On Expanding the Boundaries of Things I Don't Know

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2720

Here's a good example of "where do I go with this puzzle now?" from the daily work that I do. The stages in working with odd material like the following goes from (1) recognizing that this junky-looking bit isn't nothing; (2) identifying the something in the nothing that an outsider like me can recognize; (3) figuring out where the thing might fit in context with its development of whatever; (4) seeing how it may or may not be significant in the development of its subject; and (5) trying to figure out if I know what I was talking about in #s 1-4 (this is usually the most difficult step). In an event, I worked with something just now where it seemed to strike interesting chords along several areas, but in the end I was back at the beginning.  

The item in mind is an early application of computers in forming a bibliographic meteorological database: Final Report of Bibliographic Section of Cooperative Research Project Between the U.S. Weather Bureau and North Carolina State College, which was produced in 1949 in 11 sheets, 9 of which are blueprints of text (including“Final Report...” pp 1-6, “Appendix 2 [sic], Meteorological Factor Codes”, 3pp).  Also included is a sample IBM card mock-up with hand-printed notation.  It is accompanied by an extensive two-page cover letter explaining the bibliography project in some detail, and was written by Reuben M. Harding (“assistant statistician”) on the UNC at Raleigh Institute of Statistics letterhead. (The director and associate directors were all heavy hitter statisticians, including Gertrude Cox, William Cochran, and Harold Hotelling.)  The letter is dated March 11, 1949, and written to Jack Haynes (“Basic Sciences Division, Biological Department, Chemical Corps, Camp Detrick”. “Camp Detrick” was named so from “Detrick Field” in 1943, and became after great expansion in Biowar “Fort Detrick” in 1953.) I cannot find out anything about Harding save for his dates (1919-1997) and I found nothing on Mr. Haynes, though given the nature of Fort Detrick, this does not surprise me at all, as those guys--being at the center of biological and chemical weaponry establishment in the U.S.--were doing work that generally was not published or publicly shared.

Basically it seems that Haynes wrote to Harding for general information on creating database on punch cards, though not necessarily for meteorological purposes. There is a mention for example of “battlefield conditions” which would not necessarily appear in a meteorological bibliography, but there is no hint in the letter at all regarding the ultimate applied interest of Detrick might've been. So my guess is that Haynes was interested in structure and not content. Harding responds mostly outlining the weaknesses of his project, though this critique is very highly useful in itself, and for all I know may have been the most significant contribution of the entire affair. 

Here's the cover letter, which makes for interesting reading in itself, with some good insight on how to convey information on a proposed project and what the troublesome issues were--it is worth a read from that perspective alone.

And the first page of the blueprinted document:

And the punch card mock-up:

And so, it was an interesting time figuring out some of the parts of this document, but after everything was said and done, I really didn't know where I was. The document itself didn't show up as a published entity in WorldCat, and general academic searches revealed nothing of use on my early attempts, which means all I have thus far are discrete bits of information, explaining more deeply what I don't know. Sometimes these things are a challenge, and sometimes they need to be let go, in spite of the convincingly-interesting bits that surround them.  We'll see what happens to this...

And speaking of things that I don't know, I'm not even sure what post number this really is--I say "2720" but I think in the last few hundred numbered post I've lost my numerical way, and I'm not positive of what number I am up to. It gets more confusing as there are unnumbered "quick posts", which number probably now about 2k, and since there can be 5 or 10 or more of them spaced between numbered posts, I sometimes just forget what number I am pushing against. 

Comments

[Frank Wilhoit]

The meat of the letter is the 2d and 3d grafs on the first page. Here we see an individual, an unwitting pioneer, beginning to think through what would be involved in building an ontology. He came to it bottom-up: he had a local problem to solve. He knows that it is (at least potentially) an instance of a universal problem of supreme importance. There may have been others pursuing the ontology concept from the top down, but he has no way of contacting them or even of becoming aware of their work. Now for the punchline (and a gut punch it is): 68 years on, a human lilfetime, we are still *beginning* to think through what would be involved in defining an ontology. It is still a universal problem, it is still of supreme importance, and it is still intractable. I assert that its intractability is not intrinsic but extrinsic, and I cite this letter in support. Dispute me who will.