Ontotypes
Ontotypes is a term used across several disciplines to denote fundamental typological categories that organize a domain of inquiry. Broadly, an ontotype refers to an abstract, high-level type that describes the essential kinds of entities, processes, or relations that can exist within a system, and that give rise to observable phenomena. The concept functions as a bridge between ontology—the study of what exists—and empirical classification, providing a framework for reasoning about how different instances share an underlying structure.
In philosophy and the theory of science, ontotypes are used to analyze how theories partition reality into
In knowledge representation and artificial intelligence, ontotypes can refer to high-level ontological types used to categorize
Critics argue that ontotypes risk conflating ontology with taxonomy or overgeneralizing across heterogeneous domains. Proponents contend
See also: ontology, taxonomy, phenotype, genotype, knowledge representation.