Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2009
Some problems in the behavioural and physical sciences arise in the context of an incomplete knowledge of the fine detail of underlying practical situations. This paper presents a general mathematical framework for the discussion of such problems. This framework provides an algebraic language for the discussion of ecological analysis in the social sciences, aggregation in economics and macroscopic descriptions in statistical physics. Here, however, only the mathematical framework is presented; detailed applications will be presented elsewhere.