Difference between Taxonomy and Ontology?
There have been many posts and articles comparing taxonomies and ontologies. But is that a valid comparison?
It has been a journey for me, as I am sure for others as well.
Today, I can take a taxonomy developed on paper, Excel, or from anywhere else someone might have stored it and develop that exact taxonomy as an ontology.
Before beginning down the road of what else can be done with the taxonomy now that it is an ontology, what if we consider this... When we have the exact taxonomy expressed as an ontology, what then is the difference between the taxonomy and the ontology?
I think we can only say that the difference is the way in which the taxonomy is captured.
And then we can ask, why capture any taxonomy as an ontology?
At this point the conversation can explode into the discovery of the myriad of expanded capabilities that the taxonomy can have as an ontology. We hear about them all the time, for example, multiple custom relationships, the use of semantic standardization via SKOS, the ability to be used in AI and precise findability software; and, when the expansion of the taxonomy as an ontology has been done, the taxonomy may not even be recognized as the same structure it was when first developed as an ontology.
Of course, if it does not resemble where it started, then what is it now? I do not have a good name for what it has become; but I would not call this new thing an ontology. We can build several different kinds of information structures as an ontology.
I think what we have is a growth in Information Science with the ability to create a "new" information structure bigger/different than we had before, all while understanding that we are still modeling concepts that describe a knowledge domain.
Perhaps this is when we go to the more generic name of “Knowledge Organization System”? I do not have the answer. I do think it is an interesting conversation to be had though. Do you have any thoughts on this topic?
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I agree with you Paula M. , it is something new. When we ask ourselves so many times the same question is because there is no formal definition about it without ambiguities. It is not possible to establish a deterministic comparison criterion on this basis. Why don't we recurrently ask ourselves the difference between odd and even numbers? Computers can develop methods to generate embeddings, with the aim of reducing semantic ambiguity (treatable with a statistical similarity criterion) to minimize the processing cost associated with networks of nodes. Because these node networks were born with the intrinsic ambiguity between taxonomy and ontology. That new will have to solve the problem (without adding processing power and more parameters).
You could also make another difference between onto and taxo. If you describe a domain and give it the structure and relations that are identifiable you will do this with an ontology. Your public will find themselves in this domain or in related domains. If you gather terms and structure to identify the correct usage and the full list of objects you will use a taxonomy. Your public does not need any knowledge since you provide them handles to find the correct entrance for their search. Naturally a taxonomy can have already as much structure as an ontology so the difference becomes thin. With the evolution of data and knowledge presentation it will not matter any more cause we will build Knowledge Graphs.
I have always tried to focus on the different purposes of taxonomies and ontologies. A taxonomy describes terms and relationships between the terms while an ontology describes things and the relationships between things. A related view is that a taxonomy is a specific kind of ontology concerned with terms and vocabulary.
Taxonomy generally contains the concept (business fact, terms) in a hierarchical fashion whereas it is not necessary to represent your data in hierarchical fashion when we are talking about ontology. Ontology deals in classes and sub classes whereas taxonomy deals in concept. Since taxonomy and ontology are designed to be used for different purposes. hence, I think we should not compare these two concepts.