Ontology

This article is about ontology in philosophy. For the term in computer science, see ontology (computer science).

Ontology is one of major branches of philosophy, which studies questions of being or existence. It is a central part of Metaphysics. The questions include wide range of issues concerning being or existence such as: the meaning of being or what it means "to be" for each of such beings as physical entities, souls, God, values, numbers, time, space, imaginary objects, and others; what is real existence; why something exits rather than nothing, and so on.

Thee conceptual division of this branch of philosophy was established by Aristotle. He distinguished "a science of that studies being in so far as it is being" (Metaphysics, IV.1; 1003a21) and called it the "First Philosophy." Thomas Aquinas (1224/5 - 1274) further developed it within Christian context and the issues were continually discussed as the central issue in philosophy by Scholastics. The term "ontology" is, however, a modern coinage by Jacob Lorhard (Lorhardus) (1591 - 1609) and Rudolph Göckel (Goclenius) (1547 - 1628), created by a compound of "on" (Greek ὤν, genitive ὄντος: of being (part. of εἶναι: to be)) and "-logy" or "logos" (-λογία: science, study, theory).

Although Christian von Wolff (1679-1754) further developed it, ontology was superseded by epistemology by major modern philosophers from Descartes to Kant. In the twentieth century, Nicolai Hartmann, Martin Heidegger, and Neo-Thomists shed new light on ontology and revived its popularity. In the tradition of Analytic philosophy, questions of being is approached through linguistic analysis.

Questions of ontology

One common approach is to divide the extant entities into groups called "categories." However, these lists of categories are also quite different from one another. It is in this latter sense that ontology is applied to such fields as theology, information science and artificial intelligence.

Further examples of ontological questions include:

• What is existence? Is existence a property? What does it mean to say something exists or does not exist? Is existence properly a predicate? Are sentences expressing the existence or non-existence of something properly called propositions?
• What is a physical object? Can one give an account of what it means to say that a physical object exists?
• What could it mean to say that non-physical objects (such as times, numbers, souls, deities, values, imaginative objects) exist?
• What constitutes the identity of an object? When does an object go out of existence, as opposed to changing?
• What features are essential, as opposed to merely accidental, attributes of a given object? What are an object's properties or relations and how are they related to the object itself?
• Why are we here? Why does anything exist, rather than nothingness? (Though, according to some, these questions may be more in the realm of cosmology.)

Early history of ontology

The concept of ontology is generally thought to have originated in early Greece. Before Socrates, questions of being, stasis and change occupied Parmenides and Heraclitus. Parmenides is associated with the view that being must be affirmed and non-being avoided and denied. This is also expressed by Parmenides in the dictum "ἔστι γὰρ εἶναι" or "It is, namely, being." Parmenides denied that there is any real change in the universe, and Heraclitus is diammetrically opposed to Parmenides in his affirmation of change as the ultimate nature of things.

After Socrates, ontology was very important for Plato and Aristotle. While the etymology is Greek, the oldest extant record of the word itself is the Latin form ontologia, which appeared in 1661, in the work Ogdoas Scholastica by Jacob Lorhard (Lorhardus) and in 1631 in the Lexicon philosophicum by Rudolph Göckel (Goclenius). The first occurrence in English of "ontology" as recorded by the OED appears in Bailey’s dictionary of 1721, which defines ontology as ‘an Account of being in the Abstract’. However its appearance in a dictionary indicates it was in use already at that time. It is likely the word was first used in its Latin form by philosophers based on the Latin roots, which themselves are based on the Greek.

Students of Aristotle first used the word 'metaphysica' (literally "after the physics" because these works were placed after his works on physics) to refer to the work their teacher described as "the science of being qua being." The word 'qua' means 'in the capacity of'. According to this theory, then, ontology is the science of being inasmuch as it is being, or the study of beings insofar as they exist. Take anything you can find in the world, and look at it, not as a puppy or a slice of pizza or a folding chair or a president, but just as something that is. More precisely, ontology concerns determining what categories of being are fundamental and asks whether, and in what sense, the items in those categories can be said to "be."

Ontological questions have also been raised and debated by thinkers in the ancient civilizations of India and China, in some cases perhaps predating the Greek thinkers who have become associated with the concept.

Prominent ontologists

Anselm of Canterbury Thomas Aquinas Aristotle David Malet Armstrong Alain Badiou Gustav Bergmann Patricia Churchland Paul Churchland Gilles Deleuze

René Descartes Jean Gebser Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Martin Heidegger Heraclitus Edmund Husserl Roman Ingarden Saul Kripke

Gottfried Leibniz Friedrich Nietzsche William of Ockham Parmenides Plato Plotinus Hilary Putnam W. V. Quine

Bertrand Russell Gilbert Ryle Jean-Paul Sartre John Duns Scotus Barry Smith Baruch Spinoza P. F. Strawson Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Ludwig Wittgenstein

See also

Applied Ontology Category of being Cosmology Counterpart theory Epistemology Foundation ontology Mereological essentialism Mereology Metaphysics Modal logic Multimedia Web Ontology Language (MOWL) Nihilism

Personal Taxonomy Ontological argument Ontological security Ontological perfection Philosophy of science Philosophy of space and time Philosophy of mathematics Schema Ship of Theseus Solipsism Taxonomy Theology

External links

• Dmoz.org: Directory of links to Ontology
• Ontology. A resource guide for philosophers
• Ontologists of 19th and 20th centuries
• Living ontologists
• Buffalo Ontology Site

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