Ontology in Computer Science

Abstract

The word ontology comes from the Greek ontos (being) + logos (word). The Merriam Webster online dictionary defines the term ontology as: 1. A branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being. 2. A particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds of existents. The term ontology was introduced in philosophy, in the nineteenth century, by the German philosopher Rudolf Gockel, in his Lexicon Philosophicum, to distinguish the study of “being” from the study of various kinds of beings in the natural sciences. As a philosophical discipline, ontology building is concerned with providing category systems that account for a certain vision of the world.