Knowledge Representation with Ontologies: The Present and Future

O'Hara, Dr. Kieron and Brewster, Mr. Christopher (2004) Knowledge Representation with Ontologies: The Present and Future. IEEE Intelligent Systems 19(1):pp. 72-73.

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Ontologies—specifications of what exists, or what we can say about the world—have been around at least since Aristotle. At various times, philosophers have wondered whether the present King of France is bald or whether existence is a predicate. Just as scientists have grappled with the reality of negative numbers, subatomic particles, or the vital force, so have theologians and mystics grappled with the reality of God and inner spiritual experiences. The nature of knowledge is an abiding question and has resulted in people’s continuous attempts to find ways to express, word, or convey their own “knowledge.” Physics and mathematics depend on specific symbolic languages, and many approaches to AI regard finding the problem’s optimal representation as most of the solution. Recently, we have seen an explosion of interest in ontologies as artifacts to represent human knowledge and as critical components in knowledge management, the Semantic Web, business-to-business applications, and several other application areas. Various research communities commonly assume that ontologies are the appropriate modeling structure for representing knowledge. However, little discussion has occurred regarding the actual range of knowledge an ontology can successfully represent.

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