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Re: [ontolog-forum] Two ontologies that are inconsistent but both needed

To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Smith, Barry" <phismith@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:59:57 -0600
Message-id: <20070613220528.967E8109408@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

>
>--
>^1 He was not the first to use it;  wikipedia says, "Although not the
>first to mention the word "ontology" in computer science (that
>distinction belongs to John McCarthy), Hayes was one of the first to
>actually do it.")
>    (01)


It seems that the first use of the term 
‘ontology’ in the computer and information 
science literature occurs already in 1967, in
a work on the foundations of data modeling by S. 
H. Mealy, in a passage which concludes with a
footnote referring to Quine’s essay “On What 
There Is”. Here Mealy distinguishes three distinct
realms in the field of data processing:    (02)

the real world itself, ideas about it existing in 
the minds of men, and symbols on paper or
some other storage medium. The latter realms are, 
in some sense, held to be models of
the former. Thus, we might say that data are 
fragments of a theory of the real world, and
data processing juggles representations of these 
fragments of theory. No one ever saw or
pointed at the integer we call “five” – it is 
theoretical – but we have all seen various
representations of it, ... and we recognize them 
all as denoting the same thing, with perhaps different flavours. …
The issue is ontology, or the question of what exists. (Mealy 1967. p. 525)    (03)

 From http://ontology.buffalo.edu/ontology_long.pdf
The reference is to:
Mealy, G. H. 1967 “Another Look at Data,” 
Proceedings of the Fall Joint Computer Conference,
November 14–16, Anaheim, California (AFIPS Conference Proceedings, Volume 31),
Washington, DC: Thompson Books, London: Academic Press, 525–534.    (04)




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