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Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This

on·tol·o·gy

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–noun

1.	the branch of metaphysics that studies the nature of existence or being as such.

2.	(loosely) metaphysics.

[Origin: 1715–25; < NL ontologia. See onto-, -logy

]

—Related forms

on·to·log·i·cal

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l] Pronunciation Key, on·to·log·ic, on·tol·o·gis·tic

Audio Help [on-tol-uh-jis-tik] Pronunciation Key, adjective

on·tol·o·gist, noun

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Ontology

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American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

on·tol·o·gy Audio Help (ŏn-tŏl'ə-jē) Pronunciation Key
n. The branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being.

on·tol'o·gist n.

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Online Etymology Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
ontology

"metaphysical science or study of being," 1721, from Mod.L. ontologia (coined in Fr. by Jean le Clerc, 1692), from Gk. on (gen. ontos) "being" (prp. of einai "to be") + -logia "writing about, study of."

WordNet - Cite This Source - Share This

ontology
noun
1.	(computer science) a rigorous and exhaustive organization of some knowledge domain that is usually hierarchical and contains all the relevant entities and their relations
2.	the metaphysical study of the nature of being and existence

Free On-line Dictionary of Computing - Cite This Source - Share This

ontology
1. A systematic account of Existence.
2. (From philosophy) An explicit formal specification of how to represent the objects, concepts and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and the relationships that hold among them.
For AI systems, what "exists" is that which can be represented. When the knowledge about a domain is represented in a declarative language, the set of objects that can be represented is called the universe of discourse. We can describe the ontology of a program by defining a set of representational terms. Definitions associate the names of entities in the universe of discourse (e.g. classes, relations, functions or other objects) with human-readable text describing what the names mean, and formal axioms that constrain the interpretation and well-formed use of these terms. Formally, an ontology is the statement of a logical theory.
A set of agents that share the same ontology will be able to communicate about a domain of discourse without necessarily operating on a globally shared theory. We say that an agent commits to an ontology if its observable actions are consistent with the definitions in the ontology. The idea of ontological commitment is based on the Knowledge-Level perspective.
3. The hierarchical structuring of knowledge about things by subcategorising them according to their essential (or at least relevant and/or cognitive) qualities. See subject index. This is an extension of the previous senses of "ontology" (above) which has become common in discussions about the difficulty of maintaining subject indices.
(1997-04-09)

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

Ontology

On`to*gen"e*sis\, Ontogeny \On*tog"e*ny\, n. [See Ontology, and Genesis.] (Biol.) The history of the individual development of an organism; the history of the evolution of the germ; the development of an individual organism, -- in distinction from phylogeny, or evolution of the tribe. Called also henogenesis, henogeny.

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