Building Objects in Time - Spatio-temporal Approaches - page 9

Varzi [SMI 00], between bona fide 6 objects and fiat 7 objects, by adapting them to
the objects encountered during spatial analysis works:
- bona fide objects correspond to “natural” objects of common sense [SMI 00].
They have a material and physical anchorage, and the authors evoke “genuine
objects”, i.e. “real”, “authentic” objects. These objects exist and are distinguished
from their environment regardless of what Galton named “human partitioning
activity” [GAL 03]. They correspond, therefore, to a “reality” that can be described
as objective [PEU 98];
- fiat objects are constructed objects, which exist according to an administrative,
social or political convention [SMI 00], or in the imaginary, as a concept [HOR 00].
These objects are, therefore, derived from a human partitioning activity, and it is
useful to distinguish two cases: - the objects corresponding to a political or
administrative convention, for example, such is the case of countries and
administrative regions; - the objects constructed by “expertise”, with a scientific or
operational objective. The dichotomy proposed by Terrier [TER 98] between
“power zoning” and “knowledge zoning” illustrates this distinction from the point of
view of domain expert well. The first term refers to a splitting of the space in zones
corresponding to the exercise of a power (typically the municipalities and
departments). The second corresponds to a splitting of the space made by
institutions and researchers with the purpose of answering a question (for example,
the mobilization of census tracts to study at what rate urban sprawl increased).
Of course, the distinction between bona fide and fiat categories is not always
immediate and intermediate cases can appear. A forest, for example, can be viewed
from both angles: it is distinguishable in the landscape, but its delimitation is not
always unequivocal. As an island, the group formed by the space bringing together
the two departments of Corsica is of the first type; as an administrative unit, each of
these departments taken separately corresponds to the second. The benefit in
explicitly discussing the ontological nature of the object that is being worked upon is
in first place epistemological. This reflection helps to ensure that there is no
ambiguity in the definition of the objects, to control any potential gap between the
object as it was designed and the object as the empirical approach allows observing
and analyzing it, and finally to give meaning to the results of any processing carried
out. We think it is also clarifying to combine this categorization corresponding to the
point of view of the philosophers, with the methodological categorization on the
6 The Latin phrase “bona fide” meaning “in good faith” is used to characterize what is
authentic in English as well as in French texts.
7 “ Fiat Lux ” is a Latin phrase present at the beginning of the Genesis. It is the first word of
God, order given when he creates light during the creation of the world, translatable into
English by “ let there be light ”. This formula that experiences a great success since the 18th
Century is used nowadays to mention slightly pompously an invention or a discovery.”
(Wikipedia).