I have studied JavaScript now about two days. Because I'm from Finland and my mother language is Finnish, it is easiest for me to study it in Finnish. And a good introduction to JavaScript is needed. I am going to make it. Last week I learned something about HTML - this page has been done mostly using just HTML. A good HTML-introduction for me was: Kuinka tehdä kotisivu?

I made one home page according to the advices I got from "Kuinka tehdä kotisivu? ("How to Make a Home Page?"): This Is My Life!

I have been surfing in net now about two weeks, and I have found some interesting things there. But many things were missing. This is one of them:

Kulttuurisilta

Unfortunately, I will have to remove the "Kulttuurisilta's" ("Cultural Bridge", in English) site in another place. But I hope that I will have then more time to make a home page for the Cultural Bridge Association in English language. Just wait and see. The page should be ready-made in the beginning of December '97.

This Geocities' Free Home Page Policy is meant for me. Namely, I am convinced of the fact that creating (for instance, home pages) is the most relevant thing to do in order to model the world. And because I'm fond of free things, I made a home page a couple of weeks ago (without using HTML): Esko's Home Page

In about one month there will be an interesting place, too: Cultural Bridge Association

However, the focus in modeling the world is the concept "relevance", and because it is a comparative notion, we should also try to define the degree of relevance. And in order to do so we are forced to use concepts. That is to say, we should apply conceptual modelling. The next chapter in my page is my research plan for the next century.

The design of information systems is difficult without having sufficient information. On the other hand, if the amount of information is enormous, it is difficult to handle it all. In other words, we have the difficulty of finding out what information is relevant and what is not for a particular design task. In the design of information systems, it has shown to be useful first to construct a conceptual model which contains all the relevant concepts belonging to the universe of discourse (shortly, the UoD) which is regarded as a collection of all those entities that have been, are, or ever might be in a selected portion of the real world or postulated world. The problem of relevance is, shortly, "What are the relevant entities of a given UoD and what is the best way to represent them in the form of a conceptual schema?"

1. The Background of the Study

The study is a part of a larger international and interdisciplinary project "Conceptual Representation in the Information Society", which involves four countries (Denmark, Finland, Spain, and Czech Republic), and 27 researchers from nine institutes. One aim of the project is to invent methods and software which would be relevant for conceptual representation and would help one to master and understand the complexity of information systems. A more general aim is to explore the philosophical and technical approaches to conceptual and linguistic analyses in order to create new unifying methods, philosophical views, and technical implementations. The preliminary plan for the project is divided into four main research fields:

(I) Conceptual analysis,
(II) Analysis of natural languages,
(III) Conceptual modelling and computer science, and
(IV) Conclusion.

Although my previous work in these fields represents strongly conceptual and logical analysis, the present study aims primarily to develop methodologically relevant tools for information modelling. Hence it is an essential part of the research field (III) which can be further divided to four phases:

1. Information acquisition,
2. Information selection,
3. Information representation, and
4. Implementation.

In all these phases it is of utmost importance to know what elements are relevant for modelling a given information system.

2. The Aims and Methods

The aim of this study is to develop a definition for the degree of relevance of a given entity belonging to some universe of discourse. It is essential to speak of the degree of relevance, because "relevance" is a comparative notion, i.e., an entity may be more (or less) relevant than another. A more general aim is to develop a topology for the basic modelling situation along the lines presented in Marjomaa & Palomäki 1992 (see [16], in Publications, Unfortunaly, the page is not ready, yet in  Nov '97). This also means that the basic hypothesis of this study is that the basic modelling situation is topologically describable. Because modelling processes are often very complex, it is extremely important to use strict and well-defined tools in order to get useful results. In my doctoral dissertation (1997 - see Esko's Home Page), I made the preliminary conceptual analysis of the notion of relevance, but in order to develop it further I need to employ so-called concept languages, e.g., conceptual graphs, their semantics and proof theory. I'm convinced that in this work it would be very fruitful for me to collaborate with the logicians of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, who are experts, especially, in the study of the semantics of data structures.

In my doctoral thesis, I found that for every information subject, S1 to Sn, participating the modelling process, there are the following relevant things to be taken into account:

A. certain definite background factors
B. four different senses of relevance
C. processive and semiotic relevance
D. the fact that interpretation has always three essential aspects
E. Si should know that Sj can have quite a different kind of conceptual model than himself
F. only those factors that support the modelling process in order to reach system users' targets are relevant
G. the fact that just Peirce's ten classes of signs are possible
H. there are nine essential principles of conceptual modelling
I. some related concepts (preference, necessity, etc.)
J. model constructs and levels of abstraction
K. there are three interconnected problems of relevance, viz, in information acquisition, in inf. selection, and in inf. representation

Hence we get the following kind of structure for relevance R = .

The problem is how to connect this structure to the so-called Himmeli structure. Namely, one kind of measure for relevance can be developed on the basis of the Himmeli structure. We can state that the degree of relevance R of any entity ei belonging to the Himmeli for information subject Sj in respect to goal G is one per minimum of the distances between entity ei and goal G, or, formally

GR(ei)Sj = 1/min{dk(ei,G)}.

The strategy of defining the structure may change, of course, if we distinguish explicitly between "relevance in respect to a goal" and "logical relevance". In order to condense the amount of information concerning the structure of relevance in information modelling situations I am also going to develop the idea of partial idealization introduced by Kuokkanen & Tuomivaara 1992 ("On the Structure of Idealizations, Explorations in the Poznan school methodology of science". Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of Sciences and the Humanities 1992, vol. 25, pp.67-102; see, esp., pp. 70-71) further.

3. Results and Publishing Plan

Developing a topological definition for the degree of relevance would help us to construct useful conceptual schemata for the design of information systems. In general, the clarification of the notion of relevance in the philosophy of science would increase the conceptual clearness of any kind of scientific investigation. Hence it would also help us to make the results of the investigation more understandable and easier to apply. Two papers will be published. The first one will be on the degree of relevance in conceptual modelling and it will be presented in the European-Japanese Seminar on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases, Spring 1998. The second one will be on the topology of information modelling situations and it will be submitted to some international journal, Fall 1998.

4. Resources and Time Table

Because the project "Conceptual Representation in the Information Society" has not yet got any financial support, I would be grateful, if the Academy of Finland could make it financially possible for me to study in the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic for a couple of months in Spring 1998.