Ether
Ether used viewpoints to relativist information in publications. However a great deal of information is shared across viewpoints. So Ether made use of inheritance so that information in a viewpoint could be readily used in other viewpoints. Sometimes this inheritance is not exact as when the laws of physics in Newtonian mechanics are derived from those of Special Relativity. In such cases Ether used translation instead of inheritance. Bruno Latour has analyzed translation in scientific communities in the context of actor network theory. Imre Lakatos studied very sophisticated kinds of translations of mathematical (e.g., the Euler formula for polyhedra) and scientific theories.
Viewpoints were used to implement natural deduction (Fitch ) in Ether. In order to prove a goal of the form (P implies Q) in a viewpoint V, it is sufficient to create a new viewpoint V' that inherits from V, assert P in V', and then prove Q in V'. An idea like this was originally introduced into programming language proving by Rulifson, Derksen, and Waldinger except since Ether is concurrent rather than being sequential it does not rely on being in a single viewpoint that can be sequentially pushed and popped to move to other viewpoints.
Ultimately resolving issues among these viewpoints are matters for negotiation.
Read more about this topic: Scientific Community Metaphor
Famous quotes containing the word ether:
“Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly
different from myself,
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)