What is a structural representation

We outline a formal foundation for a “structural” (or “symbolic”) object/event representation, the necessity of which is acutely felt in all sciences, including mathematics and computer science. The proposed foundation incorporates two hypotheses: 1) the object’s formative history must be an integral part of the object representation and 2) the process of object construction is irreversible, i.e. the “trajectory” of the object’s formative evolution does not intersect itself. The last hypothesis is equivalent to the generalized axiom of (structural) induction. Some of the main difficulties associated with the transition from the classical numeric to the structural representations appear to be related precisely to the development of a formal framework satisfying these two hypotheses. The concept of (inductive) class representation—which has inspired the development of this approach to structural representation—differs fundamentally from the known concepts of class. In the proposed, evolving transformations system (ETS), model, the class is defined by the transformation system—a finite set of weighted transformations acting on the class progenitor— and the generation of the class elements is associated with the corresponding generative process which also induces the class typicality measure. Moreover, in the ETS model, a fundamental role of the object’s class in the object’s representation is clarified: the representation of an object must include the class. From the point of view of ETS model, the classical discrete representations, e.g. strings and graphs, appear now as incomplete special cases, the proper completion of which should incorporate the corresponding formative histories, i.e. those of the corresponding strings or graphs.