| Source | Persagen.com |
| Author | Dr. Victoria A. Stuart, Ph.D. |
| Created | 2021-04-16 |
| Modified | |
| Summary | Glossary of key terms for Persagen.com |
An entity is something that exists as itself, as a subject or as an object, actually or potentially, concretely or abstractly, physically or not. It need not be of material existence.
A named entity is a real-world object - such as a person, location, organization, product, etc. - that can be denoted with a proper name. It can be abstract or have a physical existence. Examples of named entities include Barack Obama, New York City, Volkswagen Golf, or anything else that can be named. Named entities can simply be viewed as entity instances (e.g., New York City is an instance of a city).
Ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality. Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories, and which of these entities exist on the most fundamental level. Ontologists often try to determine what the categories or highest kinds are and how they form a system of categories that encompasses the classification of all entities. Ontology is sometimes referred to as the science of being and belongs to the major branch of philosophy known as
In computer science and information science an ontology encompasses a representation, formal naming, and definition of the categories, properties, and relations between the concepts, data, and entities that substantiate one, many, or all domains of discourse. More simply, an ontology is a way of showing the properties of a subject area and how they are related, by defining a set of concepts and categories that represent the subject.
Simply put, an ontology allows administrators and users to manage knowledge according to a structured categorization of those data.
The definition of
Gruber, T. (2009) "Ontology." In: Encyclopedia of Database Systems, Ling Liu and M. Tamer Özsu (Eds.), Springer-Verlag.
Swartout et al. defined an ontology as "a hierarchically structured set of terms for describing a domain that can be used as a skeletal foundation for a knowledge base".
Swartout, B. R. Patil, K. Knight and T. Russ.(1997) "
When you conduct a search you may be overwhelmed with too many results. Having an ontology allows you to facet those data, better organizing those results while reducing the amount of material - according to your preference.
For example, you may be interested in Persagen.com entries for Michael Levin, an American philosopher and writer at City University of New York,
... not Michael Levin, an American developmental and synthetic biologist at Tufts University.
Similarly, you may wish to focus on LGBT right groups in Canada,
... not the United States.
The Persagen ontology, Eureka! is used to classify entities as a grounded hierarchical data structure. "Grounded" means that all entries stem from a common root (ROOT), extended through the nested classification to the LEAF nodes - an entity (idea or concept; thing; named entity). This data structure provides several key attributes.
Anything in the universe may be easily and definitively categorized.
Being grounded, the relationship among entities is readily apparent.
Named entities may be uniquely identified, thus disambiguated both to humans and machines (machine learning, especially natural language processing.
A greater understanding of a domain may be attained through the examination of similar (locally categorized) entities in the ontology. Ontologies facilitate the discovery and visualization of relationships, not previously recognized or understood.
While some entities may appear as two or more ontological classifications, cross-referencing among ontology entries again facilitates broader understanding of subject matter.
Here is an example of a grounded ontological structure (illustration only - see also the D3.js visualization (demo), following).
Eureka! is a living document - updated multiple times daily (form, content).
• The plain-text version of Eureka! is available here. Note:
1. it is a huge, plain-text file, which allows facile editing and sorting;
2. it is a living document, updated multiple times daily (form, content);
3. I use a bespoke script to render that content amenable to indexing in Pg-Solr; and,
4. this is a temporary approach, until a final solution is coded / implemented.
[victoria@victoria data]$ date
Sat May 27 12:22:19 PM PDT 2023
[victoria@victoria data]$ ls -lh ontology.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria 34M May 26 17:28 ontology.txt
[victoria@victoria data]$ cat ontology.txt | wc -lcw ## lines characters words
62293 5182399 35266610
[victoria@victoria data]$ file ontology.txt
ontology.txt: Unicode text, UTF-8 text, with very long lines (15262)
For example, here is a representative listing (entries here edited for brevity).
[ ... snip ... ]
Society - Charitable giving & Practices - Politics - Countries - United States - Organizations - Nonprofit organizations - 501(c)(3) organizations (religious, charitable, scientific, literary, educational purposes; public safety; amateur sports competition; prevention of cruelty to children, women, or animals; non-incorporated community chest, fund, cooperating associations | A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501(c)(3)_organization | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:501(c)(3)_organizations)
Society - Charitable giving & Practices - Politics - Countries - United States - Organizations - Nonprofit organizations - 501(c)(3) organizations - Alliance Defending Freedom (Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF, formerly Alliance Defense Fund) is an American conservative Christian nonprofit advocacy group. ... The Southern Poverty Law Center designates ADF as an anti-LGBT hate group for opposing the decriminalization of homosexuality in the United States and around the world, opposing same-sex marriage in the United States and around the world, supporting the discredited practice of conversion therapy, opposing laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, pushing for and defending laws restricting the rights of transgender people in bathrooms and in sports, and falsely linking homosexuality to pedophilia. ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_Defending_Freedom)
Society - Charitable giving & Practices - Politics - Countries - United States - Organizations - Nonprofit organizations - 501(c)(3) organizations - Alliance Defending Freedom - Persons - Alan Sears (Alan E. Sears is an American lawyer. ... In 2005, Sears wrote the book The ACLU vs. America with Craig Osten. THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA. This 2003 book was described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "an anti-LGBT call to arms that links homosexuality to pedophilia and other 'disordered sexual behavior.'" The book was accused of claiming that allowing same-sex marriage was a part of a secret agenda by activists to "lead young men and women into homosexual behavior" and trap them in a homosexual lifestyle. The book also accused gay-rights advocates as trying to create a nation of "broken families and broken lives." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sears | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Alliance_Defending_Freedom_people)
Society - Charitable giving & Practices - Politics - Countries - United States - Organizations - Nonprofit organizations - 501(c)(3) organizations - Alliance Defending Freedom - Persons - Michael Farris (lawyer | Michael P. Farris (born August 27, 1951) is an American lawyer. He is a founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and Patrick Henry College, which share a campus in Purcellville (Loudoun County), Virginia. He is CEO of and general counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom. After Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and refused to concede while making claims of fraud, Farris worked behind the scenes on legal documents filed by Texas attorney general Ken Paxton to overturn the election results. ... Farris was co-founder of the Convention of States Project, founded in 2013 to encourage a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution. He served as senior fellow for constitutional studies for the project's parent organization, Citizens for Self-Governance, and as a member of CSG's legal board of reference. Alliance Defending Freedom announced that Farris would become its CEO and general counsel in January 2017. ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Farris_(lawyer) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Alliance_Defending_Freedom_people | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Conservatism_in_the_United_States)
[ ... snip ... ]
Society - Charitable giving & Practices - Politics - Countries - United States - Organizations - Nonprofit organizations - 501(c)(3) organizations - American Legislative Exchange Council (The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a nonprofit organization of conservative state legislators and private sector representatives who draft and share model legislation for distribution among state governments in the United States. ALEC provides a forum for state legislators and private sector members to collaborate on model bills - draft legislation that members may customize and introduce for debate in their own state legislatures. ... The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) describes itself as the largest "membership association of state legislators," but over 98% of its revenue comes from sources other than legislative dues, primarily from corporations and corporate foundations. ... ALEC's agenda extends into almost all areas of law. Its bills undermine environmental regulations and deny climate change; support school privatization; undercut health care reform; defund unions and limit their political influence; restrain legislatures' abilities to raise revenue through taxes; mandate strict election laws that disenfranchise voters; increase incarceration to benefit the private prison industry, among many other issues. ALEC is an "associate" member of the State Policy Network, a web of right-wing "think tanks" in every state across the country. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Legislative_Exchange_Council| see also: Society - Business - Corporations - Conglomerates - Telecommunications - AT&T | Society - Charitable giving & Practices - Politics - Countries - United States - Organizations - Nonprofit organizations - 501(c)(3) organizations - State Policy Network)
[ ... snip ... ]
Society - Charitable giving & Practices - Politics - Countries - United States - Organizations - Nonprofit organizations - 501(c)(3) organizations - State Policy Network (The State Policy Network (SPN) is an American nonprofit organization that functions primarily as an umbrella organization for a consortium of conservative and libertarian think tanks that focus on state-level policy. ... SPN keeps its donors private and voluntary. In 2011, Mother Jones reported that SPN is largely funded by donations from foundations, including the Lovett and Ruth Peters Foundation, the Castle Rock Foundation, and the Bradley Foundation. A 2013 article by The Guardian said that SPN received funding from the Koch brothers, Philip Morris, Kraft Foods and GlaxoSmithKline. Other corporate donors to SPN have included Facebook, Microsoft, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, and Comcast. Between 2008 and 2013, SPN received $10 million from DonorsTrust, a nonprofit donor-advised fund. In 2011, the approximately $2 million investment from DonorsTrust accounted for about 40% of annual revenue. In September 2020, an analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy identified the sources for $41 million in contributions to SPN between 2014 and 2019. Of that amount, the top five funders gave a combined $34.1 million, of which $26.6 million came from two funding vehicles of the Koch network - DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund. The third-largest funder, at $4.2 million, was Searle Freedom Trust, which also gave $4.5 million directly to 17 SPN affiliates in 2018. The fourth-largest was the Walton Family Foundation; the fifth was the Bradley Foundation. ... SPN is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization that drafts and shares state-level model legislation for conservative causes, and ALEC is an associate member of SPN. SPN is among the sponsors of ALEC. A 2009 article in an SPN newsletter encouraged SPN members to join ALEC, and many SPN members are also members of ALEC. ALEC is "SPN's sister organisation," according to The Guardian. SPN member think tanks aided the Tea Party movement by supplying rally speakers and intellectual ammunition. ... Today's SPN is the tip of the spear of far-right, nationally funded policy agenda in the states that undergirds extremists in the Republican Party. SPN describes itself as a network and service organization for the "state-based free market think tank movement," and its stated mission is "to provide strategic assistance to independent research organizations devoted to discovering and developing market-oriented solutions to state and local public policy issues." ... SPN groups operate as the policy, communications, and litigation arm of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), giving the cookie-cutter ALEC agenda a sheen of academic legitimacy and state-based support. Many SPN groups are and often write ALEC "model bills." In the states, SPN groups increasingly peddle cookie-cutter "studies" to back the cookie-cutter ALEC agenda, spinning that agenda as indigenous to the state and giving it the aura of academic legitimacy. Many SPN groups, such as the Mackinac Center in Michigan, have been accused of lobbying in their states, in violation of IRS rules for non-profit "charitable" organizations. Some SPN groups, like the Goldwater Institute in Arizona, also contain litigation centers funded by national foundations to defend or pursue the SPN/ALEC agenda. SPN shares many of same sources of funding as ALEC, including Koch institutions. The Kochs' Americans for Prosperity provides the "grassroots" boots on the ground for this agenda. Although many SPN groups claim to be independent and non-partisan, they promote a policy agenda - including union-busting, attacks on the tort bar, and voter suppression - that is highly-partisan and electoral in nature. ... https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=State_Policy_Network | see also: Science - Social sciences - Economics - Economic systems - Capitalism - Ideology - Economic liberalism - Ideas - Tax reform - Taxpayer groups - United States - Americans for Tax Reform | Society - Issues - Discrimination - Discriminatory policies - Voter suppression)
[ ... snip ... ]
Eureka! currently (2022-07) consists of approximately 17,330 lines (entries). While it is easy to manage Eureka! in Vim (text editor) as a flat file, it is not the ideal data structure for these data. The ideal web- and JavaScript-friendly data structure is JSON (possibly JSONB, in PostgreSQL) - certainly JSON, in some form. JSON also allows the facile embedding of metadata - also extensively used at Persagen.com for data annotation and information retrieval and processing. JSON also facilitates the incorporation of relationships (e.g. parent-child nodes, and the representation of hyperdimensional data (analogous to mathematical tensors, the basis of Google's TensorFlow).
The downside is it's considerably more difficult to manually edit and interact with JSON. Resolving this technical challenge is a key focus of Persagen's data engineering. In the meantime, the indexing of Eureka! in Apache Solr provides a facile user interface to the querying of those data.
An earlier draft version of Persagen explored a D3.js visualization of Eureka!. Noting the challenges above and the need to press forward on other areas of development (Persagen is a solo effort), JavaScript (JSON)-based visualizations of Eureka! await further study and exploration.
Click to drag; mouse wheel (or double click / Shift-double click) to zoom at cursor position. Page Up/Down to scroll webpage. Reload page to reset all selections, views.
Alternatives to the D3.js visualization above include the graphical display of those data - i.e., a relation graph (nodes plus edges). Platforms under consideration for that approach include NetworkX, Cytoscape (possibly Cytoscape.js), tensors / TensorFlow TensorBoard, and custom solutions.