Ontology

This page describes a concept which is part of our glossary

In OrganicDesign, the Ontology refers to all the nodes in the peer-to-peer network, even ones representing abstract concepts. There are then subsets of this Ontology formed by various kinds of nodes, for example, each member of a trust group is a person or legal entity and has a corresponding node in the Ontology, or the Platform network which is all the nodes representing trust groups that implement the platform specification. Every node in the Ontology has the potential to be a self governing organisation working in alignment with the Whole equivalent to a cell in an organism.

Ontologies are closely related to the Semanic Web (also known as "Web 3.0") which is a general term meaning that all the information is connected into a web of concepts and relationships connecting them. The relationships are of a particular kind which is also a concept in the network. In Information Technology, an Ontology refers to a specific named and defined collection of such concepts and relations that cover a specific domain of operation and often comes with high-level methods and tools specialised for working with information structured in terms of their associated ontology.

Portals

Every node in the Ontology has the potential to be a self governing organisation because the Platform specification includes the requirement that all nodes have an informational portal forming a foundation of knowledge and tools for discussion, collaboration and eventually governance to take place around it.

Common aspects

• Globally unique references (URI)
• Typed relationships between nodes (triple-space)
• Relative addressing
• Templates (classes and instances)

Types of node

Every concept fulfils a certain specific role in our civilisation, in the global organisation, equivalent to cells in an organism. However, one important point which is often overlooked in the analogy of organisation and organism is that the individuals making up our society are not just people (and animals) but also organisations. Just like other individuals, organisations can be communicated with, have addresses for service and can trade with other individuals in the society.

Institutes are organisations representing specific domains of knowledge or groups of concepts within a particular domain. Standards emerge which are common ontologies used to unify institutes and organisations globally. Standards institutes are organisations dedicated to this pursuit.

So in the sense of Spontaneous Evolution, the cells composing our global civilisation cover many types, but stop at individuals, organisations and institutes? The co-called Web 3.0 concept is pushing this standardisation movement out further into all concepts by maintaining ontologies that specialise in the most general concepts that are common to all disciplines. These special ontologies are called "foundation ontologies", a couple of the most popular examples are the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology and Basic Formal Ontology.

OrganicDesign Ontology

In OrganicDesign the Ontology refers to the entire network of all concepts, which can each be considered as an organisation or project which is evolving under the collaboration and governance of its members.

Foundation Ontology: A system of operating as an evolving organisation is common to all nodes in the Ontology, the conceptual structure of this kind of organisation that captures these principles of collaboration and self-governance is considered to be the Foundation Ontology for the Organic Design system. The Foundation Ontology is a common form of organisation that spans both real-world organisation, and informational systems alike, it defines what it is to be a node in the unified Ontology. Since the Foundation Ontology defines the attributes that are common to all organisations in the network, it's important that the bottom lines designed in its system remain aligned with the core values and common vision. [more]

More general meaning

A domain ontology (or domain-specific ontology) models a specific domain, or part of the world. It represents the particular meanings of terms as they apply to that domain. For example the word card has many different meanings. An ontology about the domain of poker would model the "playing card" meaning of the word, while an ontology about the domain of computer hardware would model the "punched card" and "video card" meanings.

An upper ontology (or foundation ontology) is a model of the common objects that are generally applicable across a wide range of domain ontologies. It contains a core glossary in whose terms objects in a set of domains can be described. There are several standardized upper ontologies available for use, including Dublin Core, GFO, OpenCyc/ResearchCyc, SUMO, and DOLCE. WordNet, while considered an upper ontology by some, is not strictly an ontology. However, it has been employed as a linguistic tool for learning domain ontologies.

The Gellish ontology is an example of a combination of an upper and a domain ontology.

Since domain ontologies represent concepts in very specific and often eclectic ways, they are often incompatible. As systems that rely on domain ontologies expand, they often need to merge domain ontologies into a more general representation. This presents a challenge to the ontology designer. Different ontologies in the same domain can also arise due to different perceptions of the domain based on cultural background, education, ideology, or because a different representation language was chosen.

At present, merging ontologies that are not developed from a common foundation ontology is a largely manual process and therefore time-consuming and expensive. Domain ontologies that use the same foundation ontology to provide a set of basic elements with which to specify the meanings of the domain ontology elements can be merged automatically. There are studies on generalized techniques for merging ontologies, but this area of research is still largely theoretical.

Related software and projects

• GNOME First Class Objects & Ubuntu Tracker
• CS Definition of Ontology at Eduwiki
• Ontology Development 101: A Guide to Creating Your First Ontology
• Organic ontology evolution as a basis for collaborative tagging in a polyscopic socio-semantic bookmarking system
• Semantic Web Services Framework (SWSF)
• Chimaera - Chimaera is a software system that supports users in creating and maintaining distributed ontologies on the web. Two major functions it supports are merging multiple ontologies together and diagnosing individual or multiple ontologies.
• Stanford links to Ontology editing tools and frameworks

See also

• Portal
• Web 3.0
• Wikipedia:Ontology
• Organic Ontology - mindmaps and trees of our information a few years ago (legacy)
• Introduction to Ontology - Barry Smith (he's heavily influenced by Husserl - particularly Husserl's "Logical Investigations")