ontologyn.
/ɒnˈtɒlədʒi/, U.S. /ɑnˈtɑlədʒi/ 1.
a. Philosophy. The science or study of being; that branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature or essence of being or existence.
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the mind > mental capacity > philosophy > metaphysics > ontology > [noun]
ontology1663
ontosophy1728
ontonomy1803
ontogony1860
1663 G. Harvey Archelogia Philosophica Nova I. ii. i. 18 Metaphysics..is called also the first Philosophy, from its nearest approximation to Philosophy, its most proper Denomination is Ontology, or a Discourse of a Being.
1721 N. Bailey Universal Etymol. Eng. Dict. Ontology, an Account of being in the Abstract.
1776 A. Smith Inq. Wealth of Nations II. v. i. 354 Subtleties and sophisms..composed the whole of this cobweb science of Ontology, which was likewise sometimes called Metaphysics. View more context for this quotation
a1832 J. Bentham Fragm. Ontol. in Wks. (1843) VIII. 195 The field of ontology, or as it may otherwise be termed, the field of supremely abstract entities, is a yet untrodden labyrinth.
1865 Reader 8 July 30 We cordially approve and admire,..not least, the signal demolition of Ontology, in the form of the noumenon, or unknowable substratum of matter and mind.
1884 B. Bosanquet et al. tr. H. Lotze Metaphysic 22 Ontology..as a doctrine of the being and relations of all reality, had precedence given to it over Cosmology and Psychology, the two branches of enquiry which follow the reality into its opposite distinctive forms.
1903 F. C. S. Schiller Humanism i. 9 The effect of what Kant called the Copernican revolution in philosophy is that ontology, the theory of Reality, comes to be conditioned by epistemology, the theory of our knowledge.
1960 C. C. Gillispie Edge of Objectivity xi. 496 Comte had to..repudiate not only metaphysics but also ontology. Thus would he deprive science of any and every claim to deal with objective reality.
1988 Mind 97 537 To admit that in some sense events exist is not to admit that events as arbitrary objects have any significance for the ontology of causality.
b. As a count noun: a theory or conception relating to the nature of being. Also in extended use.
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1855 A. Potter Lect. Evid. Christianity 197 [Rationalism] might do but little harm in..disporting itself with its own fanciful creations..respecting necessity and spontaneity.., quiddities and ontologies.
1888 Mind 13 64 We are ready to admit all the hard things the Comte has said of the old Ontologies.
1909 Philos. Rev. 18 490 Even in the most nihilistic of ontologies the eternal is meant to be functional, not be merely the blank and irrelevant negation of temporality.
1950 Sci. Monthly May 346/2 Today we need new ontologies constructed in the light of what science now tells us about man.
1995 Church Times 3 Nov. 13/4 In trying together prayer and ethics, Barth explores a moral ontology and a moral anthropology in which dependence is not diminishment and resolute action is not self-assertion.
2. Logic. Chiefly with reference to the work of Stanislaw Leśniewski (1886–1939): a system similar in scope to modern predicate logic, which attempts to interpret quantifiers without assuming that anything exists beyond written expressions.S. Leśniewski first developed this system of ontology in conjunction with the logical systems of mereology and protothetic. Cf. mereology n., protothetic n.
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1938 Jrnl. Symbolic Logic 3 169 There is also included a sketch of Leśniewski's ontology or theory of classes.
1955 A. N. Prior Formal Logic iii. iii. 293 The basis of Leśniewski's logic is the ‘protothetic’..and on this he builds two further disciplines called ‘ontology’ and ‘mereology’.
1983 Jrnl. Symbolic Logic 48 522 The proposed Lesniewskian-type ontology for natural language is related via a translation to the Montague grammar of a traditional type.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2004; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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