What is an ontology

The word "ontology" is used with diðerent senses in diðerent com- munities. The most radical diðerence is perhaps between the philosophical sense, which has of course a well-established tradition, and the computational sense, which emerged in the recent years in the knowledge engineering community, starting from an early informal definition of (computational) ontologies as "explicit specifications of conceptualizations". In this paper we shall revisit the previous attempts to clarify and formalize such original definition, providing a detailed account of the notions of conceptualization and explicit specification, while discussing at the same time the importance of shared explicit specifications.

Tipo Pubblicazione: 
Contributo in volume
Author or Creator: 
Nicola Guarino
Daniel Oberle
Steffen Staab
Publisher: 
Springer-Verlag, Berlin, DEU
Source: 
Handbook on Ontologies, edited by Steffen Staab; Rudi Studer, pp. 1–17. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2009
Date: 
2009
Resource Identifier: 
http://www.cnr.it/prodotto/i/140130
urn:isbn:978-3-540-40834-5
Language: 
Eng
ISTC Author: 
Ritratto di Nicola Guarino
Real name: