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Tautology vs Ontology - What's the difference?

tautology | ontology |

As nouns the difference between tautology and ontology

is that tautology is (uncountable) redundant use of words while ontology is (uncountable|philosophy) the branch of metaphysics that addresses the nature or essential characteristics of being and of things that exist; the study of being qua being.

tautology

English

Noun

  • (uncountable) redundant use of words
  • It is tautology to say, "Forward Planning".
  • (countable) An expression that features tautology.
  • ''The expression "raze to the ground" is a tautology, since the word "raze" includes the notion "to the ground".
  • * 1946 , Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy :
  • Pure mathematics consists of tautologies , analogous to ‘men are men’, but usually more complicated.
  • (countable, logic) A statement that is true for all values of its variables
  • Given a Boolean A, "A OR (NOT A)" is a tautology .
    A logical statement which is neither a tautology nor a contradiction is a contingency.
    A tautology''' can be verified by constructing a truth tree for its negation: if all of the leaf nodes of such truth tree end in X's, then the original (pre-negated) formula is a '''tautology .

    Antonyms

    * contradiction in terms * (in logic) contradiction * (literary) oxymoron

    Coordinate terms

    * (in logic) contingency, contradiction

    Derived terms

    * tautological * tautologically * tautologise * tautologist * tautologous * tautologously

    See also

    * pleonasm * redundancy * (Tautology) English words suffixed with -ology

    ontology

    Noun

    (ontologies)
  • (uncountable, philosophy) The branch of metaphysics that addresses the nature or essential characteristics of being and of things that exist; the study of being qua being.
  • * '>citation
  • (countable, philosophy) The theory of a particular philosopher or school of thought concerning the fundamental types of entity in the universe.
  • * 2000 , , Substantial Knowledge: Aristotle's Metaphysics , Hackett Publishing, p. 97:
  • The answer to the controversial question of whether Aristotle's ontology includes non-substantial particulars, then, is that it does.
  • (logic) A logical system involving theory of classes, developed by (1886-1939).
  • (computer science, information science) A structure of concepts or entities within a domain, organized by relationships; a system model.
  • Usage notes

    In the field of philosophy there is some variation in how the term ontology'' is used. ''Ontology'' is a much more recent term than ''metaphysics'' and takes its root meaning explicitly from the Greek term for ''being.'' ''Ontology'' can be used loosely as a rough equivalent to ''metaphysics or more precisely to denote that subset of the domain of metaphysics which is focused rigorously on the study of being as being.

    Holonyms

    * metaphysics

    Derived terms

    * ontologic * ontological * ontologist * ontologistic * formal ontology

    References

    * * * * * * " ontology" by F.P. Siegfried, in The Catholic Encyclopedia (Robert Appleton Company, New York, 1911) * Oxford English Dictionary , second edition (1989) * Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary (1987-1996) * Dictionary of Philosophy'', (editor), Philosophical Library (1962); ''see: "Ontology" by James K. Feibleman, page 219 * " Ontology" by Tom Gruber to appear in the Encyclopedia of Database Systems, Ling Liu and M. Tamer Özsu (editors), Springer-Verlag (2008) English words suffixed with -ology