- From: Deborah McGuinness <dlm@ksl.stanford.edu>
- Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 05:48:41 -0800
- To: Ludger van Elst <elst@dfki.uni-kl.de>
- CC: www-webont-wg@w3.org
I also typically refer to Gruber's definition when I introduce ontologies - I think citing his work is important. When i introduce ontologies to people unfamiliar with our field, I also think it is useful to mention that ontology has been around in the philosophical literature for a long time and our definition departs from theirs. I also typically point to collections of work on ontologies, e.g., fois books. I wrote a paper on Ontologies Come of Age[1], which could be one of the things pointed to if you like and of course it points to much previous work. [1] http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/papers/ontologies-come-of-age-abstract.html d Ludger van Elst wrote: > Hi Webont-Members, > > > "what is an ontology?" stuff in requirements abstract/intro > > From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org> > ... > > let's > > see if there's some text to grab... yes: > > > > Put simply, an ontology is just a set of > > standard vocabularly terms along with some > > formal definitions of the terms. > > > > Lightly edited: > > > > An ontology is vocabularly of terms along > > with some formal definitions of the terms. > > I am a little bit surprised that - though nearly all papers about > ontologies refer to Tom Gruber´s "shared conceptualization" definition - > all proposals in this group only capture the "conceptualization" aspect > but don´t mention the "sharing" aspect. > In the requirements document there is a paragraph titled "3.1 Shared > Ontologies" which would - accepting Tom's definition - expand to "3.1 > Shared Shared Conceptualizations". > In my opinion, a good definition of the term ontology should cover both > aspects, sharing and conceptualizing. Otherwise, we should consequently > only talk about conceptualizations (e.g., "A conceptualization is > vocabularly of terms along with some formal definitions of the terms."), > not ontologies. > > What do you think about this topic? > > Best regards, > Ludger > > ______________________________________________________________________ > Ludger van Elst > Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz GmbH > Erwin-Schrödinger-Straße Geb. 57/377, D-67608 Kaiserslautern, Germany > Tel. : 0631 205-3474 > E-mail: elst@dfki.uni-kl.de > WWW : http://www.dfki.uni-kl.de/~elst/ > ______________________________________________________________________ -- Deborah L. McGuinness Knowledge Systems Laboratory Gates Computer Science Building, 2A Room 241 Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-9020 email: dlm@ksl.stanford.edu URL: http://ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm (voice) 650 723 9770 (stanford fax) 650 725 5850 (computer fax) 801 705 0941
Received on Thursday, 14 February 2002 08:43:02 UTC