Barry Smith (ontologist)

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Barry Smith

Barry Smith (born June 4, 1952 in Bury , England ) is an English mathematician and philosopher who mainly works in the fields of formal ontology and medical bioinformatics . He is the current editor of The Monist : An International Journal of General Philosophical Inquiry .

Academic career

From 1970 to 1973 Smith studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Oxford , he graduated with a Master of Sciences ; In 1976 he obtained the Ph.D. at the University of Manchester with a dissertation entitled “The Ontology of Reference”. In this work, Smith examines the ontological assumptions and consequences of referring to objects in language. Between 1976 and 1994 various positions followed at the University of Sheffield , the University of Manchester and in Liechtenstein .

In 1992, Smith protested against the award of an honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge to Jacques Derrida with an open letter in the Times .

In 1994 Smith finally received a chair as Julian Park Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo . He is also Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Neurology and Computer Science and as a researcher at the Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences at the same university. From 2002 to 2006 he was director of the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS) with locations in Leipzig and Saarbrücken and has been research director there ever since.

research

Barry Smith's dissertation outlines an “ontology of reference”: starting from the established distinction between abstract and concrete types of objects, Smith suggests abstract objects and their use following Frege's ontology, Husserl's theory of noemata and Leopold Löwenheim's work on the representation of Interpret classes . The aim of the work is u. a. to show necessary and sufficient conditions for object-likeness in general (especially in chapter 12). In addition, Smith counts firstly the possibility of a successful "fulfilled" reference to the corresponding entities (in the sense of approximately " knowledge through acquaintance " according to Russell), secondly the existence of a field of predicates in the vicinity of proper names for the object in question (which in the sense of Michael Dummett distinguishes independent objects from linguistic entities), thirdly, being embedded in a veridic (rather than illusory) epistemic context. In addition to developing this theory of objectivity, Smith et al. a. to problems of the philosophy of mathematics with regard to the ontology of mathematical objects, to problems of interpretation, etc. a. the above-mentioned classics of logic and phenomenology, on which approaches and a. by Roman Ingarden and Paul Lorenzen , on the weaknesses of Alexius Meinong's ontology as well as on a number of metaphilosophical topics and in particular on the relationship between phenomenology, logic and ontology.

Barry Smith's research activities focus on ontology (computer science) and its applications, especially medical bioinformatics . In this area he has worked on various projects on biomedical terminology and electronic medical records. He is the head of the Basic Formal Ontology project , coordinating editor of the Open Biomedical Ontologies Foundry, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Gene Ontology Consortium, and the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) group. The NCOR (National Center for Ontological Research) was co-founded by Smith in 2005. The Ontology for the Intelligence Community and STIDS conference series have been held there since 2006. The Smith also initiated the International Conference on Biomedical Ontology.

Awards, grants

Smith is the recipient of the Wolfgang Paul Prize of the Humboldt Foundation and the Paolo Bozzi Prize for Ontology from the University of Turin .

Smith's research has received numerous grants, including the National Institutes of Health , the National Research Funding of the USA , Switzerland and Austria , the Humboldt Foundation , the Volkswagen Foundation , the European Union , and the US Department of Defense .

He has worked with economist Hernando de Soto , founder and director of the Instituto de Libertad y Democracia in Lima , on the ontology of property law and social development, and is an advisor to the US Army's Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate on ontology-based technologies.

Publications (selection)

Smith has over 500 publications.

Monographs
Editorships
  • Structure and Gestalt: Philosophy and Literature in Austria-Hungary and Her Successor States , 1981.
  • Parts and Moments. Studies in Logic and Formal Ontology , Munich: Philosophia, 1982.
  • Foundations of Gestalt Theory , Munich: Philosophia, 1988.
  • Adolf Reinach, Complete Works. Critical Edition with Commentary , Volume I: The Works, Part I: Critical New Edition (1905–1914), Part II: Post-processed texts (1906–1917); (with Karl Schuhmann :) Volume II: Commentary and Text Criticism, Munich: Philosophia 1989.
  • (with Hans Burkhardt) Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology , Munich: Philosophia, 1991.
  • (with David W. Smith) The Cambridge Companion to Husserl , Cambridge / New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
  • (with Berit Brogaard) Rationality and Irrationality , Vienna: öbv & hpt, 2001.
  • (with Christopher Welty) Formal Ontology in Information Systems , New York: ACM Press, 2001.
  • John Searle , Cambridge / New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
  • (with David Mark and Isaac Ehrlich) The Mystery of Capital and the Construction of Social Reality , Chicago: Open Court, 2008.
  • (with Ludger Jansen) Biomedical Ontology. Structuring knowledge for IT use , Zurich: vdf, 2008.
  • (with Katherine Munn) Applied Ontology: An Introduction (Metaphysical Research) , Volume 9, De Gruyter, 2008. ISBN 978-3-110-32450-1
Essays
  • Pierre Grenon, Barry Smith: Foundations of an ontology of philosophy , Synthesis 182/2, 2001, pp. 185-204. doi : 10.1007 / s11229-009-9658-x
  • Barry Smith, Austrian Economics and Austrian Philosophy ” (PDF file; 6.08 MB), in W. Grassl and B. Smith (eds.): Austrian Economics: Historical and Philosophical Background, Routledge, London 2010, 1–36.
  • Pierre Grenon and Barry Smith, SNAP and SPAN: Towards Dynamic Spatial Ontology , in: Spatial Cognition and Computation, 4 (1), 2004, 69-103.
  • Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith, What's Wrong with Contemporary Philosophy? , Topoi, 25 (1-2), 2006, 63-67.
  • Barry Smith, Beyond Concepts, or: Ontology as Reality Representation (PDF file; 74 kB) ”, in: Achille Varzi and Laure Vieu (eds.): Formal Ontology and Information Systems. Proceedings of the Third International Conference, (FOIS 2004), IOS Press, Amsterdam 2004, 73-84.
  • Barry Smith, Dirk Siebert, Werner Ceusters: What the philosophical ontology can contribute to biomedical informatics (PDF; 66 kB) , in: Information Wissenschaft & Praxis, 55 (2004) 3, pp. 143–146
  • Barry Smith, Ontology (PDF file; 61 kB) ”, in Luciano Floridi (ed.), Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information , Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, 155–166.
  • Barry Smith and David M. Mark, “ Do Mountains Exist? Towards an Ontology of Landforms ”, Environment and Planning B (Planning and Design) , 30 (3), 2003, 411-427.
  • Barry Smith, " Fiat Objects, " Topoi , 20: 2 (Sep 2001), 131-148.
  • Barry Smity, David M. Mark: “Geographical categories: an ontological investigation”, in: International Journal of Geographical Information Science , 15/7 , 2001. doi : 10.1080 / 13658810110061199
  • Barry Smith and Achille Varzi, “ Fiat and Bona Fide Boundaries ”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 60 (2), 2000, 401-420.
  • Barry Smith and Achille Varzi, “ The Niche (PDF file; 89 kB)”, Nous, 33 (2), 1999, 198–222.
  • Barry Smith "Mereotopology: A theory of parts and boundaries", Data & Knowledge Engineering , 20 / 3.1996, pp. 287-303. doi : 10.1016 / S0169-023X (96) 00015-8
  • Barry Smith, “ On Drawing Lines on a Map, ” in Andrew U. Frank and Werner Kuhn (eds.), Spatial Information Theory. A Theoretical Basis for GIS (LNCS 988), Berlin / Heidelberg / New York etc .: Springer, 1995, 475-484.
  • Barry Smith, "Gestalt theory: An essay in philosophy," in B. Smith (Ed.), Foundations of Gestalt Theory , 11-81.
  • Kevin Mulligan, Peter M. Simons and Barry Smith, " Truth-Makers ", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 44 (1984), 287-321.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ themonist.org website of the magazine .
  2. ^ Barry Smith, The Ontology of Reference: Studies in Logic and Phenomenology . University of Manchester, 1976. Archived from the original on February 23, 2020 Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Accessed July 17, 2012). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / catalogue.library.manchester.ac.uk
  3. ↑ Jeffery Simms, Barry Smith: Letters and Papers - Revisiting the Derrida Affair with Barry Smith in: Sophia , Vol. 38-2 (199), pp. 142-169 (PDF file; 1.25 MB), original formulation online on the University of Buffalo website.
  4. ↑ Homepage of the Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences
  5. ↑ See Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science , online.
  6. ↑ Barry Smith and Werner Ceusters: Ontological realism: A methodology for coordinated evolution of scientific ontologies in: Applied Ontology 2010 Nov 15; 5 (3-4): 139-188. PMC 3104413 (free full text), PMID 21637730
  7. ↑ Barry Smith, Cornelius Rosse: The role of foundational relations in the alignment of biomedical ontologies , in: Studies in health technology and informatics , Vol. 107-1 2004, PMID 15360852
  8. ↑ Barry Smith, Jennifer Williams, Steffen Schulze-Kremer: The ontology of the gene ontology. in: AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2003: pp. 609-613, PMID 14728245
  9. ↑ Barry Smith, W. Ceusters, B. Klagges, J. Köhler, A. Kumar, J. Lomax, C. Mungall, F. Neuhaus, AL Rector, Cornelius Rosse: Relations in biomedical ontologies. , in: Genome Bioly 2005; 6 (5), PMID 15892874
  10. ^ D. Schober, B. Smith, SE Lewis, W. Kusnierczyk, J. Lomax J, C. Mungall, CF Taylor, P. Rocca-Serra, SA Sansone: Survey-based naming conventions for use in OBO Foundry ontology development. 1. BMC Bioinformatics. 2009, PMID 19397794
  11. ↑ Barry Smith et al., “The OBO Foundry: coordinated evolution of ontologies to support biomedical data integration.”, Nature Biotechnology 2007, 25 (11): pp. 1251-5. PMID 17989687 ; PMC 2814061 (free full text).
  12. ↑ OBI Constortium ". Modeling Biomedical experimental processes with OBI", Journal of Biomedical Semantics , 2010; 1 Supplement 1: S7. PMC 2903726 (free full text); PMID 20626927 .
  13. ↑ homepage NCOR
  14. ↑ See http://ncor.us/OIC  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / ncor.us  
  15. ↑ See http://stids.c4i.gmu.edu/
  16. ↑ See International Conference on Biomedical Ontology , online.
  17. ↑ Information on the Wolfgang Paul Prize of the Humboldt Foundation 2002
  18. ↑ Press release Paolo Bozzi Prize for Ontology (PDF file; 185 kB), 2010
  19. ↑ Overview at google scholar
personal data
SURNAME Smith, Barry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English mathematician and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH June 4th 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Bury , England