Page 224 - Using MIS

Guide

immanuel Kant, data modeler

Only the users can say whether a data model accu- humans can do represents the real, noumenal world. A
rately reflects their business environment. What happens data model, therefore, is a model of a human’s model of
when the users disagree among themselves? What if one what appears to be “out there.” For example, a model of a
user says orders have a single salesperson, but another says salesperson is a model of the model that humans make of
that sales teams produce some orders? Who is correct? salespeople.
It’s tempting to say, “The correct model is the one that To return to the question that we started with, what
better represents the real world.” The problem with this do we do when people disagree about what should be in a
statement is that data models do not model “the real world.” data model? First, realize that anyone attempting to justify
A data model is simply a model of what the data modeler
perceives. This very important point can be difficult to un-
derstand, but if you do understand it, you will save many
hours in data model validation meetings and be a much
better data modeling team member.
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant reasoned
that what we perceive as reality is based on our perceptive
apparatus. That which we perceive he called phenomena.
Our perceptions, such as of light and sound, are processed
by our brains and made meaningful. But we do not and
cannot know whether the images we create from the per-
ceptions have anything to do with what might or might not
really be.
Kant used the term noumenal world to refer to the es-
sence of “things in themselves”—to whatever it is out there
that gives rise to our perceptions and images. He used the
term phenomenal world to refer to what we humans per-
ceive and construct.
It is easy to confuse the noumenal world with the
phenomenal world, because we share the phenomenal
world with other humans. All of us have the same mental
apparatus, and we all make the same constructions. If
you ask your roommate to hand you the toothpaste, she
hands you the toothpaste, not a hairbrush. But the fact
that we share this mutual view does not mean that the
mutual view describes in any way what is truly out there.
Dogs construct a world based on smells, and orca whales
construct a world based on sounds. What the “real world”
is to a dog, a whale, and a human are completely different.
All of this means that we cannot ever justify a data model
as a “better representation of the real world.” Nothing that
Source: Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library/Alamy
192