Page 216 - Modern Spatiotemporal Geostatistics

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SINGLE-POINT ANALYTICAL
FORMULATIONS

"Knowing ignorance is strength. Ignoring
knowledge is sickness." Lao Tsu

The Basic Single-Point BME Equations

In the preceding chapters we presented the main concepts of BME and we
studied several scientific applications of modern geostatistics. When we talk
about any sort of scientific discipline we are essentially talking about two main
components:
1. an organized body of physical knowledge (ontological component), and
2. a distinctive methodology for obtaining and processing knowledge of the
subject matter of the science (epistemic component).
The epistemic viewpoint a discipline adopts is a part of its very character-
ization of its scientific content. It is by virtue of the epistemic component that
we can say, e.g., that modern physics is importantly different from scholastic
physics. In the case of modern spatiotemporal geostatistics, this viewpoint has
led to the development of the BME concepts and methods, which have con-
siderable advantages over many traditional geostatistical approaches. While
searching for solutions to real-world problems, BME analysis forces us to de-
termine explicitly the available physical knowledge, and to develop logically
plausible rules for processing this knowledge. All these issues are incorpo-
rated up front in the mapping process, and nothing is swept under the carpet.
What distinguishes the "knowledge-based" approach from the "axiomatic" ap-
proach is the role played by the Q and ,5 bases of past experience. While the
"axiomatic" approach is based on deduction from a set of basic principles,
in the "knowledge-based" approach the challenge in space/time analysis is to
make use of the Q and S bases in the most effective way.

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