Formalizing System Ontologies
Background
In General System Theory (1968), Ludwig von Bertalanffy outlines three complementary aspects of GST with shared content but differing intentions:1
Systems science
Systems technology
Systems philosophy
Within the realm of systems philosophy, he highlights “systems ontology” as the field dedicated to determining “what is meant by ‘system’ and how systems are realized at the various levels of the world of observation.”
In Systems Science: Theory, Analysis, Modeling, and Design (2022) George Mobus outlines a formal systems ontology — a set of terms naming what exists in the domain of systems. 2
This week, I’d like to share an early version of my formalization of this ontology.
A Formal Ontology of Systems
I formalized aspects of the ontology described in Mobus’s textbook with Protege, a free and open source ontology editor developed by Stanford University’s Center for Biomedical Informatics Research.
The quickest way to explore is by viewing it with the OWLGrEd web application for ontology visualizations.
If you’d like to do a deeper dive, you can download the file at this link and explore it with one of the following options:
Download the Protege desktop application and load the model file.
Sign up for a free account on Stanford’s WebProtege platform and upload the model file.
Upload the model file using the WebVOWL web application.
You’ll need to interact with the model directly using one of the options above in order to see the specific logical relations between entities, but these images give a general feel for the ontology in its current state.
This is a list of all the terms I’ve entered into the ontology so far.
Everyone developing and proposing a general system theory has an internal ontology, an assertion of what basic things exist in the realm of “systems” and how these things are related. By making our various ontologies explicit with graphical modeling tools, we can reduce barriers to communication and cooperation among systems researchers.
This is an early work in progress that also relates directly to my more focused research on analyzing cryptoeconomic systems. More on that soon.
von Bertalanffy, Ludwig. General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications (p xxv). George Braziller Inc.
Mobus, G. E. (2022). Systems Science: Theory, Analysis, Modeling, and Design (p.260). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93482-8