Ontologies timeline

[Jorn Barger]

This is based on an old catalog compiled by Fritz Lehmann:
http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/fritz.html

I've sorted part of it chronologically, and extracted the
toplevel distinctions where practical. More at:
http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/timeline/0000.html

330 BC: Aristotle's Categories

Essence (substance), Quantity, Quality, Relation, Place,
Time, Position (situation), State (condition), Activity
(action), Passivity (passion)

1307: Llull's Ars Magna

goodness, greatness, duration, power, wisdom, will,
virtue, truth, glory, difference, concordance,
contrariety, beginning, middle, end, majority, equality,
minority

1647: Lodwyck's Common Writing [Lodwick]

16 verbs: be, make, speak, drink, love, cleanse, come,
begin, create, light, shine, live, darken, comprehend,
send, name

1657: Cave Beck [Universal Character]
1661: Dalgarno's Ars Signorum

Thing/Being, Substance, Accident, Concretion, Body,
Spirit, Composition

1668: Wilkins' Real Character & Philosophical Language

transcendent relations, unclassified, plants, animals,
parts, quantity, quality, action, relation

1672? Leibniz's Ars Combinatoria & Char. Universalis
1735: Linnaeus-type biological taxonomy
1781: Kant's a priori synthetic categories

quantity: Unity, Plurality, Totality
quality: Reality, Negation, Limitation
relation: Substance/Accident, Causality/Dependence,
Community or Interaction
modality: Possibility/Impossibility, Existence/
Non-existence, Necessity/Contingency

1830? Anon. (Fitzgerald? C. 1830) Universal Character
1837: Bolzano {Theory of Science]

part-relation, abstract objects, attributes, sentence-
shapes, ideas-as-such, propositions, sums and sets,
collections, substances, adherences, subjective ideas,
judgments, sentence-occurences

1852: Roget's Thesaurus

existence, relation, quantity, order, number, time,
change, causation, space, dimensions, form, motion,
matter, inorganic matter, organic matter, formation of ideas,
communication of ideas, individual volition, intersocial
volition, affections, personal affections, sympathetic
affections, moral affections, religious affections

1868: Peirce's Categories (1,2,3; 66 signs, etc.)

being, quality, relation, representation, substance

1876: Dewey Decimal

Generalities, Philosophy & psychology, Religion, Social
sciences, Language, Natural sciences & mathematics,
Technology, The arts, Literature & rhetoric, Geography &
history

1895: UDC [Universal Decimal Classification]
1900: Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations

Supplication, Deliverance, Vengeance of a crime, etc

1900: Husserl's ontology
1901: Library of Congress

General works, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion,
Auxiliary Sciences of History, History, Geography, Maps,
Anthropology, Recreation, Social Sciences, Political Science,
Law, Education, Music, Fine arts, Language and Literature,
Science, Medicine, Agriculture, Technology/Engineering,
Military Science, Naval Science, Bibliography, Library
Science

1902? Bradley [FH?]
1905ff: patent classification systems
1909: Library of Congress Subject Headings
1910: Principia Mathematica
1910? Meinong
1916: Liesniewski's Mereology & so-called ontology [Lesniewski]
1927: Propp's folktale morphology encoding
1929: Whitehead's process theory

prehensions, etc

1930: Ogden & Richards' Basic English
1932: Stith Thompson folk motifs
1933: Colon Faceted library classification
1935: Ingarden's Aristotle revision

events, processes, and objects enduring in time

1938: HRAF Outline of Cultural Materials (anthrop.)
1943: Dutton Speedwords system

eg: book->bu, writing->ri, liberation->lib, efficiency->ef,
gratitude->gra

1952: The Syntopicon (for Encyc. Brit. Gt Books)

Angel, Animal, Aristocracy, Art, Astronomy, etc

1952: Hallig & Wartburg's Concept-system/order-scheme
1955: Loglan/Lojban semantic primitive word roots
1956: Richens's 100 "semantic net" minimals

folk, stuff, man, thing, etc

1960: Lincos interplanetary language
1961: Ceccato's correlation net primitives

member-class, species-genus, part-whole, object,
instrument, result, containing, covering, contiguity,
constellation

1961: Masterman's semantic lattices

Folk, Stuff, Thing, Do, Be, etc

1964: NTIS/DoD/COSATI classification scheme
1965: Semantography/Blissymbolics symbols
1968: Iconclass art subject classification

Abstract, Non-representational Art; Religion and Magic;
Nature; Human being, Man in general; Society,
Civilization, Culture; Abstract Ideas and Concepts;
History; Bible; Literature; Classical Mythology and
Ancient History

1972: Schank's conceptual dependency theory

ptrans, atrans, mtrans, mbuild, plan, propel, ingest,
expel, move, grasp, speak, attend

1972: Preference Semantics primitives [Wilks]
1972? Smalltalk data type tree
1973: Laffal's Concept Dictionary
1974: Leech's Semantics
1975: Broad System of Ordering

knowledge generally; science and technology;
education; human needs; humanities, cultural and
social sciences; technology; language, linguistics and
literature; arts; religion and atheism

1976: Lenat's AM/Eurisko math categories

name, definition, origin, predicate-calculus, iterative,
examples, boundary, boundary-failures, failures,
generalizations, specializations, conjectures, intuitions,
analogies, interest, worth

1976? geographic database concepts
1977: UNESCO Thesaurus

Education; Science; Culture; Social and human sciences;
Information and communication; Politics, law and economics;
Countries and country groupings

1977: Mario Bunge's physics-based ontology
1978: Hayes's Naive Physics
1978: Parker-Rhodes' Inferential Semantics Lattices
1980: Wierzbicka's Lingua Mentalis
1982: Bhattacharya's Classaurus
1984: Lenat/Guha Cyc project (MCC/Cycorp)

thing, intangible, represented thing, individual object,
collection, relationship, stuff, event, process, slot,
attribute, value, dynamic process, etc

1987: TADS - Text Adventure Description language

Room, Thing, Item (vehicle, surface, lightsource, key,
food, container, clothing), FixedItem (switch, dial, button,
decoration, actor, chair)

1990: Wordnet [George A Miller]

Abstraction, Act (human), Entity, Event, Group, Phenomenon,
Possession, Psychological Feature, State

1990: Penman Upper Model
1991: Barger's conceptual fractal thicket theory

person, place, thing, motive, modality, relationship

1992? R.M. Martin's semiotic primitives [Richard M Martin]
1996: EDI (Elec. Data Interch.) business comm standard
1998? ACM computer science classification

Here's the ones I haven't gotten to yet-- info appreciated:

Deep Case Systems
Shum "spiritual" networks
Levi-Strauss Anthropological Models
Propaedia of Encylopaedia Britannica
Weber Russell's categories of nominals
Scheele's Ordnung Des Wissens
Russian Mison "Rubricator" Class. Codes
Austin's Precis Concept Analysis & Indexing
Perreault's Schema of Relations
Kamp's Discourse Representation Structures
Miller/Johnson-Laird Primitives
Lehnert's Object Primitives
Schank/Carbonell social/political acts
Mel'chuk's Explanatory-combinatory Dictionary
Mesh - Medical Subject Headings Thesaurus
Jolley's Holotheme
Zarri's Reseda/NKRL Ontology
Sowa's Conceptual Graphs Primitives
Barwise/Perry/Devlin Situation Semantics
Schubertian ("Eco") Subhierarchies
Fiction Classification Schemes
Wahlin's T.I.M, Manufacturing Facets
Citizens Advice Bureau Classification Uk
Qualitative Physics Primitives
Smith-Mulligan-Degen Ontology
Simons' Part System
Objective-C (NextStep) Data Types
Booch/Rational Objects Hierarchies
Wuester's General Theory of Terminology
Kab German Library Classes (K.Lehmann)
Graesser's Multiple Concept Hierarchies
Dahlgren/mcdowell Naive Semantics
Longman Dictionary Codings (incl. Slator)
Longman Lexicon (thesaurus)
Burger's The Wordtree
Fass's Genus Classification
Unified Medical. Lang. Sys.(UMLS) Metathesaurus
Sparck Jones/boguraev Deep Case List
Cook Ontology
Dixon Ontology
Various Wille-style Formal Concept Lattices
Russian Meronomy/taxonomy (Shreider et al.)
Somers's Case Grid
Chaffin's Relation Hierarchy
Epstein AM-based Graph Theory Hierarchy
Marty's Semiotic Lattices (algebra of signs)
Mapsee Geographic Map Axioms (Mackworth/Reiter)
IRDS Database Categories
Rea Accounting Ontology
Hobbs' Commonsense Ontology
Goranson Symmetries
Pansystems Philosophical Logic (Chinese)
Giunchilia's Italian Prepositions
Lilog Dusseldorf Ontology
Velardi's Semantic Lexicon For Italian
Ontek, Inc.'s Ontology
Lakoff's Categories
Huhns/Stephens Relation Features
Edr Concept Dictionary (Japan)
Ontos Concept Hierarchy
Doudna Quantifier Rhombidodecahedron
Scrambled Roget (5th Ed.)
Nirenburg's Dionysus Ontology
Schubert/hwang Episodic Logic Categories
Unitran-lcs (Dorr et al.)
Evens/Nutter Lexical Relation Hierarchy
Pustejovsky's Qualia/Events
Porter's U.Texas Botany Ontology
Fulton's Semantic Unification Metamodel
Random House Word Menu Categories
Pangloss Ontology
SNEPS Dictionary of Case Frames(incl.yuhan)(i,p-,c=chalupsky)
Yale's Esperanto Thesaurus
ARPA/Rome Planning Ontology
Cimosa Business Enterprise Architecture Model
ICAM Manufacturing Reference Model
IWI (German) Manufacturing Reference Model
Tove Enterprise Model
Art & Architecture Thesaurus (Getty)
Lib. of Congress Thesaurus For Graphic Material
Kipfer's "21st Century Roget" Concept Index
Guarino concept/relation ontology
Spatial Data Transfer Standard
Skuce Ontology
Petrie Enterprise Ontologies
Tepfenhart Situational Ontology
G.E. Semantic Hierarchy & Lexicon (Rau et al.)
Plinius Ceramics Ontology
Mars' Kelvin Measurement Hierarchy
Randell & Cohn's Spatiotemporal Lattices
PDES/step Product Description Standards
Hartley's Time and Space World
Ontolingua-kif Frame Ontology
Gruber's Quantities/units Ontology
Generic Bibliography Concept System
Ecobase Biochemical Ontology (in Ontolingua)
Dick's Case-relation System For Legal Analysis
Valente Legal Ontology
Z39.50 Scientific & Tech. Attribute Set (STAS)
Horn's Subject Matter Categories
Arnopoulos' System Unification Model (SUM)
Tenenbaum/EIT Manufacturing Ontology
Intell. Text Processing Inc. Semantic Lexicon
Microsoft Dictionary-based Ontology (heidorn)
Baggett's Worldclass Classes For Tads
Alcohol & Other Drug Thesaurus
Oracle "Context" Concept Tree
Nextstep Enterprise Objects Model
Falcidieno Medical Ontolingua Ontology
Bongalon Ontology
ISO/IEC 11179 Data Element Standard
Basic Semantic Repository (for EDI Reform)
Mikrokosmos Ontology
Cambridge New Learners Dict. Ontology
Micra Factotum Ontology (Roget/UMLS-based)
Sowa's Dimensional Ontology
Doudna's Toto (The One True Ontology)

[Jorn Barger]

Two of Fritz's that I forgot to illustrate:

1927: Propp's folktale morphology encoding

Absention, Interdiction, Violation, Reconnaissance, etc

1977: Mario Bunge's physics-based ontology

things, properties (intrinsic, mutual), composites,
attributes, laws, functional schema, states (stable,
unstable), events, changes, interactions

Some that Fritz missed:

universal languages: Mersenne-1636, Urquaart-1653, Kircher-1663,
Comenius-1668, Sudre-1829, Letellier-1850

classifications of sciences: Boethius-500, Hugh-1128, Bacon-1266,
Bacon-1605, Whewell-1847, Spencer-1864

divination systems: I Ching-1000BC, Zohar-1295, tarot-1400

rhetorical 'topics': Aristotle-330BC, Cicero-45BC, Ramus-1549

classifications of human motives: James-1890, McDougall-1908,
Watson-1913, Maslow-1943, Ortony-1988

A weird classic:

1942: Borges's worst-case animal-typology

"belonging to the Emperor, suckling pigs, embalmed, trained,
sloppy, sirens, fabulous, stray dogs, included in this
classification, trembling like crazy, innumerable, drawn with
a very fine camelhair brush, et cetera, having just broken the
vase, from a distance look like flies"

More recent:

1990: Kassabov's 'Semantic Dictionary-Minimum'

morality (and law), science (and education), war, culture,
religion, society, mentality, family, illness (and health),
home, (house), body, road (and town), nature, organism,
production (and trade), food, money</blockquote><p>

1990: Wand and Weber's "Ontological Model of an Information System"

Thing, Property, Attribute, State, Event, History, Type/Class,
Subtype/Subclass, Composite thing

1994: Yahoo Web-index

Arts, Business and Economy, Computers and Internet, Education,
Entertainment, Government, Health, News, Recreation and Sports,
Reference, Regional, Science, Social Science, Society and Culture

1997: 17Nov: UML (Unified Modeling Language)

1999: Universal Networking Language (UNL)

agent, and, attribute, degree, beneficiary, co-agent, content,
co-thing, condition, co-occurrence, duration, range (from-to),
origin, goal, instrument, manner, method, modification, name,
or, proportion, place, part-of, possessor, partner, purpose,
quantity, reason, scene, sequence, time, destination, via

2001: Degen et al's General Ontological Language (GOL)

Entity, Set, Extension, Urelement, Individual, Chronoid, Topoid,
Substance, Moment, Quality, Relational Moment, Universal,
Relational Universal

2001: Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO)

Principal Distinctions, Objects, Processes, Abstract Entities,
Structural Ontology, Basic Binary Relations, Artifacts, Spatial
Relations, Number, Measure, Organic, Temporal Concepts, Mereology,
Semiotics

2002: Guarino and Welty's OntoClean

Quality, Quality Region, Aggregate, Amount of matter, Arbitrary
Collection, Object, Physical Object, Body, Ordinary Object,
Mental Object, Feature, Relevant Part, Place, Occurrence, State,
Process, Accomplishment