Ontbroken

Ontbroken is a neologism used in discussions of ontology in philosophy, knowledge representation, and information science. The term blends ontology with broken to describe a breakdown or mismatch between an ontological model and the phenomena, categories, or relations it is intended to capture.

As a concept, ontbroken is not yet standardized; it appears in blogs, practitioner forums, and some speculative writings to denote gaps, inconsistencies, or brittle inferences in a formal or informal ontology.

In ontology engineering, an ontbroken situation arises when a formal ontology cannot faithfully represent observed data, leading to misclassification or unsupported inferences. Examples include an anatomy ontology lacking contemporary anatomical terms, or a social ontology that fails to represent fluid identities; in AI, ontbroken can describe between-model mismatches after integrating domain ontologies for decision making.

Causes include semantic drift, granularity mismatches, conflicting conceptualizations, integration of heterogeneous data, and evolving domains that outpace the ontology's scope. Consequences include reduced interoperability, brittle reasoning, and the need for repair through ontology alignment or extension.

Mitigation strategies emphasize modular design, alignment with upper ontologies, regular maintenance, automated consistency checks, and human-in-the-loop curation to detect and correct ontbroken conditions before deployment.

Reception: some scholars view ontbroken as a useful heuristic rather than a formal diagnosis, while others caution against overgeneralizing the term. Alternatives include "ontological mismatch" or "ontology gap."

See also: ontology, knowledge representation, semantic interoperability, ontology alignment, data modelling.