Levels metaphor and building blocks—towards a domain granularity framework for the life sciences
Arranging a heterogeneous collection of entities into a hierarchy of linearly ordered levels (layers or strata) is a general ordering scheme that is a widely used notion for organizing knowledge. On the basis of four specific examples, all of which are relevant in the life sciences, I briefly discuss the diversity of different notions of the underlying levels metaphor. Before I turn to ontology research and Keet's formal theory of granularity, I introduce a specific notion of general building blocks, which gives rise to a hierarchy of levels of building blocks that is intended to function as an organizational backbone for integrating various granular perspectives that are relevant in the life sciences. Each such granular perspective employs its own specific application of the levels metaphor, which is integrated with the other perspectives within a general domain granularity framework for the life sciences. The resulting granularity framework is meant to provide the initial basis on which a desperately required overarching and more comprehensive information framework for the life sciences can be developed.