The concept most fascinating to me in Kuhn`s paper was that of grounding which explained that the “claims of any domain theory need to be based on some observation in that domain”. This makes intuitive sense; one must know the domain in question and have some reference material to be able to begin to assemble the domain theory and an accompanying ontology. However, Kuhn refers to the “observation” as being “tangible” which may not always be the case. In Kuhn’s methodology, the basis for information is from a textual source compiled by experts. This assumes experts have the most appropriate grasp of how to assemble the concepts of a domain into some textual reference and then ontology. Yet this neglects two things: public participation and non-tangible reference material.
Public participation would be crucial in cultural studies where experts may not actually be of the culture they study and so may miss some cultural distinctions as a result of their own cultural influences. This reflects a need for the public to participate in defining concepts and objects as they see them and not only as these things are seen by experts or, as Kuhn mentioned, by the knowledge engineers often creating the ontologies.
Closely related to public participation are non-tangible references for a subject such as oral histories of some cultures. The history or stories told may remain relatively stable over time yet the words used to tell a particular history or story may change from telling to telling making it difficult to pin down exactly the meaning of a single concept in the story and to place this in an ontology.
-Outdoor Addict