Ontology 22261 226091688 2008-07-16T20:02:30Z GregorB 179697 "About" template {{about|ontology in philosophy|the term in [[information science]]|ontology (information science)}} In [[philosophy]], '''ontology''' (from the [[Greek language|Greek]] {{polytonic|ὄν}}, genitive {{polytonic|ὄντος}}: ''of being'' (part. of {{polytonic|εἶναι}}: ''to be'') and [[-logy|-λογία]]: ''science'', ''study'', ''theory'') is the most fundamental branch of [[metaphysics]]. Ontology is the study of [[being]] or [[existence]] and its [[category of being|basic categories]] and relationships. It seeks to determine what [[being]] exists and how these entities interact. From this exercise, the ontologist usually seeks to categorize being and reality. Ontology is usually distinguished from its sister subject, [[epistemology]], the study of knowledge and what can be known. Some philosophers, notably of the [[Plato]]nic school, contend that all nouns refer to entities that have being. Other philosophers contend that nouns do not always name beings but provide a kind of shorthand for reference to a collection of either objects or events. In this latter view, ''[[mind]]'', instead of referring to an entity, refers to a collection of ''mental events'' experienced by a person; ''[[society]]'' refers to a collection of persons with some shared characteristics, and ''[[geometry]]'' refers to a collection of a specific kind of intellectual activity. Any ontology must give an account of which words refer to entities, which do not, why, and what categories result. When one applies this process to nouns such as ''[[electron]]s'', ''[[energy]]'', ''[[contract]]'', ''[[happiness]]'', ''[[time]]'', ''[[truth]]'', ''[[causality]]'', and ''[[god]]'', ontology becomes fundamental to many branches of philosophy. == Some basic questions == Ontology has one basic question: "What actually exists?" Different [[philosophers]] provide different answers to this question. One common approach is to divide the extant entities into groups called "categories". However, these lists of categories are also quite different from one another. It is in this latter sense that ontology is applied to such fields as [[theology]], [[library and information science|library science]] and [[artificial intelligence]]. Further examples of ontological questions include: * What is [[existence]]? * Is existence a property? * Why does something exist rather than nothing? * What constitutes the ''[[Identity (philosophy)|identity]]'' of an object? * What is a [[physical object]]? * What features are the essential, as opposed to merely accidental, attributes of a given object? * Can one give an account of [[the existence of physical objects|what it means to say that a physical object exists]]? * What are an object's [[properties]] or relations and how are they related to the object itself? * When does an object go ''out'' of existence, as opposed to merely ''[[change|changing]]''? == Concepts == Quintessential ontological [[concept]]s include: * [[Universal (metaphysics)|Universals]] * [[Substance theory|Substance]] == Early history of ontology == The concept of ontology is generally thought to have originated in early [[Greece]] and occupied [[Plato]] and [[Aristotle]]. While the etymology is Greek, the oldest extant record of the word itself is the Latin form ''ontologia'', which appeared in 1606, in the work ''Ogdoas Scholastica'' by Jacob Lorhard (''Lorhardus'') and in 1613 in the ''Lexicon philosophicum'' by Rudolf Göckel (''Goclenius''). The first occurrence in English of "ontology" as recorded by the OED appears in Bailey’s dictionary of 1721, which defines ontology as ‘an Account of being in the Abstract’. However its appearance in a dictionary indicates it was in use already at that time. It is likely the word was first used in its Latin form by philosophers based on the Latin roots, which themselves are based on the Greek. Students of Aristotle first used the word 'metaphysica' (literally "after the physical") to refer to the work their teacher described as "the science of being ''qua'' being". The word '' 'qua' '' means 'in the capacity of'. According to this theory, then, ontology is the science of being in as much as it is being, or the study of ''beings'' insofar as they exist. Take anything you can find in the world, and look at it, not as a puppy or a slice of pizza or a folding chair or a president, but just as something that ''is''. More precisely, ontology concerns determining what ''[[category of being|categories of being]]'' are fundamental and asks whether, and in what sense, the items in those categories can be said to "be". Ontological questions have also been raised and debated by thinkers in the ancient civilizations of India and China, in some cases perhaps predating the Greek thinkers who have become associated with the concept. == Subject, relationship, object == "What exists", "What is", "What am I", "What is describing this to me", all exemplify questions about being, and highlight the most basic problems in ontology: finding a subject, a relationship, and an object to talk about. During the [[the Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] the view of [[René Descartes]] that "[[cogito ergo sum]]" ("I think therefore I am") had generally prevailed, although Descartes himself did not believe the question worthy of any deep investigation. However, Descartes was very religious in his [[philosophy]], and indeed argued that "[[cogito ergo sum]]" proved the existence of [[God]]. Later theorists would note the existence of the "[[Cartesian Other]]" — asking "who is reading that sentence about thinking and being?" — and generally concluded that it must be [[God]]. This answer, however, became increasingly unsatisfactory in the 20th century as the [[philosophy of mathematics]] and the [[philosophy of science]] and even [[particle physics]] explored some of the most fundamental barriers to knowledge about being. Sociological theorists, most notably George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman, saw the Cartesian Other as a "Generalized Other," the imaginary audience that individuals use when thinking about the self. The Cartesian Other was also used by Freud, who saw the [[Ego, superego, and id|superego]] as an abstract regulatory force, and Emile Durkheim who viewed this as a psychologically manifested entity which represented God in society at large. == Body and environment == Schools of [[metaphysical subjectivism|subjectivism]], [[metaphysical objectivism|objectivism]] and [[relativism]] existed at various times in the 20th century, and the [[postmodernism|postmodernists]] and [[embodied philosophy|body philosophers]] tried to reframe all these questions in terms of bodies taking some specific [[philosophy of action|action]] in an environment. This relied to a great degree on insights derived from scientific research into animals taking instinctive action in natural and artificial settings — as studied by [[biology]], [[ecology]], and [[cognitive science]]. The processes by which bodies related to environments became of great concern, and the idea of [[being]] itself became difficult to really define. What did people mean when they said "A is B", "A must be B", "A was B"...? Some linguists advocated dropping the verb "to be" from the English language, leaving "[[E-Prime|E Prime]]", supposedly less prone to bad abstractions. Others, mostly philosophers, tried to dig into the word and its usage. [[Martin Heidegger| Heidegger]] attempted to distinguish ''being'' and ''existence''. == Being == [[Existentialism]] regards ''[[being]]'' as a fundamental central concept. It is anything that can be said to 'be' ''in various senses of the word 'be'.'' The [[verb]] [[to be]] has many different meanings and can therefore be rather [[ambiguity|ambiguous]]. Because "to be" has so many different meanings, there are, accordingly, many different [[ways of being]]. In Systems-Theory, 'being' corresponds with the 'system-state' and Systems-Engineering(not system-administration...) is the engineering-grade/wise onthology, which identifies to the architects the existence of systems and defines their boundaries to them. == Social science == Social scientists adopt one of four main ontological approaches: [[realism]] (the idea that facts are out there just waiting to be discovered), [[empiricism]] (the idea that we can observe the world and evaluate those observations in relation to facts), [[positivism]] (which focuses on the observations themselves, attentive more to claims about facts than to facts themselves), and [[post-modernism]] (which holds that facts are fluid and elusive, so that we should focus ''only'' on our observational claims). == Prominent ontologists == * [[Aquinas]] * [[Aristotle]] * [[Alain Badiou]] * [[Gilles Deleuze]] * [[Martin Heidegger]] * [[Heraclitus]] * [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]] * [[Edmund Husserl]] * [[Roman Ingarden]] * [[Immanuel Kant]] * [[Gottfried Leibniz]] * [[Parmenides]] * [[Plato]] * [[Marcel Proust]] * [[W. V. Quine]] * [[Gilbert Ryle]] * [[Jean-Paul Sartre]] * [[Baruch Spinoza]] * [[Alfred North Whitehead]] * [[Charles Taylor (philosopher)|Charles Taylor]] * [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]] ==See also== * [[Cosmology]] * [[Epistemology]] * [[Foundation ontology]] * [[Mereology]] * [[Meta-modeling|Metamodeling]] -- a [[Meta-model|metamodel]] is a simplified form of ontology * [[Metaphysics]] * [[Modal logic]] * [[Nihilism]] * [[Ontology (computer science)]] * [[Philosophy of science]] * [[Philosophy of space and time]] * [[Philosophy of mathematics]] * [[Quantum ontology]] * [[Schema]] * [[Solipsism]] * [[Taxonomy]] * [[Theology]] * [[Ontological security]] * [[Perfection]] ("Ontological and theological perfection") == External links == * [http://www.formalontology.it Ontology. A resource guide for philosophers] * [http://www.formalontology.it/history.htm Notes on the history of Ontology] * [http://www.formalontology.it/being-qua-being.htm Aristotle's definition of a science of Being qua Being: ancient and modern interpretations] * [http://ontology.buffalo.edu Buffalo Ontology Site] * [http://www.eece.memphis.edu/cas/publications.htm Building a Sensor Ontology: A Practical Approach Leveraging ISO and OGC Models] * [http://www.obromley.co.uk/web/concept/ontology.htm Example General Ontology] * [http://ncor.us National Center for Ontological Research] * [http://ncbo.us National Center for Biomedical Ontology] * [http://www.applied-ontology.org Applied Ontology. An interdisciplinary journal on ontological analysis and conceptual modeling] * [http://www.depreter.org/AutomationByNature/doc/030%20Semantics%20and%20Ontology.htm Systems semantics and ontology] * [http://www.loa-cnr.it Laboratory for Applied Ontology] * [[Clay Shirky]]: [http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html Ontology is Overrated] * [http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/ W3C Semantic Web] * [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiVentory WikiVentory on WikiPedia Meta] * [http://www.creatingtechnology.org/papers/field.htm The ontology of quantum fields: entity and quality] {{Philosophy topics}} [[Category:Ontology| ]] [[Category:Knowledge representation]] [[af:Ontologie]] [[ar:أنتولوجيا]] [[ast:Ontoloxía]] [[zh-min-nan:Pún-thé-lūn]] [[bs:Ontologija]] [[bg:Онтология]] [[ca:Ontologia]] [[cs:Ontologie]] [[da:Ontologi (filosofi)]] [[de:Ontologie]] [[et:Ontoloogia]] [[el:Οντολογία]] [[es:Ontología]] [[eo:Ontologio]] [[eu:Ontologia]] [[fa:هستی‌شناسی]] [[fr:Ontologie (philosophie)]] [[ga:Onteolaíocht]] [[gl:Ontoloxía]] [[hr:Ontologija]] [[io:Ontologio]] [[id:Ontologi]] [[ia:Ontologia]] [[is:Verufræði]] [[it:Ontologia]] [[he:תורת ההוויה]] [[la:Ontologia]] [[lt:Ontologija]] [[hu:Ontológia]] [[nl:Ontologie (filosofie)]] [[ja:存在論]] [[no:Ontologi]] [[pl:Ontologia]] [[pt:Ontologia]] [[ro:Ontologie]] [[ru:Онтология]] [[sq:Ontologjia]] [[sk:Ontológia]] [[sl:Ontologija]] [[sr:Онтологија]] [[sh:Ontologija]] [[fi:Ontologia]] [[sv:Ontologi]] [[ta:உள்ளியம் (மெய்யியல்)]] [[vi:Bản thể luận]] [[tr:Ontoloji]] [[uk:Онтологія]] [[zh-yue:本體論]] [[diq:Ontolociye]] [[zh:本体论]]