ontology

IPA: ɑntˈɑɫʌdʒi

(uncountable, philosophy) The branch of metaphysics that addresses the nature or essential characteristics of being and of things that exist; the study of being qua being.
(uncountable, philosophy) In a subject view, or a world view, the set of conceptual or material things or classes of things that are recognised as existing, or are assumed to exist in context, and their interrelations; in a body of theory, the ontology comprises the domain of discourse, the things that are defined as existing, together with whatever emerges from their mutual implications.
(countable, philosophy) The theory of a particular philosopher or school of thought concerning the fundamental types of entity in the universe.
(logic) A logical system involving theory of classes, developed by Stanislaw Lesniewski (1886-1939).
(countable, computer science, information science) A structure of concepts or entities within a domain, organized by relationships; a system model.

Examples of "ontology" in Sentences

The metaphor I employ to illustrate this ontology is "Author/Story".
So, what does all of this have to do with my starting diatribe about the term ontology?
Or, an 150-term ontology to annotate the scientific content of your literature archive?
I think that differences in ontology, methodology and/or axiology cause a great deal of confusion in these discussions.
This paper discusses the development of a new information representation system embodied in ontology and the Semantic Web.
And in this paradigm, he argues that the ontology is one of nominalism, programs do not exist in the abstract but only in the concrete.
Often, the term ontology is used to cover both ABox and TBox statements (which, I argue, only makes the understanding of the 'ontology' concept more difficult).
Inside Factual's Santa Monica office, a couple dozen engineers train computers using principles from an academic field called ontology, which is the science of categorizing words and phrases.
Without tracing the history of the notion of rights, or exploring their uncertain ontology, let me simply note here that the current concept arises from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The term "metaphysics" (q.v.) was given a wider extension by Wolff, who divided "real philosophy" into general metaphysics, which he called ontology, and special, under which he included cosmology, psychology, and theodicy.