Scope note

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This class comprises time-indexed observational situations defined as phenomena happening in time and physical or social space whose identity does not depend on intrinsic criteria but on the perspective of the external observer, who carves out the epistemic situation from a more complex or prolonged temporal phenomena. The coherence or identity of an observational situation is thus provided by a specific, research-driven choice of the observer and this class is therefore disjoint from the crm:E4 Period class whose identity and coherence is considered to be intrinsically defined.

The Observational Situation class includes situations in observable phenomena that are sliced up in terms of temporal duration, or of geographical extension or of the restriction to a particular aspect of more complex phenomena. For example, if we consider the economic activity of a country during a civil year, and measure different aspects of it, the life of this physical and social phenomenon does not stop to exist at the 31th of December of that year, nor it is limited to economy. An epistemic situation thus cuts out a portion of more complex phenomena for the sake of observation and research. It is somehow constructed by simplification and choice of specifc aspects of the temporal phenomena.

An observational situation can also concern the absence of a particular kind of phenomena during a particular period of time or in a particular place, such as the known non-presence of a person at an event. The observational situation is driven by an epistemic approach: it carves out a moment in time and physical/social space and captures the information of the absence of an awaited phenomenon. 

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