A Taxonomy of Collective Phenomena
Zena Wood and Antony Galton
Applied Ontology, Volume 4, 2009, pages 267-292.
DOI 10.3233/AO-2009-0071
Abstract
We are surrounded by collective phenomena, with examples existing on
many levels of granularity. Despite our frequent experiences of such
phenomena they seem to have been largely ignored within the field of
ontology. In this paper, existing ontologies are examined to determine
the extent to which they can adequately represent collective
phenomena, and are found wanting in a number of important respects. An
adequate representation of collective phenomena must do justice to the
often subtle relationship that exists between a collective viewed as a
whole and its constitution as a plurality of individual
participants. An important prerequisite for this is to determine the
range of variation that exists within the broad class of
collectives. Numerous examples of collective phenomena have been
studied to extract appropriate classification criteria. The results
from this study are used to produce a new typology of collectives
which is intended to establish a basis for the adequate treatment of
collectives within an ontology. To illustrate the classification
system we show how it can be used to highlight the significant
distinctions between a suitably diverse range of examples. The paper
concludes with a set of further research questions that have been
raised during the development of the taxonomy.
Antony Galton
Last modified: Mon Mar 29 13:00:05 BST 2010