Introduction: What is Ontology for?
Katherine Munn · Applied Ontology · 2008
Ontology is the philosophical discipline which aims to understand how things in the world are divided into categories and how these categories are related together.This is exactly what information scientists aim for in creating structured, automated representations, called 'ontologies,' for managing information in fields such as science, government, industry, and healthcare.Currently, these systems are designed in a variety of different ways, so they cannot share data with one another.They are often idiosyncratically structured, accessible only to those who created them, and unable to serve as inputs for automated reasoning.This volume shows, in a nontechnical way and using examples from medicine and biology, how the rigorous application of theories and insights from philosophical ontology can improve the ontologies upon which information management depends. Introduction: What is Ontology for?Katherine Munn If you are reading this, then chances are you are a philosopher, an information scientist, or a natural scientist who uses automated information systems to store or manage data.What these disciplines have in common is their goal of increasing our knowledge about the world, and improving the quality of the information we already have.Knowledge, when handled properly, is to a great extent cumulative.Once we have it, we can use it to secure a wider and deeper array of further knowledge, and also to correct the errors we make as we go along.In this way, knowledge contributes to its own expansion and refinement.But this is only possible if what we know is recorded in such a way that it can quickly and easily be retrieved, and understood, by those who need it.This book is a collaborative effort by philosophers and information scientists to show how our methods of doing these things can be improved.This introduction aims, in a non-technical fashion, to present the issues arising at the junction of philosophical ontology and information science, in the hope of providing a framework for understanding the essays included in the volume.Imagine a brilliant scientist who solves a major theoretical problem.In one scenario he scribbles his theory on a beer mat, sharing it only with his drinking companions.In this scenario, very few scientists will have the ability to incorporate this discovery into their research.Even were they to find out that the solution exists, they may not have the resources, time, or patience to track it down.In another scenario our scientist publishes his solution in a widely read journal, but has written it in such a sloppy and meandering way that virtually no one can decipher it without expending prohibitive amounts of effort.In this scenario, more scientists will have access to his discovery, and may even dimly recognize it as the truth, but may only understand it imperfectly.No matter how brilliant our scientist is, or how intricately he himself understands his discovery, if he fails to convey it to the scientific community in such a way that they have ready access to it and can understand it, unfortunately that community will not benefit from what he has discovered.The moral of this story is that the means by which knowledge is conveyed are every bit as important as that knowledge itself.The authors' goal in producing this book has been to show how philosophy and information science can learn from one another, so as to