Re: Genealogical evidence and data model

Ian Goddard <goddai01@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:

> Imagine, if you can, that you have been wrongly accused of a serious
> crime.  Now, is the truth of your innocence a social phenomenon or an
> absolute?

A crime is socially defined (Robinson Crusoe could not commit a crime),
but the act is individual. Hence we are back to the notion that
individual and society are aspects of one process (this is
conventionally called "social being").

Anyway...


> How would you handle this situation:  Two men, Andy and Bob with the
> surname each have a son called Charlie in the same year.  Subsequently
> a man called Charlie with the same surname and who can be shown to
> have been born in that year marries and has a child called David.  The
> sons of Andy and Bob are the only two candidates for David's father
> but with no good grounds to distinguish between them.  How do you then
> show David's ancestry?  Do you choose to link him back to Andy with a
> note that Bob might actually be the grandfather (or the converse)?  If
> so then you may have *noted* the ambiguity but you have not *recorded*
> it in your structure.

I respond, not to answer your question, but to get a better
understanding of the issue. This David would have a GEDCOM entry like
this:

    n @[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   FAM

For example, 

    0 @[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 FAM

So couldn't Charles I (son of Andy) possibly be F4, while Charles II
(son of Bob) is F5? So a David with "0 @[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 FAM" would umambiguously be
the son of Charles I. What am I misunderstanding?

-- 
 
       Haines Brown, KB1GRM