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I'm working on a proposal for a types package for Level 3
and am wondering about the following.

L2 provided the SpeciesType, and stipulated that you
couldn't put two different species with the same type in the
same compartment. But this was an imposed restriction: the
*meaning* of a species type was defined in such a way that it
mattered to the mathematical interpretation.

However, does it have to be that way? Did anyone ever have
to worry about preventing a modeler from putting two different
species of the same species type into the same compartment?
Has it ever been an issue, in anyone's experience? After
all, the "species" already represents a pool of entities of
the same kind. The meaning of the species is that the
entities in the pool are indistinguishable from each other.
Isn't it natural to avoid trying to put two entities of the
same type in one compartment?

To connect species types with species in L2's way ends up
transferring, in effect, some of the identity of a species
out of the species identifier and into the species type.

It seems to me it's up to us to define the sense in which
"type" is meant. So in the L3 types package, my current
thinking is, let's treat types as an orthogonal dimension to
identity. Then one could have two species of the same type
in the same compartment -- it wouldn't have the same meaning
as in L2, but I'm wondering, would anyone care?

MH

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