RE: ontology as science (was: Re: SUO: Re: (ELP's summary of MRW's standards experience))
Bill,
Every axiom and definition of ontology makes a testable claim
about one or more of the following three kinds of things:
1. What is in the world,
2. What do people say about what is in the world,
3. What are the relationships among the things in #1 and #2.
WB> To be "science", it must be falsifiable and it must be
> possible to devise experiments to test hypotheses indepedently
> of any particular individual or any particular point in time
> and achieve the same results....
By this criterion, lexicography is a science. It gathers data
consisting of word occurrences and the surrounding context,
and formulates definitions that cover the data. Those
definitions can be tested by anyone else who cares to gather
similar data and check whether the definitions apply.
That kind of science satisfies the point #2 above, which deals
with things that people say about the world. It is true if and
only if people do indeed say such things about the world.
The kind of science stated in point #1 above is physical
science, which has an enormous overlap with ontology. Just
look at the information in Cyc, SUMO, and other ontologies.
They are filled with testable information about scientific
topics.
The kind of science stated in point #3 is mathematics. It is
not an empirical science, but a very hard-edged discipline for
counting, analyzing, and relating everything and anything in
points #2 and #3.
I agree that many things in social sciences are "soft" and
hard to falsify. But if the ontology attempts to define and
axiomatize what people say about those subjects, then its claims
can be tested by the same methods used by lexicographers.
John Sowa