6 ms·

The epistemology of pizza

52 points by phillord 10y ago

coreyp_1 10y ago
I have been living in Rome for 2 1/2 months, and I still can't figure out a consensus on what the different types of pizza are! I miss Pizza Hut stuffed-crust pepperoni (with pretzel crust flavor)!!!!
- fibo 10y ago
  In fact Rome is not the right place to understand what is pizza. You should go Naples. Keep in mind that Italy is made of a lot, really a lot of cultures. It is not the same to stay in Naples than in Rome. Naples was a Greek colony, Rome was an Etruscan colony. If you are in Rome you can understand what is carbonara, matriciana, abbacchio, etc. If you ask for a pizza you are astray.
  - spdionis 10y ago
    Although I agree with you I would take note that Naples being a Greek colony and Rome an Etruscan colony do not have much to do with differences in pizza matters. Those societies and the appearance of pizza have a couple of millenia between them.
    - jacobush 10y ago
      Not so sure about that ... old habits die hard. In albanian "pite" is a pizza like bread. And albanians and greek cultures shared some stuff.
  - mcguire 10y ago
    "JUST GIVE ME A GODDAMN CUP OF COFFEE!"
anthonybsd 10y ago
What in the world did I just read? Fascinating, but...
- anewhnaccount2 10y ago
  The fruits of twenty years semantic web research.
  - phillord 10y ago
    It's about pizza not fruit. This article is light-hearted of course. But there are food ontologies for real -- the BBC have one for organising their recipes. And there is another which is used for food crops, which is used for research into disease (of the crops), and helping to alleviate hunger.
    - bencollier49 10y ago
      Tomato is a fruit! Or is it? I may need a Clojure-based epistemology to decide.
    - divbyzer0 10y ago
      Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
      - mcguire 10y ago
        Alternatively, understanding is recognizing that a tomato is actually a berry; mastery is not trying to make a tomato shortcake.
      - gpderetta 10y ago
        Then again, there is nothing wrong with putting tomatoes in a fruit salad, or a mixed vegetables/fruits salad, which is delicious.
      - Retra 10y ago
        In which category would we place the needless repetition of trite sayings?
fibo 10y ago
> a pizza bianca without mozzarella is a focaccia It is completely wrong! Pizza and focaccia have a completely different mixture.
- Isamu 10y ago
  A fundamentally different bread dough? Please do tell. My mind is open!
  - phillord 10y ago
    Depends on the leavening agent (or not). I would argue that flat breads, yeast leavened, and sour doughs are all pretty different. Sour dough pizza is pretty nice. Not sure it's allowed according to the book though...
- kidmenot 10y ago
  To complicate the matter, if you ever find yourself in the Italian region of Apulia (and possibly other southern regions), you should say "focaccia" even though you really mean "pizza", because "pizza" stands for "penis".
  - gpderetta 10y ago
    [citation needed]. My wife is from Apulia, and we visit the region multiple times a year. Never heard of this, always called a 'pizza' by its name there.
    - kidmenot 10y ago
      https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cazzo https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cazzo Look for "Puglia". Looks like what I said is true for Taranto, but my ex girlfriend was from Brindisi and she was the one who told me about this. Might depend on whether you actually speak dialect, methinks.
      - gpderetta 10y ago
Overtonwindow 10y ago
"Time is money, money is power, power is pizza, and pizza is knowledge...." - April Ludgate
- taneq 10y ago
  The volume of a cylinder with radius Z and height A is PiZZA.
anonbanker 10y ago
Someone should combine this data with Jeff Varasano's Recipe[0]. Then we could actually make a good pizza. 0. http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm
pfooti 10y ago
A diversion into the pedantic, but hear me out: I'm legitimately interested in terminology here. This actually seems more like ontology work than epistemology work. In one of my academic fields (I do software, education, and the learning sciences), we tend to use the term "epistemology" to be knowledge about knowledge itself. Generally questions like "where does the ontology of pizza come from?", or "who has claim on saying what is and is not a pizza, and where do they derive that claim?" are epistemological ones, and mapping out the state of different claims are ontological ones. Is 'epistemology', as used here to mean more of a meta-ontology a common word usement that's being structured these days? Is it something from clojure or one of the other lisp-y spaces people are building ontologies? I played with building ontologies about epistemology (specifically, nature of science, quality of scientific claim, etc) using KQML back in the Dark Ages of 2000 or so, but haven't really looked at the work since then.
- phillord2 10y ago
  I am using the term "ontology" to mean "a description of truth", and "epistemology" to mean "how do we know what truth is". Of course, these are philosophical definitions, which (as the article says) are not necessarily that applicable. The article in question uses OWL -- which is a subset of first order logic -- to illustrate the point. Clojure is (in this article) just a syntactic wrapping.
  - pfooti 10y ago
    Ah, that certainly makes sense. The article was a hoot, BTW - speaking as both a philosophy geek and food geek.
    - phillord 10y ago
      Thank you!
miguelrochefort 10y ago
It is a mistake to seek universality when dealing with semantics and ontologies. The world is perceived and understood differently by every witness. The solution is to allow every agent to either support or disapprove of every semantic statement. This way, the same query will output different realities depending on the agent's opinions, preferences, and network of trust. Imagine a knowledge base where Jesus statistically both exists and doesn't exists, depending on who wants to know. A knowledge base where some food item is both a pizza and not a pizza. There's no way around it, and this will become the start of a new semantic marketplace.
- phillord 10y ago
  I wrote a different version of the pizza ontology years ago, where the level of "spiciness" was dependent on the country you came from -- so American "hot" was equivalent to British "Medium". It's hard to do, ontologically, but you can. It tends to make your ontology very complex though, and at the same time incapable (because it's hard to detect contradictions). So you should only do it when you need to.
riordan 10y ago
Friends don't let friends use RDF
_ZeD_ 10y ago
As a barese, I cannot let it go: here in Bari there is a total separation between pizza and focaccia. I know in other parts of Italy the difference is smoothered, but A pizza is only made in pizzeria, is baked directly into the wood stove, over the marble A focaccia is only made in panificio, is baked into a baking tray Btw a focaccia barese is a total specific thing (always with oil, olive, and tomato pieces) it was a shock to know this thing does not exist outiside my city
- riffraff 10y ago
  focaccia genovese is also a totally different thing. "Focaccia" in general is underspecified. FWIW, "pizza bianca" is also underspecified, as in many parts of center italy, it might refer to pizza baked from bread makers using the same dough ad the bread rather than pizza dough, just flattened.
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  This is the big issue with 'defining' pizza and many other Italian dishes - Italians themselves can't decide how it should be and love to debate these things over and over (usually while eating food)! Carbonara is another highly debated dish - here in Roma (where it is was supposedly born ~50 years ago) some people insist you only need egg, where as others insist you need egg and cheese (and then there is the debate over what cheese). I've heard some restaurants stopped serving the dish to prevent heated arguments with their customers. Even the word for bags in a supermarket can't be agreed on. Here we use "buste", where as in the north they use "sacchetto". Our word there means envelope, so obviously you will get a funny look if you ask for three envelopes when paying for your groceries (the joke is on us though, we use that word for envelope too :P). Further reading: http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/02/origins-history-of-roman-pasta-gricia-amatriciana-carbonara.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/02/origins-history-of-roman-...
  - switch007 10y ago
    I am slightly biased being part Italian, but we should celebrate diversity. Italy was unified only in 1860 – the area was various republics/city-states/etc prior to that. I love the regional variations of dishes. I love the Italian people's passion for food.
curiousgal 10y ago
Coincidentally, the volume of a cylinder of a radius z and a height a is Pi.z.z.a
- bitwize 10y ago
  ...and dr³ factors into r²dr, or rdrr... get it? Hardy har har!

52 points by phillord 10y ago

I have been living in Rome for 2 1/2 months, and I still can't figure out a consensus on what the different types of pizza are! I miss Pizza Hut stuffed-crust pepperoni (with pretzel crust flavor)!!!!

fibo 10y ago
In fact Rome is not the right place to understand what is pizza. You should go Naples. Keep in mind that Italy is made of a lot, really a lot of cultures. It is not the same to stay in Naples than in Rome. Naples was a Greek colony, Rome was an Etruscan colony. If you are in Rome you can understand what is carbonara, matriciana, abbacchio, etc. If you ask for a pizza you are astray.
- spdionis 10y ago
  Although I agree with you I would take note that Naples being a Greek colony and Rome an Etruscan colony do not have much to do with differences in pizza matters. Those societies and the appearance of pizza have a couple of millenia between them.
  - jacobush 10y ago
    Not so sure about that ... old habits die hard. In albanian "pite" is a pizza like bread. And albanians and greek cultures shared some stuff.
- mcguire 10y ago
  "JUST GIVE ME A GODDAMN CUP OF COFFEE!"

anthonybsd 10y ago

What in the world did I just read? Fascinating, but...

anewhnaccount2 10y ago
The fruits of twenty years semantic web research.
- phillord 10y ago
  It's about pizza not fruit. This article is light-hearted of course. But there are food ontologies for real -- the BBC have one for organising their recipes. And there is another which is used for food crops, which is used for research into disease (of the crops), and helping to alleviate hunger.
  - bencollier49 10y ago
    Tomato is a fruit! Or is it? I may need a Clojure-based epistemology to decide.
  - divbyzer0 10y ago
    Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
    - mcguire 10y ago
      Alternatively, understanding is recognizing that a tomato is actually a berry; mastery is not trying to make a tomato shortcake.
    - gpderetta 10y ago
      Then again, there is nothing wrong with putting tomatoes in a fruit salad, or a mixed vegetables/fruits salad, which is delicious.
    - Retra 10y ago
      In which category would we place the needless repetition of trite sayings?

fibo 10y ago

> a pizza bianca without mozzarella is a focaccia It is completely wrong! Pizza and focaccia have a completely different mixture.

Isamu 10y ago
A fundamentally different bread dough? Please do tell. My mind is open!
- phillord 10y ago
  Depends on the leavening agent (or not). I would argue that flat breads, yeast leavened, and sour doughs are all pretty different. Sour dough pizza is pretty nice. Not sure it's allowed according to the book though...
kidmenot 10y ago
To complicate the matter, if you ever find yourself in the Italian region of Apulia (and possibly other southern regions), you should say "focaccia" even though you really mean "pizza", because "pizza" stands for "penis".
- gpderetta 10y ago
  [citation needed]. My wife is from Apulia, and we visit the region multiple times a year. Never heard of this, always called a 'pizza' by its name there.
  - kidmenot 10y ago
    https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cazzo https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cazzo Look for "Puglia". Looks like what I said is true for Taranto, but my ex girlfriend was from Brindisi and she was the one who told me about this. Might depend on whether you actually speak dialect, methinks.
    - gpderetta 10y ago

Overtonwindow 10y ago

"Time is money, money is power, power is pizza, and pizza is knowledge...." - April Ludgate

taneq 10y ago
The volume of a cylinder with radius Z and height A is PiZZA.

anonbanker 10y ago

Someone should combine this data with Jeff Varasano's Recipe[0]. Then we could actually make a good pizza. 0. http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

pfooti 10y ago

A diversion into the pedantic, but hear me out: I'm legitimately interested in terminology here. This actually seems more like ontology work than epistemology work. In one of my academic fields (I do software, education, and the learning sciences), we tend to use the term "epistemology" to be knowledge about knowledge itself. Generally questions like "where does the ontology of pizza come from?", or "who has claim on saying what is and is not a pizza, and where do they derive that claim?" are epistemological ones, and mapping out the state of different claims are ontological ones. Is 'epistemology', as used here to mean more of a meta-ontology a common word usement that's being structured these days? Is it something from clojure or one of the other lisp-y spaces people are building ontologies? I played with building ontologies about epistemology (specifically, nature of science, quality of scientific claim, etc) using KQML back in the Dark Ages of 2000 or so, but haven't really looked at the work since then.

phillord2 10y ago
I am using the term "ontology" to mean "a description of truth", and "epistemology" to mean "how do we know what truth is". Of course, these are philosophical definitions, which (as the article says) are not necessarily that applicable. The article in question uses OWL -- which is a subset of first order logic -- to illustrate the point. Clojure is (in this article) just a syntactic wrapping.
- pfooti 10y ago
  Ah, that certainly makes sense. The article was a hoot, BTW - speaking as both a philosophy geek and food geek.
  - phillord 10y ago
    Thank you!

miguelrochefort 10y ago

It is a mistake to seek universality when dealing with semantics and ontologies. The world is perceived and understood differently by every witness. The solution is to allow every agent to either support or disapprove of every semantic statement. This way, the same query will output different realities depending on the agent's opinions, preferences, and network of trust. Imagine a knowledge base where Jesus statistically both exists and doesn't exists, depending on who wants to know. A knowledge base where some food item is both a pizza and not a pizza. There's no way around it, and this will become the start of a new semantic marketplace.

phillord 10y ago
I wrote a different version of the pizza ontology years ago, where the level of "spiciness" was dependent on the country you came from -- so American "hot" was equivalent to British "Medium". It's hard to do, ontologically, but you can. It tends to make your ontology very complex though, and at the same time incapable (because it's hard to detect contradictions). So you should only do it when you need to.

riordan 10y ago

Friends don't let friends use RDF

_ZeD_ 10y ago

As a barese, I cannot let it go: here in Bari there is a total separation between pizza and focaccia. I know in other parts of Italy the difference is smoothered, but A pizza is only made in pizzeria, is baked directly into the wood stove, over the marble A focaccia is only made in panificio, is baked into a baking tray Btw a focaccia barese is a total specific thing (always with oil, olive, and tomato pieces) it was a shock to know this thing does not exist outiside my city

riffraff 10y ago
focaccia genovese is also a totally different thing. "Focaccia" in general is underspecified. FWIW, "pizza bianca" is also underspecified, as in many parts of center italy, it might refer to pizza baked from bread makers using the same dough ad the bread rather than pizza dough, just flattened.
lucaspiller 10y ago
This is the big issue with 'defining' pizza and many other Italian dishes - Italians themselves can't decide how it should be and love to debate these things over and over (usually while eating food)! Carbonara is another highly debated dish - here in Roma (where it is was supposedly born ~50 years ago) some people insist you only need egg, where as others insist you need egg and cheese (and then there is the debate over what cheese). I've heard some restaurants stopped serving the dish to prevent heated arguments with their customers. Even the word for bags in a supermarket can't be agreed on. Here we use "buste", where as in the north they use "sacchetto". Our word there means envelope, so obviously you will get a funny look if you ask for three envelopes when paying for your groceries (the joke is on us though, we use that word for envelope too :P). Further reading: http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/02/origins-history-of-roman-pasta-gricia-amatriciana-carbonara.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/02/origins-history-of-roman-...
- switch007 10y ago
  I am slightly biased being part Italian, but we should celebrate diversity. Italy was unified only in 1860 – the area was various republics/city-states/etc prior to that. I love the regional variations of dishes. I love the Italian people's passion for food.

curiousgal 10y ago

Coincidentally, the volume of a cylinder of a radius z and a height a is Pi.z.z.a

bitwize 10y ago
...and dr³ factors into r²dr, or rdrr... get it? Hardy har har!