Replying to LO26094 --
>What the heck is an ontology???
Thank you, Denham, for your ontology of ontology.
Aren't there two possible articles:
an ontology or the ontology? (DANGER! Mindmines zone)
>Ontologies hold promise for:
Sounds great - I need to buy one of those (o.k. I know, I did already. I
work in a windows environment)
Object oriented technologies, XML, sound like
Do-it-yourself-ontology-kits.
>A (shared) expression of belief, an agreement on the terminology (and
>sometimes the meaning) for communication and action. Ontologies serve to
>bound discourse, facilitate communication within & across communities and
>networks, leverage action by gathering agreement around values, objects,
>the way things are and what is 'out there' that is important.
I am wondering why you have put 'shared' in brackets. How could a
not-shared ontology serve what you describe and hold those promises? This
sharing seems quite essential to me.
>Why mess with ontology?
Good question. Since ontology does not seem to fall from heaven anymore,
may be we should think of the evolution of ontology - may I say the
ontogeny of ontology, the how for the what? What may lead to a (the?)
powerful (???) ontology? What ensembles were nothing but a hopeless mess?
One last remark: There may have been despots at any time who knew how to
create and use ontology such that their people work like machines. Isn't
it interesting that much of todays interest in ontology comes from the
vision to make maschines work like man (i.e. together)?
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
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