The first common question for the neophyte can be : What is the purpose of
having a vocabulary ? The man for a few centuries likes to organize, cut out,
structure, treat on a hierarchical basis. Sometimes this hierarchisation is so
excessive that one loses the direction of them first as often arrived oneself
among the naturalists of the 19th century. To have a particular
vocabulary to describe a field allows to organize your
knowledge.
Ontology
Let us approach a first painful point immediately to thus evacuate it and
concentrate on the subject. The origin of the word ontology
such as
defined in the majority of the dictionaries will not find any reference to data
processing.
ontology |änˈtäləjē| noun
The branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being.
ORIGIN early 18th cent.: from modern Latin ontologia, from Greek ōn, ont-
‘being’ + -logy .
In Philosophy. Part of the metaphysics which applies to the
being as being, independently of its particular determinations.
“Being And
Nothingness, phenomenologic test of ontology”, Jean-Paul Sartre.
The world of the semantic Web and information sciences especially adapted this term, I do not know by which intermediary, but it is a fact and with the largest prejudice of many philosophers.