Ontology
Applied ontology is particularly relevant to information and computer science, which develop conceptual frameworks of limited domains.
It is the branch of philosophy that investigates the nature of existence, the features all entities have in common, and how they are divided into basic categories of being.
[39] Substances[e] play an important role in the history of ontology as the particular entities that underlie and support properties and relations.
[52] The problem of material constitution asks whether or in what sense a whole should be considered a new object in addition to the collection of parts composing it.
[70] It considers ontological problems in regard to specific entities such as matter, mind, numbers, God, and cultural artifacts.
This means that they are not pure fictions but, at the same time, lack the objective or mind-independent reality of natural phenomena like elementary particles, lions, and stars.
[74] A related application in genetics is Gene Ontology, which is a comprehensive framework for the standardized representation of gene-related information across species and databases.
[82] It is closely related to fundamental ontology, an approach developed by philosopher Martin Heidegger that seeks to uncover the meaning of being.
Conceptualism, by contrast, is a form of anti-realism, stating that universals only exist in the mind as concepts that people use to understand and categorize the world.
Modal anti-realists reject this view and argue that possible worlds do not have concrete reality but exist in a different sense, for example, as abstract or fictional objects.
[k] It is of particular relevance in regard to things that cannot be directly observed by humans but are assumed to exist by scientific theories, like electrons, forces, and laws of nature.
Endurantism is the view that material objects are three-dimensional entities that travel through time while being fully present in each moment.
[133] Eidetic variation is a related method in phenomenological ontology that aims to identify the essential features of different types of objects.
This method is based on the idea that scientific theories provide the most reliable description of reality and that their power can be harnessed by investigating the ontological assumptions underlying them.
[145] A theory can be simple in different respects, for example, by using very few basic types or by describing the world with a small number of fundamental entities.
[158] For instance, to encode and store information about clients and employees in a database, an organization may use an ontology with categories such as person, company, address, and name.
[166] As an example of this contrast, it has been argued that various indigenous communities ascribe intentionality to non-human entities, like plants, forests, or rivers.
This outlook is known as animism[167] and is also found in Native American ontologies, which emphasize the interconnectedness of all living entities and the importance of balance and harmony with nature.
[172] Samkhya, the first orthodox school of Indian philosophy,[t] formulated an atheist dualist ontology based on the Upanishads, identifying pure consciousness and matter as its two foundational principles.
[179] Starting in the 6th century BCE, Presocratic philosophers in ancient Greece aimed to provide rational explanations of the universe.
[182] Aristotle (384–322 BCE) suggested an elaborate system of categories that introduced the concept of substance as the primary kind of being.
[185] Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274 CE) developed and refined fundamental ontological distinctions, such as the contrast between existence and essence, between substance and accidents, and between matter and form.
[192] Starting in the 13th century CE, the Navya-Nyāya school built on Vaisheshika ontology with a particular focus on the problem of non-existence and negation.
[193] 9th-century China saw the emergence of Neo-Confucianism, which developed the idea that a rational principle, known as li, is the ground of being and order of the cosmos.
[195] Rejecting Descartes's dualism, Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) proposed a monist ontology according to which there is only a single entity that is identical to God and nature.
[207] At the beginning of the 20th century, Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) developed phenomenology and employed its method, the description of experience, to address ontological problems.
[208] This idea inspired his student Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) to clarify the meaning of being by exploring the mode of human existence.
[209] Jean-Paul Sartre responded to Heidegger's philosophy by examining the relation between being and nothingness from the perspective of human existence, freedom, and consciousness.
[210] Based on the phenomenological method, Nicolai Hartmann (1882–1950) developed a complex hierarchical ontology that divides reality into four levels: inanimate, biological, psychological, and spiritual.
[217] Since the end of the 20th century, interest in applied ontology has risen in computer and information science with the development of conceptual frameworks for specific domains.
