# Ontology **Domain:** Philosophy / Knowledge Representation / Wiki Architecture **Doc Type:** Canonical Concept Node **Maturity:** Foundational ## Definition An **ontology** specifies the entities, categories and relations a system recognizes. In philosophy it concerns what exists; in information systems it provides an explicit conceptual structure for representing a domain. ## Evolutionary Nexus [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] crosses fossils, genes, institutions, algorithms and persons. Its wiki network therefore needs an ontology that preserves differences among physical object, organism, lineage, model, institution and conscious claimant. ## Rights Context Recognition depends on categories. If a system has no representational place for a post-biological or nonhuman subject, that subject can be excluded before evidence is evaluated. ## Key Insight **An ontology is never merely descriptive when institutions use its categories to grant standing or deny existence.** ## See Also [[wiki/Encoded Domain Knowledge|Encoded Domain Knowledge]], [[wiki/Recognition Threshold|Recognition Threshold]], [[wiki/Rights|Rights]], [[wiki/Provenance|Provenance]]