Showing papers on "Upper ontology published in 1970"

Ontology in Astronomy

Abstract: In the domain of astronomy the object oriented paradigm of informatics needs to construct an ontology to be able to reason about concepts and to construct queries in a computerized knowledge system. The article presents approaches to ontology in philosophy, the natural sciences and informatics and shows their limits and reciprocity. I. Objects of Physical World Ontology is a fundatnental part of philosophy. Philosophers have, since the beginning of rational thought, tried to find the basic objects that constitute our world. From the process of constructing philosophical ontologies emerged new sciences, which had defined their objects, methods and languages. To these new sciences belongs modem physics which started with Galileo and Newton. For Galileo the world of physics was written by means of mathematics and Newton made use of this in an eminent way, introducing calculus into his mechanics. From then on, a new direction in science and a new type of scientific discovery began. The role of mathematics itself was undergoing a change in the new methodology of the empirical sciences. It was (and for some still is) used simply as a linguistic tool of „numbers" (arithmetic) or „lines" (geometry) that makes results of experiments more precise and objective and introduces some kind of order to the scientific „facts" expressed by means of „concepts". Some philosophers still regard as valid only objects so qualified. For them a phenomenological „notion" is fundamental and sufficient. But since the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries and the formalization of FORUM PHILOSOPHICUM 12 (2007), pp. 267-276