ontology

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the branch of metaphysics concerned with being, existence, and the fundamental kinds of things that exist

   The seminar compared Aristotle's ontology with modern theories of objects and properties.

2. 2
   noun

   a formal representation of the entities, categories, properties, and relationships in a field of knowledge

   The research team built an ontology linking diseases, symptoms, and treatments.

3. 3
   noun

   the set of things a theory or worldview assumes to exist

   The theory's ontology includes events and processes as well as physical objects.

From New Latin ontologia, coined from Greek on, ontos ('being,' the participle of einai, 'to be') + -logia ('study, account'). The computing sense arose when knowledge engineering adopted the philosophical term for explicit models of what exists in a domain.

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