Abstract
For the past several years ontology has enjoyed a robust regard within the geographic information science community. Ontology is however only one apex of a triangle of knowledge that also involves epistemology and the (long discredited) notion of teleology. Without epistemology we lack a systematic understanding of the nature of the correspondence between ontologies and the general or specific domain of inquiry each of them represents. Without teleology we miss the crucial distinction – essential especially in ontologies of change – between the outcomes of causal processes on the one hand, and the results of purposeful action by sentient actors or machines on the other. This paper argues that connecting current conceptions of ontology with these two other, complementary perspectives would allow new kinds of scientific questions to be addressed as well as to expand the scope of ontology itself in geographic information science. I briefly outline an ontological framework that builds on the epistemological notion of information and is guided by the teleological notion of purpose, and based on this sketch I suggest a possible way of completing the golden Greek triangle of geographic information science.
Was wir als Wirklichkeit wahrnehmen, ist unsere Erfindung 1
(Heinz von Foerster)
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Couclelis, H. (2009). Ontology, Epistemology, Teleology: Triangulating Geographic Information Science. In: Navratil, G. (eds) Research Trends in Geographic Information Science. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography(). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88244-2_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88244-2_1
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