If you are interested in writing a review, contact chandra@cis. It is intended to be a "general textbook of knowledge-base analysis and design" (p. Its great strength is recognizing the need for an interdisciplinary approach, and the attempt at presenting the logical and philosophical foundations of knowledge representation under a unified view. Its great weakness is a lack of consistent rigor, which is needed in a textbook for newcomers to a subject. After some historical remarks and a first introductory chapter devoted to logic, Sowa immediately attacks the hard problems involved in choosing ontological categories, which lie at the heart of any knowledge representation project.

This spanning of scope reflects the genius of Peirce's insight wherein semiosis can begin literally at the cusp of Nothingness [20] and then proceed to capture the process of signmaking, language, logic, the scientific method and thought abstraction to embrace the broadest and most complex of topics. This process is itself mediated by truth-testing and community use and consensus, with constant refinement as new insights and knowledge arise.