Four Principles for Description

“The World and the Machine” by Michael Jackson. Not that Michael Jackson, the Michael Jackson

Von Neumann’s principle

“There is no sense in being precise if you don’t know what you are talking about.”

  1. Establish a vocabulary of ground terms
  2. Only the phenomena of interest
  3. Only formalize what is needed

The principle of reductionism

  1. Avoid nouns to describe phenomena
  2. Describe nouns using the phenomena that define the nouns
  3. Ground terms should almost always be events (e.g. enrolled, lapsed)
  4. Use stable terms to construct more complex phenomena

Shanley's principle of parallel views

  1. “The world is not strongly typed“
  2. “The elementary individuals in one view then appear differently classified and differently typed in another view“
  3. “The need for multiple viewpoints is felt at the elementary level“

Montaigne’s principle

“The greater part of the world’s troubles are due to questions of grammar.”

  1. Operative mood – what we want to be true, requirements
  2. Indicative mood – what is asserted to be true, domain knowledge