Section 1: Ontologies and formal descriptions of patterns

Patterns are detected by inductive means (Section 1: Ontologies and formal descriptions of patterns). This section is about abstract formalisms that are underlying patterns. When  describing patterns, certain assumptions have to be made about a) what are atomic building blocks of patterns and b) how is the space of possible interdependencies between such atomic units defined. On this level of abstraction, such pattern formalisms are not restricted to a single level of description (see Section 2) but can be universally applied. The basic questions that we ask in this section are: What are underlying ontologies or formal descriptions of patterns? To what levels of description are these ontologies applied? What is the role of preconceived notions of categories and inductive biases, which researchers apply to the data in order to detect patterns?

Editors: Sabine Arndt-Lappe & Achim Rettinger