Granularity, scale and collectivity: when size does and does not matter

Journal of Biomedical Informatics
A L RectorThomas Bittner

Abstract

Bridging levels of "granularity" and "scale" are frequently cited as key problems for biomedical informatics. However, detailed accounts of what is meant by these terms are sparse in the literature. We argue for distinguishing two notions: "size range," which deals with physical size, and "collectivity," which deals with aggregations of individuals into collections, which have emergent properties and effects. We further distinguish these notions from "specialisation," "degree of detail," "density," and "connectivity." We argue that the notion of "collectivity"--molecules in water, cells in tissues, people in crowds, stars in galaxies--has been neglected but is a key to representing biological notions, that it is a pervasive notion across size ranges--micro, macro, cosmological, etc.--and that it provides an account of a number of troublesome issues including the most important cases of when the biomedical notion of parthood is, or is not, best represented by a transitive relation. Although examples are taken from biomedicine, we believe these notions to have wider application.

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Citations

Aug 11, 2006·Briefings in Bioinformatics·Olivier Bodenreider, Robert Stevens
Jul 1, 2008·Bioinformatics·Stefan SchulzMartin Boeker
Jun 1, 2010·BMC Bioinformatics·Lars Vogt
Jul 20, 2013·BMC Bioinformatics·Stefanie SeltmannAndreas Kurtz
Apr 24, 2007·BMC Bioinformatics·Stefan SchulzUdo Hahn
May 9, 2008·BMC Bioinformatics·Mikel Egaña ArangurenRobert Stevens
Oct 15, 2011·Journal of Biomedical Semantics·Ludger Jansen, Stefan Schulz
Dec 15, 2011·Journal of Biomedical Semantics·Robert HoehndorfDietrich Rebholz-Schuhmann
Jun 27, 2008·Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA·Jörg M NiggemannStefan Schulz
Aug 30, 2008·Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA·Alan L Rector, Sebastian Brandt
Feb 27, 2007·Artificial Intelligence in Medicine·Stefan Schulz, Udo Hahn
Mar 25, 2011·Methods of Information in Medicine·V MaojoC Kulikowski
Aug 31, 2010·Journal of Biomedical Informatics·Bernardo GonçalvesJosé G Pereira Filho
Dec 16, 2020·BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making·Vipina K KelothJulia Xu
May 3, 2019·Journal of Biomedical Informatics·Vipina K KelothJames Geller

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