Innovation and Ontologies

142 Concept Formation
1.2.3 An Explicit Partial Account of a Shared Conceptualization
For the course of this work, the following definition of ontology is used integrating the suggestions of
Gruber as well as of Guarino and Giaretta:
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An ontology gives an explicit partial account of a shared conceptualization.
Explicit claims that at least crucial terms are completely defined for mutual understanding (Fensel,
2001; Mizoguchi, 2003; Uschold, 1996; Zelewski, Schuette & Siedentopf, 2001).
Partial account indicates that we represent our domain of interest with a certain perspective
(Guarino & Giaretta, 1995; Guarino, 1998).
The meaning of conceptualization in this definition follows Gruber (1993):
“[…] an abstract, simplified view of the world that we wish to represent for some purpose.”
Shared implies that the meanings of the used terms are those accepted by the community interested
in the modeled domain (Guarino & Giaretta, 1995; Guarino, 1998).
The following figure illustrates the relationship between reality, conceptualization and ontology:
Reality
Conceptualization
figure 45 From reality to ontology
Ontology
An ontology is used as a framework which helps to enable communication between people,
between people and systems, and between systems: a lingua-franca. Ontologies disambiguate and
provide a consensual conceptual vocabulary, on which one can build descriptions and
communication acts. Reuse and sharing of ontologies across applications and groups of people is
typical.
An ontology can be classified anywhere on the continuum between a highly specific application
ontology to a most general representation ontology, depending on the usage scenario the
ontology is intended for. It can be realized with any degree of formality between natural language
and predicate calculus; if an informal or semi-formal ontology is developed, it has to be done in a
way which allows for future formalization. Expressiveness of the ontology might be
lightweighted or heavyweighted, depending on the application (cf. 5.4.4).