Where do ‘ontologies’ come from?

Seeking for the missing link

Aurélien Bénel, Web & Philosophy, April 17, 2012

A program that wants to compare or combine information across (...) two databases has to know that (...) two terms are being used to mean the same thing. (...)

Artificial intelligence and Web researchers have co-opted the term [‘ontology’] for their own jargon, and for them an ontology is a document or file that formally defines the relations among terms.

(Berners-Lee et al., 2001)

“

(Shirky, 2005)

A: Marxism-LeninismA1: Classic works of Marxism-LeninismA3: Life and work of C. Marx, F. Engels, V.I. LeninA5: Marxism-Leninism PhilosophyA6: Marxist-Leninist Political EconomicsA7/8: Scientific Communism

Soviet Libraries

D: History (general)DA: Great BritainDB: AustriaDC: FranceDD: GermanyDE: MediterraneanDF: GreeceDG: ItalyDH: Low CountriesDJ: NetherlandsDK: Former Soviet UnionDL: ScandinaviaDP: Iberian PeninsulaDQ: SwitzerlandDR: Balkan PeninsulaDS: AsiaDT: AfricaDU: OceaniaDX: Gypsies

Library of Congress

As true as thesauri are?

Coherence Correspondence Hypothesis Intersubjectivity

What is truth anyway?

1900

1910

1920

1930

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

‘Ontologies’

400 000 papersin computer

science

(Gruber, 1991)

???Vienna Circle

0

95

190

285

380

1930’s

1930-1939Religious studies

Philosophy of science

‘Ontology’ in Google scholar

0

375

750

1125

1500

1930’s 1940’s 1950’s

1940-1959Analytical philosophy (Quine)

‘Ontology’ in Google scholar

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

1930’s 1940’s 1950’s 1960’s

1960-1969Phenomenology

Reflections on art

‘Ontology’ in Google scholar

0

1500

3000

4500

6000

1930’s 1940’s 1950’s 1960’s 1970’s

1970-1979Analytical philosophy

Linguistics

‘Ontology’ in Google scholar

0

3750

7500

11250

15000

1930’s 1950’s 1970’s

1980-1989Computational linguistics

‘Ontology’ in Google scholar

0

17500

35000

52500

70000

1930’s 1950’s 1970’s 1990’s

1990-1999Knowledge representation

‘Ontology’ in Google scholar

0

100000

200000

300000

400000

1930’s 1950’s 1970’s 1990’s

2000-2009The Semantic Web

‘Ontology’ in Google scholar

The missing link

Vienna Circle

Semantic Web

Quine J. McCarthy

P. Hayes

Why it matters

• Debt to Artificial Intelligence

• same people

• same technologies

• same philosophy

Why it matters

• Quine, “On what there is” (1948)

• existence: neither discovered nor invented

• reference: pronouns rather than names

• formal logic as an ‘example of language’

truth as coherence

http://hypertopic.org/