Onto-
Originally posted as part of the CMPE58H course by Susan Üsküdarlı in the fall semester of 2022 at https://furkanakkurt5204.gitlab.io/personal/ontology/2022/12/15/onto.
Ontology is the study of the essence of things. Onto- is etymologically related to essence (essere: to be in Italian). Onto and logy together is the discourse of existence. Ontology in the field of computer science is, as expected, very much related to its philosophical usage.
Tower of Babel
The tower of babel narrative tries to explain why humans have languages so diverse. In the narrative, a human race with a single language gets scattered around the world and their language confused. Ontologies are attempts at reducing this diversification and unifying representations so that people unify over the understanding of a thing as much as possible. Although many philosophers are fond of ontology, it’s sad that much of the disagreements between them appear to come from understanding different things from the same phrases. People are very capable of misunderstandings.
In the computer science world, various groups establish their own terminology in their work. When outputs of these groups want to be merged, consequently, much work has to be done.2