Thesaurus Project

The Thesaurus Project of the Symmetrion aims at establishing a Web of terms related to symmetry. Clustering the terms included in this web, and building a net of their connections to each other facilitates to classify and arrange well the vast links to websites (cf. the Links to websites featuring symmetry project).

The Thesaurus Project aims also at elaborating the Symmetry Classification Scheme (SCS), a lattice scheme to classify and identify concepts, phenomena, keywords, subjects of studies, and their sub-fields in symmetrology to be used in the Bibliographic project.

This project is executed by the collective efforts of the members of the International Symmetry Association and the visitors of this site of the Symmetrion. The Symmetrion is an international institute. Join our team, join the symmetrists’ community, and become our volunteer fellow! Contribute to the permanent extension of the Thesaurus project. The Thesaurus project of the Symmetrion welcomes your contribution to accomplish one of the below tasks. The execution of the project will be continuous.

(1) Web of terms related to symmetry

This project collects terms (which denote phenomena, properties, fields and sub-fields of studies, etc. related to symmetry) and draws the relations among them. The respective terms will form the nodes of a web, while the relations between the individual terms will be marked by lines connecting them. Adding a new term (node) to the web demands also to determine which other terms is it related to. The sets of most related terms will form clusters. These clusters will build the thesaurus of the symmetry related terms. This thesaurus
will serve as a basis of the classification of the links to other websites featuring symmetry.

Note, a webpage can be qualified, according to its content, under several categories. Note also, that several aspects of classification can be applied parallel. The terms within the thesaurus can be arranged in different categories according to the respective aspects.

For example, the symmetry related terms can be classified according to disciplines (e.g., symmetry breaking in particle physics, invariance under translation in crystallography, symmetry in geometry, biological morphology, linguistics, ethnography, aesthetics, philosophy, etc. …), purposes (like a symmetry related event, research, art, education, technological application, design, entertainment, etc. …), subjects (investigation into the symmetries of polyhedra, compounds, galaxies, vertebrates, human brain, buildings, etc. …).

(2) Symmetry Classification Scheme (SCS)

The Symmetry Classification Scheme (SCS) aims at arranging the terms, that may serve as keywords to describe bibliographic items included in the Symmetrion’s Bibliographic project. It will be a manual which lists and labels terms to classify and identify concepts, phenomena, subjects of studies, and their sub-fields in symmetrology for bibliographic purposes. The terms in the Symmetry Classification Scheme (SCS) will form a lattice, that means a partially ordered set.

The Thesaurus project should be developed in correlation and simultaneously with the Symmetrion’s Links to other websites featuring symmetry project, and the Bibliographic project.

Your proposals to shape the project and contributions to the (1) Web of symmetry related terms and the (2) Symmetry Classification Scheme (SCS) are welcome in E-mail.

The Symmetrion keeps the right to moderate the submitted contributions.