Mentography Primer

by Seth Russell
Updated 2003.02.03

These mentographs are nothing but labeled directed pseudographs .  The only things which really exists in them are arrows and those arrows could be translated directly to records in some database.  

Each of these arrows have four (or more) attributes (context, subject, property, object).   From the ordered pair (subject, object) we get the arrow which is labeled with a property node which is some other node in the graph. The arrow appears in some context which is shown as a Venn Diagram containing the arrow.   Please ignore the pointer on the circle enclosing the context, those pointers are an artifact of the IHMC software tool that is being used here to draw these graphs.
Subject pointing to Object in context


The database for this mentograph would contain the following record:

ContextA, Subject1, property1, Object1
Everything that appears inside the boxes are just labels for purpose of human comprehension - they ground our understanding of the graph in human terms.   

The nodes themselves don't really exist as such , they supervene on arrows which have the same subject attribute;  likewise the Venn circles supervene on those arrows with the same context attribute.

It is hoped that these graphs are an extension of RDF graphs which are arguably becoming the accepted method for exchanging metadata on the Semantic Web . The SUO ontology as well as anything else expressed in any language whatsoever can be translated into this graphic notation and round tripped back with no loss of information.
References: