Completeness is not produced by reasoning — it must be declared or governed.

This article by Nicolas Figay, When Knowledge Graphs Fail, It's Not the Ontology — It's the Epistemology*, is spot on.  It is critically important for business professionals to understand the following notions.

First, toward the end of the article, the following statement is made, "Completeness is not produced by reasoning — it must be declared or governed." That statement is spot on. As I have tried to point out in  articles I have written, there needs to be a conscious matching between possible perturbances and control.  This is the Law of Requisite Variety. Full stop.

Second, there is a difference between "data", "information", and "knowledge".  Most people seemed to be mentally locked in the world of data.  But that is not where you want to be.  You want to be working with information because you can use information to create knowledge; data will not get you where you want to be.

Third, I never could really get my head around the term epistemology.  Epistemology is the study of knowledge. I still don't totally "get it, get it".  I tried to get Microsoft Copilot to help me understand epistemology and it provided a metaphor which I  tweaked.  This is the metaphor:

Imagine "data", "information", and "knowledge" in terms of building a house.

  • Bricks, 2 by 4s, cement; that is the level of "data".  The raw materials used to build a house. "Unprocessed".
  • Walls, doors,  windows,  roof, floor; that is the level of "information". Information is like the bricks, 2 by 4s, and cement arranged into the structures that make up the house. "Processed bricks,  2 by 4s, and cement."
  • House, a structure made up of walls, doors, windows, roof, and floor that you can live in. The house is made of walls, doors, windows, a roof, and a floor which makes it something you might be able to live in. "Completed structure."
  • Epistemology is the blueprint, the engineering, and the inspection process which is used to answer questions like: Is this house solid? Was the building code followed when the house was constructed? Can we trust the house? Should we take the risk and live in the house?  Epistemology is less about what you know, and more about how you know what you know, and whether you should trust it.  "Assessment."
Epistemology seems to be the "layer" which governs how we distinguish between raw inputs (data), structured meaning (information), and actionable knowledge.

This is why the Seattle Method, XBRL International's Open Information Model (OIM), and  OMG's Standard Business Report Model (SBRM) are so critically important and why these conceptualizations of a business report should be aligned.  How exactly do you know you can trust that the XBRL-based or RDF-based or LPG-based or whatever digital format you are working with is complete and correct enough to trust? What "inspection process" should be used? Who signed off on the engineering? This needs to be declared and governed.

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