onto-, ὄν, ("being; that which is",)
-λογία, -logia, i.e. "science, study, theory".
Etymology[edit]
The word ontology is a compound word, composed of onto-, from the Greek ὄν, on (gen. ὄντος, ontos), i.e. "being; that which is", which is the present participle of the verb εἰμί, eimi, i.e. "to be, I am", and -λογία, -logia, i.e. "science, study, theory".[5][6]While the etymology is Greek, the oldest extant record of the word itself is the New Latin form ontologia, which appeared in 1606, in the work Ogdoas Scholastica by Jacob Lorhard (Lorhardus) and in 1613 in the Lexicon philosophicum by Rudolf Göckel (Goclenius); see classical compounds for this type of word formation.[citation needed]
The first occurrence in English of "ontology" as recorded by the OED (Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989) appears in Nathaniel Bailey's dictionary of 1721, which defines ontology as 'an Account of being in the Abstract' — though, of course, such an entry indicates the term was already in use at the time. It is likely the word was first used in its Latin form by philosophers based on the Latin roots, which themselves are based on the Greek.[citation needed]
The current on-line edition of the OED (Draft Revision September 2008) gives as earliest documented occurrence in English a work by Gideon Harvey (1636/7-1702): Archelogia philosophica nova; or, New principles of Philosophy. Containing Philosophy in general, Metaphysicks or Ontology, Dynamilogy or a Discourse of Power, Religio Philosophi or Natural Theology, Physicks or Natural philosophy, London, Thomson, 1663.[citation needed]
Origins[edit]
Parmenides and monism[edit]
Parmenides was among the first to propose an ontological characterization of the fundamental nature of existence. In his prologue or proem he describes two views of existence; initially that nothing comes from nothing, and therefore existence is eternal. Consequently, our opinions about truth must often be false and deceitful. Most of western philosophy, and science — including the fundamental concepts of falsifiability and the conservation of energy — have emerged from this view. This posits that existence is what can be conceived of by thought, created, or possessed. Hence, there can be neither void nor vacuum; and true reality can neither come into being nor vanish from existence. Rather, the entirety of creation is eternal, uniform, and immutable, though not infinite (he characterized its shape as that of a perfect sphere). Parmenides thus posits that change, as perceived in everyday experience, is illusory. Everything that can be apprehended is but one part of a single entity. This idea somewhat anticipates the modern concept of an ultimate grand unification theory that finally describes all of existence in terms of one inter-related sub-atomic reality which applies to everything.[citation needed]Ontological pluralism[edit]
Main article: Ontological pluralism
The opposite of eleatic monism is the pluralistic conception of Being. In the 5th century BC, Anaxagoras and Leucippus replaced [7] the reality of Being (unique and unchanging) with that of Becoming and therefore by a more fundamental and elementary ontic plurality. This thesis originated in the Hellenic world, stated in two different ways by Anaxagoras and by Leucippus. The first theory dealt with "seeds" (which Aristotle referred to as "homeomeries") of the various substances. The second was the atomistic theory,[8] which dealt with reality as based on the vacuum, the atoms and their intrinsic movement in it.[citation needed]The materialist Atomism proposed by Leucippus was indeterminist, but then developed by Democritus in a deterministic way. It was later (4th century BC) that the original atomism was taken again as indeterministic by Epicurus. He confirmed the reality as composed of an infinity of indivisible, unchangeable corpuscles or atoms (atomon, lit. 'uncuttable'), but he gives weight to characterize atoms while for Leucippus they are characterized by a "figure", an "order" and a "position" in the cosmos.[9] They are, besides, creating the whole with the intrinsic movement in the vacuum, producing the diverse flux of being. Their movement is influenced by the Parenklisis (Lucretius names it Clinamen) and that is determined by the chance. These ideas foreshadowed our understanding of traditional physics until the nature of atoms was discovered in the 20th century.[citation needed]
Plato[edit]
Plato developed this distinction between true reality and illusion, in arguing that what is real are eternal and unchanging Forms or Ideas (a precursor to universals), of which things experienced in sensation are at best merely copies, and real only in so far as they copy ('partake of') such Forms. In general, Plato presumes that all nouns (e.g., 'Beauty') refer to real entities, whether sensible bodies or insensible Forms. Hence, in The Sophist Plato argues that Being is a Form in which all existent things participate and which they have in common (though it is unclear whether 'Being' is intended in the sense of existence, copula, or identity); and argues, against Parmenides, that Forms must exist not only of Being, but also of Negation and of non-Being (or Difference).In his Categories, Aristotle identifies ten possible kinds of things that can be the subject or the predicate of a proposition. For Aristotle there are four different ontological dimensions:[citation needed]
- i) according to the various categories or ways of addressing a being as such
- ii) according to its truth or falsity (e.g. fake gold, counterfeit money)
- iii) whether it exists in and of itself or simply 'comes along' by accident
- iv) according to its potency, movement (energy) or finished presence (Metaphysics Book Theta).
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology
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