[Sigia-l] Question about the use of the term 'ontology'

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* ruth at ruthkaufman.com
| 
| Interesting. I was under the impression that topics are reified
| subjects (from reading the paper called The TAO of Topic Maps -
| http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/tao.html#d0e657),

"Reification" was indeed the terminology that was used for the
topic-subject relationship, but in the new standard (after the TAO was
written) it's been abandoned in favour of "representation".

So a topic is a symbol that represents a subject.

| so how can they be nested within a taxonomy of subject-based
| classifications? 

Like Peter says, subject != subject. :-)

Topic maps *are* subject-based classification systems in the sense
that one of their most common uses is to classify information by what
it's about (its subject). That's what it means to be a subject-based
classification.

| In other words, I don't see a topic as a type of subject, but as
| something that a subject may become. 

If in the sentence above you use "subject" in the library science
sense that's absolutely right. In topic map terminology topics and
subjects are 100% disjoint.

| I'm possibly jumping to a conclusion that wasn't intended -- that by
| nesting topic maps under subject-based classification, that topics
| would be nested under subjects... thoughts?

You are right; that wasn't the intended conclusion. :)
 
| By the same token, I'd think that subject-based classifications
| reify ontologies. 

I'm not sure I know what you mean by "reify" here.

| Maybe what we need is a way to express the way these things become
| each other -- a sort of state change diagram perhaps?

I tried with a taxonomy, but since that didn't work the next step is
perhaps a topic map. :-)

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50                  <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >