Ontologien in den historischen Wissenschaften

Abstract

Databases are for historians a mighty tool, especially for the statistical analysis of huge qualities of data. But the tool can only work with a solid data structure that is defined on a meta-level. To guarantee this structure, computer scientists developed for most different scopes ontologies – the topic of the following elementary article. After the definition of ontologies as formal defined systems of concepts and relations with rules of inference and integrity, a special vocabulary for entities and relations and conditions of completeness and correctness of the terms, the following article will introduce the basic concepts of a specific ontology – CIDOC CRM (Comité International pour la Documentation Conceptual Reference Model). The fundamental terms Entities and Properties will be explained as well as their structure and their underlying rules.