the relation of the cells in the finger of the skin to the finger, in which an indeterminate number of grains are parts of the whole by virtue of being grains in a collective that is part of the whole, and in which removing one granular part does not nec- essarily damage or diminish the whole. Ontological Whether there is a fixed, or nearly fixed number of parts - e.g. fingers of the hand, chambers of the heart, or wheels of a car - such that there can be a notion of a single one being missing, or whether, by contrast, the number of parts is indeterminate - e.g., cells in the skin of the hand, red cells in blood, or rubber molecules in the tread of the tire of the wheel of the car.

PAPER: Granularity, scale and collectivity: When size does and does not matter, Alan Rector, Jeremy Rogers, Thomas Bittner, Journal of Biomedical Informatics 39 (2006) 333-349

Discussion in Karslruhe with, among others, Alan Rector, Stefan Schulz, Marijke Keet, Melanie Courtot, and Alan Ruttenberg. Definition take from the definition of granular parthood in the cited paper. Needs work to put into standard form

has grain

http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/IAO_0000120

http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/obi.owl

PERSON: Alan Ruttenberg