No fear of Meta

When you start talking "Meta" you might end up very lonely. Meta denotes an abstraction level that seems to be so far away from reality that quite a few people simply do not bother. Basically there are three abstraction levels on which you can deal with things:

Why you should not fear Meta

I think you should not fear to go all the way up to the meta level when trying to understand the world around you. If you have any fear overcoming it is most useful to have no fear of "Meta" when you work with computers, software and data to solve your daily problems.

How to describe Meta in plain english language

This article tries to use plain english language. To still give you the opportunity to find out about the more mathematical/scientific/academic approaches to the "Meta" thing I have made links available right in the text and a list of references at the end. Eventually I intend to "disambiguate" some of the links when there are multiple truths out there.

The Meta Disambiguation page on Wikipedia is an interesting starting point although it doesn't even point to a "Meta" thing/concept as described here.

The thing level

A thing (also called object, entity, instance, item, element) is something, anything. If you can point at it or talk about it or call it "it" then it is probably a thing.

There is a thing called "concept" and that makes Meta interesting. Talking about a thing needs to clarify Whatchamacallit?

Example for a thing

What is it it?

The picture shows the Auriga Leader. A wikipedia article has some statements about this thing. Auriga Leader WikiData Item Q2871898 makes some of the statements available in computer readable form.

Whatchamacallit?

I call it a Ship.
I also call it a RoRo-ship.
I also call it a Vehicle carrier
I also call it a Thing.
I also call it a Vessel.

How to describe it

9402718 is the IMO ship number of it
564268000 is the MMSI of it
9VHF4 is the callsign of it
2008 is the year it was built of it
0137N 10324E is the position at 2018-01-07 of it
https://www.marinetraffic.com/de/ais/details/ships/564268000 is the URL of a webpage showing details of it
https://www.vesselfinder.com/de/vessels/AURIGA-LEADER-IMO-9402718-MMSI-564268000 is the URL of a webpage showing details of it
https://www.marineinsight.com/types-of-ships/auriga-leader-the-worlds-first-partially-propelled-cargo-ship/ is the URL of a webpage reporting on the ship

These descriptive statements all have a three part structure:

9402718
is the IMO ship number
of it

We could also say:

Auriga Leader
has IMO ship number
9402718

This three part structure is going to get interesting later.

The concept level

The concept level tries to give similar things a name to group these things. A concept might also be called a group, category, class,classification, type or kind.

So any of the names I gave this Auriga Leader is a potential concept.

The following sentences would all be valid:

Auriga Leader is a ship
Auriga Leader is a roro-ship
Auriga Leader is a vehicle carrier
Auriga Leader is a thing
Auriga Leader is a vessel

So the statement "is a" about a thing links it to some concept that has a name. Later we will see that the three parts of an "is a" sentence

Auriga Leader
is a
vehicle carrier

are just a good example for the structure of statements about things and concepts that are easily understandable by humans and computers.

The most precise way to clearly define a concept is to list all things that can be truely given the name of the concept. For quite a few concepts that is possible. And given todays world wide access to internet-information it gets even more feasible. The issue with this approach is just that different people have different notions about what the truth is. So saying "is a" is not quite precise - it would be more polite to say "I believe this is a" or "I would classify this as a".

An example would be "Auriga Leader is a solar powered ship". Given that only 0.05% of the ship's propulsion power and 1% of it's electrical usage was powered by solare energy I personally would not subscribe to this point of view. I'd personally probably say something like "Auriga Leader is a commercial solar power experimental vessel".

Concepts are like bags or drawers in which you put things. Mostly it is already helpful to name a few things that you can put in the bag.

Example for a concept

"Vehicle carrier" is a concept.

Auriga Leader is a vehicle carrier
Salome is another vehicle carrier (which happens to have transported BITPlan's electric Vehicle in early 2017
Glovis Corona is a vehicle carrier (which got famous for developing a list of 15 degrees in storm in December 2016

In the english Wikipedia the "Vehicle carrier" concept is called "Car carrier" and explained in the same article that explains "Roll-on/roll-off ro-ro ships". Wikipedia articles of other countries have separated articles:

According to Intenrational Shipping News there are 795 Vehicle carriers in operation world wide as of 2017.

The meta level

At the meta level we consider things that are concepts. So it is no wonder that Meta is a thing and a concept. On the meta level we switch the view. While concepts describe things on the meta level we have meta-concepts that describe concepts. We don't even really have to do this switch of view and introduce the meta-level in the first place - bringing structure and system into the description of things and concepts is actually all we need to have a meta-level. So being on the meta-level is merely being on some kind of discussion level about things and concepts. The bad new is - that discussion level is usually very abstract and not easily accessible to "the rest of us".

Instead of spending a lot of timing with fearing that discussion level we'll simply continue.

Thing is a Concept
Concept is a Concept
Link is a Concept

Example of a Meta concept

"Link" is one of the most important concepts in the world it is also called relation, connection, association.

Let's go thru the three levels from Thing to Meta:

Thing Level

In 2017 the ship Auriga Leader has connected Ports in Japan with Ports in the United States. This Link can be described with three elements

a starting port e.g. Port of Nagoya / JP NGO
details about the link e.g. the name "shipping route" and e.g. times JPNGO at 2016-12-15 18:00, US BAL 2017-05-30 23:00
a destination port e.g. Port of Baltimore US BAL

The Auriga Leader has followed shipping routes which are Links.

Concept Level

Each Link-Thing connects two things. The Link-Concept describes the Link-Thing Connections.

Why you should not fear the Meta level

References

Renssen, Andries (2015) Semantic information modeling methodology : towards interoperability of systems. Zoetermeer:Gellish.net, ISBN 9781329654488.

Meta

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