From Encyclopedia To Ontology: Toward Dynamic Representation Of The Discipline Of Philosophy / quote 30 of 30
Challenge: will the dynamic nature of the ontology be able to capture paradigm shifts in philosophy?
There seems to be no way around the conclusion that large-scale paradigm shifts in philosophy will require fresh re-conceptualizations of the Þeld from the top down. Rather than being fatalistic, however, we can note the advantages of the 'dynamic ontology' approach to these issues, for which ontology evolution can be seen as a natural extension of the initial process of ontology creation and population. First, re-conceptualizations which result from large-scale paradigm shifts may not have to be coded entirely from scratch; much of the old ontology may be reincorporated or used as inspiration where relevant, and metrics about the unsuitability of the obsolete ontology may guide the creation of the new one. Second, smaller changes to the ontol- ogy are tractable by modest semi-automatic means. For example, we will be able to automatically detect when some categories become too large, and then use automated methods to divide the contents of the category into two or three more closely-related clusters;