User:Mutanabbi/History of ontologies

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Human Pattern Matching and the History of Ontologies new article content ... INTRODUCTION

This page is devoted to an overview of the highest level ontologies in use in different cultures throughout history. It is thus related to but distinct from a number of existing Wikipedia pages or sections of pages, in particular those dealing with the history of metaphysical and religious ontologies, scientific taxonomies, knowledge representation in general, library classification systems, pedagogical systems and curricula and folksonomies , among others. Relevant sources are thus heterogeneous, ranging from metaphysical or religious works, to explicitly scientific attempts at classification, to practical systems for arranging reference works or organizing education, The point is to permit a synoptic overview of how a culture in one time and place organized the world around it, facilitating comparison with the perspective of other cultures. The ontologies described on this page need not have been intended to be entirely comprehensive, an intention that is often difficult to determine; but merely that they are extremely general. When the categorization is explicitly intended to be include everything in human experience it is hoped that contributors will draw attention to that fact. It is meant to include attempts to distinguish the major categories of human experience as well as natural phenomena.

The inventory of high level ontologies is preceded by an inventory of those human characteristics, such as pattern recognition and interpretation and the innate preferences for specific behaviors, that structure our experience and activity. This section is meant to represent our best current understanding of the ways that our biology, culture, language and personal experiences shape the categories we use. It is intended to remind us that the most common general schemes for categorizing both human experience and behavior and the rest of the world, are themselves influenced by human biology and culture. It's own explanatory categories are thus meant to be revised continuously, rather than forming a historical narrative. When they are superseded, if they were sufficiently general and influential they may find a place in following historical inventory of major ontologies, disappearing from this first section. The chronological format of the historical inventory of ontologies explicitly ignores disciplinary boundaries implicit in categories like "educational curricula," "scientific taxonomies", "metaphysical ontologies" etc, to focus on the formal rather than the semantic characteristics of the ontologies- features such as the number of categories, their level of abstraction or comprehensiveness and their interrelations.

While the specific ontologies described in the historical section must surely reflect the specific needs and opportunities of the historical moments in which they arose, a subject for detailed historical and philological scholarship, this page is intended as a repository for evidence of how they may also reflect human universals in how we structure our world. It's focus is not on either the genetics or the experiences that create humans' pattern recognition, interpretation, and expression systems, but rather on what we are learning about the patterning systems themselves- the categories through which we perceive, interpret and model the world around us.

Human Pattern Recognition, Interpretation and Expression

  The human organism can only become aware of what is outside it through a small number of highly specific pattern recognition systems that have been optimized through evolution for extremely practical tasks such as the detection of predators, prey and above all rivals. For these purposes they usually work very well, but for a more complete inventory of reality we must use specialized instruments and often perform complex calculations on what the instruments tell us to build up more truthful models of the world around us. 

  Even with these special instruments and models, each of us still lives in the world created by the limitations of our species, what von Uexkull has termed our "Umwelt."  These limitations include perceptual limitations through which we respond to only certain sorts of stimuli over a specific range of magnitude, as well as interpretive limitations resulting from ignorance and various cognitive and emotional biases, privileged associations and illusions. Similarly, our species has a large but still limited behavioral repertoire for responding to the interpretations that it has made of what it has perceived. Our personalities and our cultures develop within these constraints, and we are still discovering how they are shaped by them. This section reviews some of the better documented patterns in human perception, interpretation and behavior, while the following sections review some of the classical classification systems or ontologies that illustrate both the variety and the commonalities of the imagination with which people have organized their worlds throughout history.  

Distinct Brain Regions for Pattern Recognition

Genetic Variation in Brain Localization

Categories of Perception and Perceptual Systems

taste:

 bitter, 
 salty, 
 sour,  
 sweet, 
 umami. 

audition:

   frequency- pitch
   volume- amplitude
   timbre-quality-tone (overtones present)
   concord- harmony
   melody
   rhythm

olfaction:

   ten dimensions 
   effects on motivation and behavior: 

vision:

 shape perception:  

 color vision: V4

 motion detections: V5

 Recognition of Faces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusiform_face_area

 Viewpoint Specific Geometry of local environment: Parahippocampal Place Area
 

 Viewpoint Invariant Geometry of local environment: Retrosplenial Cortex
 

 Parts of the Human Body  Extrastriate Body Area
 

 Cerebral Lateralization: Greater linguistic facility in one, usually the left, with greater freedom of pattern recognition in the other
 
  While the prefrontal lobes are involved with executive function (planning, reasoning,overriding impulses) there appears

to be some degree of lateralization with the left frontal cortex specializing in verbal working memory and the right frontal cortex in visuospatial memory.

time and rhythm:

  The discipline of chronobiology has documented a variety of way in which an individual's physiological rhythms, affect cognition, affect, and behavior as well as vulnerability to illness and response to therapeutic interventions. 

Categories of Interpretation:

Heuristics and Biases

Systematic sources of illusion and deception.

  We have only recently become aware of how pervasively our interpretations are affected by cognitive and emotional biases of various kinds. The well-known human tendency to see faces in visual patterns and narrative plots in events turns out to be merely the tip of a very big iceberg. 

A word has even been coined for the tendency to see meaningful patterns in data that does not contain them: apophrenia The specific form of apophrenia that sees images, such as faces, in random data is termed pareidolia

language learning and use:

Phonemic and Lexical Recognition

It appears that the processing of what are interpreted as nouns and verbs takes place in distinct regions of the brain. (See linguistic universals below)

Categories of Expression

Facial Expressions

Facial Action Coding System

Microexpressions

Language

linguistic universals: 

linguistic relativity:

Language expresses alternative systems for orientation in space and time. eg spatial orientation by cardinal points versus

Gender affects association patterns:

language learning and use:

narrative construction:

categorization and metaphors:

Rhetoric

linguistic theory and scholarship- philology

Personality

Big Five Personality Factors

Learning Styles and Aptitudes

declarative learning

procedural learning

--- rapidity of learning

duration of retention

Cognitive Styles

Plato/Aristotle

Whitehead/Russell

Undated Ontologies and Classification Systems

=== Traditional Elements of Nature- By Culture ===

=== Traditional Classifications of Human Relationships-By Culture ===

   kinship, marriage, alliances
   family, friends, others, enemies

Traditional Classifications of Humans and Human Behavior- By Culture

    type and frequency of adjectives applied to persons- in novels, in correspondence

   noble, ignoble
   courageous/cowardly
   sacred-inspired
   good/bad
   selfish/selfless
   empathetic/cold
   loyal/treacherous

Linguistic Universals: Parts of Speech

Nouns and Verbs appear to be a nearly universal distinction.

Grammatical Genders and Classifiers

Yanyuwa

1      female (human 
2      male (human  	
3      feminine 	
4      masculine 	
5      food (non-meat) 	
6      arboreal 	
7      abstract 	
8      body parts 	
9      familiar kinship 	
10     formal kinship for close kin 	
11 	formal kinship-grandparent level 	
12 	formal kinship-avoidance 	
13 	human group 	
14 	personal names 	
15 	ceremony names 	
16 	place names

Swahili

1      singular: persons
2 	plural: persons (a plural counterpart of class 1)
3	singular: plants
4 	plural: plants (a plural counterpart of class 3)
5 	singular: fruits
6 	plural: fruits 
7 	singular: things
8  	plural: things (a plural counterpart of class 7)
9  	singular: animals, things
10  	plural: animals, things (a plural counterpart of class 9 and 11)
11 	singular: no clear semantics
15 	verbal nouns
16  	locative meanings: close to something
17 	indefinite locative or directive meaning
18 	locative meanings: inside something

Japanese counters:

  枚  	Thin, flat objects: sheets of paper etc 
  部 	Packets of papers, magazines
  冊 	Books
  面 	Mirrors, boards, walls
  階 	Number of floors, storeys

  本 	Long, thin objects
  台 	Mechanical devices
  杯 	Cups and glasses, containers
  匹 	Small animals and demons of any size
 
  個, 箇 General measurement word, especially for small or round objects
 
  名 	People (polite) 
  人 	People 
  話   Stories, narratives

Chinese classifiers

Dated Ontologies and Classification Systems

c. 3500 BCE ProtoIndoEuropean Grammatical gender

 masculine
 feminine
 neuter

c. 3500 BCE Proto-Bantu genders

 singular human
 plural humans
 thin or extended things
 instruments
 animals
 qualities
 body parts
 locations

500 BCE India.

 the three Vedas 

18 silpas (of uncertain nature- often including
law
medicine
mathematics
accounting
surveying
agriculture
cattle breeding
administration 
archery
hunting
military strategy
magic
elephant lore
snake charming
art of finding treasures

c. 500 BCE China

Rites (禮)
Music (樂)
Archery (射)
Chariot handling (禦)
Calligraphy (書)
Mathematics (數)

c. 380 BCE Plato: Curriculum in Seventh Book of Republic

1 arithmetic
2 geometry
3 solids in motion
4 astronomy
5 music
6 dialectic

c, 235 Pinakes of Callimachus. Catalog of Library of Alexandria

1 rhetoric, 
2 law, 
3 epic, 
4 tragedy, 
5 comedy, 
6 lyric poetry, 
7 history, 
8 medicine, 
9 mathematics, 
10 natural science
11 miscellanies

c. 420 Martianus Capella:

Mercury 
and
Philologia

Philologia's Handmaidens: The Seven Liberal Arts
1 Grammar
2 Logic/Dialectic
3 Rhetoric
4 Geometry
5 Arithmetic
6 Astronomy
7 Music

c. 520 Quadrivium named by Boethius

 1 Arithmetic
 2 Geometry
 3 Music
 4 Astronomy

c. 840 Trivium named

  1 Grammar
  2 Logic/Dialectic
  3 Rhetoric

c. 850 張彥遠 : 法書要錄 Zhang Yanyuan's Fashu Yaolu

 四藝:

   qin (the guqin, a stringed instrument. 琴
   qi (the strategy game of Go, 棋), 
   shu (Chinese calligraphy 書) and
   hua (Chinese painting 畫).

10th century

   Ibn al Nadim  
    938: Firhist:  An index of all books written in Arabic.
     
1 the Holy Scriptures of Muslims, Jews, and Christians, with emphasis on the Qur'an and hadith;
2 works on grammar and philology;
3 history, biography, genealogy and the like;
4 poetry;
5 dialectical theology (kalam);
6 law (fiqh) and hadith.
7 philosophy and the 'secular sciences';
8 legends, fables, magic, conjuring, etc.;
9 the doctrines (maqalat) of other religions (Manichaeans, Hindus, Buddhists and Chinese);
10 alchemy.

1267 Roger Bacon: Opus Maius:

 Four sources of error (Offendicula):
    following incorrect authorities
    custom
    the ignorance of others
    pretending to know what one does not
 Philosophy and Theology
 The Four biblical languages:
    Hebrew
    Greek
    Latin
    Arabic
 Mathematics
 Optics
 Experimental Science. Alchemy, Astronomy
 Moral Philosophy, Ethics

1620 Francis Bacon's Four Sources of Error from Novum Organum: Four Idols.

Bacon's Idols 
   
   Idols of the Tribe (Idola tribus): Limits, illusions and weaknesses common to all humans. (eg overconfidence in the senses; 
       overgeneralization, bias toward perceiving regular patterns, wishful thinking, too hasty judgement...
   Idols of the Cave (Idola specus): Limitations and weaknesses of the individual person- prejudices from experience etc
   Idols of the Marketplace (Idola fori): Problems arising from human intercourse, chiefly language. Having words for things
       that do not really exist or not having adequate terms for things that really do exist.
   Idols of the Theatre (Idola theatri): Blind adherence to traditional philosophies, whether excessively speculative, 
       inadequately reasoned or superstitious.

1626 Francis Bacon's epitaph: COMPOSITA SOLVANTVR

1885 Dewey Decimal System

000 – General Reference works, 
100 – Philosophy and psychology
200 – Religion
300 – Social sciences
400 – Language
500 – Pure Science
600 – Technology
700 – Arts & recreation
800 – Literature
900 – History & geography

1897 Library of Congress System, LCC

A -- GENERAL WORKS -
B -- PHILOSOPHY. PSYCHOLOGY. RELIGION - 
C -- AUXILIARY SCIENCES OF HISTORY - 
D -- WORLD HISTORY AND HISTORY OF EUROPE, ASIA, AFRICA, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, ETC. - 
E -- HISTORY OF THE AMERICAS - 
F -- HISTORY OF THE AMERICAS - 
G -- GEOGRAPHY. ANTHROPOLOGY. RECREATION - 
H -- SOCIAL SCIENCES - 
J -- POLITICAL SCIENCE - 
K -- LAW - 
L -- EDUCATION - 
M -- MUSIC AND BOOKS ON MUSIC -
N -- FINE ARTS - 
P -- LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE - 
Q -- SCIENCE - 
R -- MEDICINE - 
S -- AGRICULTURE - 
T -- TECHNOLOGY - 
U -- MILITARY SCIENCE - 
V -- NAVAL SCIENCE - 
Z -- BIBLIOGRAPHY. LIBRARY SCIENCE. INFORMATION RESOURCES (GENERAL)

1852 Roget's Synopsis of Categories.

Abstract Relations
Space
Material World
Intellect
Volition
Sentiment and Moral Powers

1950,52,55,71 Swadesh Lists of Basic Concepts

   225, 215, 200, 100 basic concepts available in all cultures

1986/2012 Princeton Wordnet

 noun:
  entity
   physical entity
   abstraction

1997 Stephen Jay Gould's Non-overlapping Magisteria

 Science
 Religion
 Art, etc

2010- DMOZ Open Directory Project

     Shopping
     Society
     News
     Science
     Business
     Health
     Computers
     Home
     Sports
     Arts
     Regional
     Reference
     Recreation
     Games
     World
   

2014 SUMO Suggested Upper Merged Ontology

Entity
  Physical
    Object
      self-connected object
      region
      collection
      agent
    Process
      dual object process
      intentional process
      motion
      internal change
      shape change
  Abstract
    quantity
    attribute
    set or class
    relation
    proposition
    graph
    graph element

2014 DBPEDIA

    Thing
      Activity
      Agent
        Person
      Event
      Place
      Time Period
      TopicalConcept
      Work
      ...

External links

• www.example.com