<p>Indicating that a statement is an hypothesis can be made with reification.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-rdf11-mt-20140225/#reification" rel="nofollow">reification in the RDF 1.1 specification</a></p>

<p>Reification does not entail that the reified triple exists. Therefore, there is another approach that entails the triple: <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.3399" rel="nofollow">reification done right</a>. Note: this approach is not a standard.</p>
Writing scientific hypothesis in RDF
<p>I wonder how to describe scientific theories.</p>

<p>In Physical sciences a key element is to link an equation
to the hypothesis that determines its domain of validity.</p>

<p>N-ary sentences can be described as follow</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>_: Equation123 o:hypothesis _:HypothesisABC .</p>
  
  <p>_:HypothesisABC rdfs:label "abc",</p>
  
  <p>o:expression "a = b" .</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Yet, an hypothesis is a triple in itself, not only a datatype literal.</p>

<p>Therefore I see 3 ways to write the hypothesis itself and I think
there is still a better way :</p>

<ul>
<li>Encode the triple in turtle as au datatype literal
_:HypothesisABC o:expression "a=b" .</li>
<li>Encode the triple in a N-ary sentence :
_:HypothesisABC a:has subject "db:Function" ,
o:has Predicate "o:has Property" ,
o:hasObject "o:Linear" .</li>
<li>store the triple in a distinct RDF graph
and indicate the URI of the RDF graph</li>
</ul>

<blockquote>
  <p>o:HypothesisABC o:storedIn <a href="http://example.org/graph" rel="nofollow">http://example.org/graph</a>; .</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Yet, these three means to write the link between
an equation and the underlying
hypothesis bring new problems,
as the computation of the RDF graph requires first to:</p>

<ul>
<li>parse the datatype literal as triple (case 1 and 2),</li>
<li>load the graph where the triple is stored (case 3).</li>
</ul>

<p>Is there another solution I didn't consider ?
If not, is the 3rd solution reasonable ?</p>

<p>PS : I read <a href="http://www.lncc.br/seminarioDEXL/palestras/Bernardo.pdf" rel="nofollow">this powerpoint presentation</a> and like some others, there is no reference to the RDF syntax correspondig to the model.</p>

<p>Edit (2015-10-10 13:10):</p>

<p>Here is another solution I thought of.</p>

<p>It would be to integrate the notion of hypothesis in the property. That is to say defining object properties and datatype properties in the ontology indicating in their names that they have hypothesis value.</p>

<p>Therefore two versions of a property (e.g. hasProperty haSupposedProperty) have same function (attribution of a property to the object) yet they enable to write triples
corresponding to hypothesis differently from triples corresponding to true sentences.</p>

<p>Sincerly yours,</p>

<p>jeybee</p>