meridian didn’t exist until the Greenwich observatory was established as its location – by the British. And without much thought otherwise. The Date Line passes through the central Pacific. Having it pass through the Greenwich observatory would be problematic for the British since it would divide half the country into different dates
Iceland might have been a better choice, such as a westernmost promontory or one of the Azores. Then we could have had that be the Date Line as well, and the prime meridian would be easy to locate visually from space or the surface of the earth as a geophysical prominence. Of course, then Africa would no longer be the only continent located in all four hemispheres. Continental drift would still be a problem, but we already deal with drift in the magnetic pole and with the wobble in earth’s axis of rotation where that is important to navigation or for other purposes such as astronomy
Hans
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