Act of Artifact Processing definition seems too restrictive for subclasses

[swartik]

The definition of Act of Artifact Processing is:

A Planned Act of performing a series of mechanical or chemical operations on something in order to change or preserve it.

For subclasses such as Act of Construction and Act of Manufacturing, I'm unclear what the something is that's changed or preserved.

• Act of Construction uses construction of an airport as an example. The land on which the airport is to be sited is changed; is that the "something"?
• Act of Manufacturing creates artifacts, possibly from raw materials. This doesn't necessarily change or preserve raw materials. The act can convert them into something else.

I think my issue may be the definition's use of singular: "something" and "it". Given the class's name, I would expect the something to be an artifact. Obviously it's not.

Here is a suggested revised definition:

A Planned Act of performing a series of mechanical or chemical operations, the output of which is new, changed, preserved, or destroyed artifacts.

("Destroyed" occurred to me because I recently worked on a project concerned in part with disassembling nuclear weapons.)

[cameronmore]

I concur, a good clarifying change.

[neilotte]

@swartik @cameronmore I believe the intent is that there is an identified object that is a workpiece, which is to be distinguished from byproducts and other incidentals that are changed in the course of the process. I don't think it makes sense to say that an artifact that has been intentionally destroyed has been 'processed'. cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_processes "Industrial processes are procedures involving chemical, physical, electrical, or mechanical steps to aid in the manufacturing of an item or items, usually carried out on a very large scale. Industrial processes are the key components of heavy industry."

I think improvements can be made here, but I would not add 'destroy' as an option. Processes of destruction may be accommodated under a separate class.

[cameronmore]

Looking at the Cyber Ontology, I found Act of Artifact Destruction, defined as "An Act of Artifact Processing that consists of destroying some Artifact." If we expand our interpretation of 'change' in the definition of Artifact Processing, then this might be a properly asserted subclass, but maybe it should be a sibling. In any event, this should be raised in that forum and coordinated between the ontologies (Cyber Ontology Repo)

[cameronmore]

revisiting this, we could appeal broadly and define it as:

A Planned Act of performing a series of mechanical or chemical operations on an Artifact.

With a scope note to the effect of:

Artifact Processing encompasses a wide range of processes that are performed on Artifacts that change the Artifact to a wide range of degrees. This may include repairing, preserving, changing, re-configuring, damaging, or even destroying an artifact. Because some Acts of Artifact Processing may attempt but fail to actually change the Artifact, we cannot say that all outputs of this process are 'changed Artifacts.'

Thoughts? @swartik @neilotte

[swartik]

@cameronmore, Your revised definition and scope note are definitely an improvement.

One more question just occurred to me, though: firing a clay pot in a kiln has a chemical effect, but is it a chemical operation? Or it is a transfer of energy, and more properly in the realm of physics than chemistry? Should we generalize "mechanical or chemical" to "physical"? We could then include three examples, one chemical, one mechanical, and one thermal.

[cameronmore]

@swartik I am open to changing to 'physical' and adding a second scopeNote saying:

'Physical' should be understood in a broad manner that especially encompasses mechanical and chemical operations. A mechanical operation may be the polishing of a piece of metal, and a chemical operation may be the anodizing of a piece of metal.

This term is the parent class for a lot of processes that are central to industrial domains so I am in favor of having many necessary annotations to clarify the intent here.

[swartik]

@neilotte Are you satisfied with @cameronmore's revised annotations? Your Wikipedia citation broke industrial processes into chemical, physical, electrical, and mechanical steps. I am comfortable using "physical" in the broad sense of "having a material effect" but if others feel differently I will accept the majority's opinion.