The Case for Religious Data Scientists

As I sit here at my in-laws’ in Colorado popping kumquats and working on an ontology, I think about what makes ontologies so important.

Since the beginning of whatever this is (Information science? Data engineering? Artificial neural network design?), there has been a need to make sense of information so that something can be done with it.

Wait.

Since the beginning of human history this need has existed. Like many modern things, this is a revival of old trends.

Logic, rhetoric (i.e. effective communication), and philosophy were central in the academy for most of civilization. Now they have even cooler applications.

Enter BFO

Anyway, I got a contract job manually improving the ontology for a big database of religious texts using a foreign language encyclopedia designed for these texts. We’re using the Basic Formal Ontology of Barry Smith as a base and building necessary classes on top of that.

BFO was an attempt to make philosophical definitions and logical relations the basis of ontologies. After all, if you want to make sense, being accurate and thoughtful about it helps.