CLAVIUS

Towards the modelling of a diachronic termino-ontological resources in the XVII century mathematical and astronomical domain

Abstract

This article describes the termino–ontological resource, CLAVIUS, which models mathematical and astronomical terminology from the sixteenth century. It is being created on the basis of Clavius’ commentaries on Euclid’s Elements and on Sacrobosco’s Sphaera. The resource has been built in Protégé, a free open–source ontology editor, using both OWL DL and Simple SKOS, the latter via a specifically designed Protégé plug–in, SkosEditor. OWL DL is used due to its expressivity and decidability. Instead, skos was chosen to formalize the evolution in knowledge and conceptualisation revealed in Clavius’ works. This diachronic aspect was modeled using Chronos, a plug–in for Protégé to manage temporal ontologies. The two owl and SKOS worlds are kept separate. An annotation property skos:as has been introduced to link owl entities to particular skos concepts. An example of formalization in skos is provided, which describes how theories on the number of celestial spheres developed from Aristotle to Magini.