Meaning & use
ontology
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Meanings
noununcountabletechnical
The branch of philosophy that asks what exists and what the basic kinds of things in the world are.
Grammar: Uncountable when naming the field; countable for a particular theory.
Patterns
- the ontology of something
The seminar covers the ontology of time and space.
Questions about whether numbers exist belong to ontology.
She wrote her thesis on the ontology of fictional characters.
nouncountablecomputing
A set of terms and the relationships between them that describes a subject area, used to organize information in a computer system.
Grammar: A countable noun in computing: build an ontology.
Patterns
- an ontology for something
The hospital built an ontology of diseases and symptoms.
An ontology helps a search engine understand related terms.
Researchers shared a common ontology for the project.
Word forms
| plural | ontologies |
|---|
Common combinations
- the ontology of
- The book examines the ontology of social groups.
- formal ontology
- A formal ontology lists every concept and rule.
- build an ontology
- The team will build an ontology for the library.
- social ontology
- Social ontology studies what money and marriage are.
- gene ontology
- Gene ontology groups genes by their roles.
Synonyms and how they differ
- metaphysics
- Metaphysics is the wider field that includes ontology and also asks about causes, mind, and time.
- taxonomy
- A taxonomy is a classification hierarchy, while an ontology also records other relationships beyond parent and child.
- schema
- A schema describes the structure of data, while an ontology describes the meaning of concepts.
- classification
- Classification just sorts things into groups, with no claim about what exists.
Word family
- ontological adjective
- relating to the nature of being or to an ontology
- ontologically adverb
- in terms of what exists
- ontologist noun
- a person who studies or builds ontologies
Commonly confused: ontology or epistemology? ontology or oncology?
ontology vs epistemology
Epistemology is the study of knowledge, while ontology is the study of what exists.
ontology vs oncology
Oncology is the medical study of cancer, unrelated to philosophy.
Practice
A philosopher who asks whether numbers and ideas really exist is working in ___.
Choose one answer.
Ontology deals with what exists. Epistemology is the tempting wrong answer because it studies how we know things, not what exists.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “ontology”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.