Culture as Applied Ontology

Abstract

The smallest human isolate is a culture, not an individual. The test for valid isolation is the prospect of survival: the individual cannot live alone, a culture can. Philosophy in the old sense of a subjective study involving supernatural or transcendental knowledge was inimical to the physical sciences; but this is not true of philosophy in the new sense and it is not true of the social sciences. We shall see what these two propositions involve, for they result in the proposal to set forth a certain theory concerning the relations of that part of philosophy named ontology to those large-scale items of the social field called human cultures, more specifically in the use of ontologies as instruments of cultural analysis. The term, ontology, has acquired an unfortunate reputation among scientists because of the theological endorsement by which it has been identified with a particular theory of ontology long considered official in certain quarters. But the field of ontology is wider than any particular theory comprised within it Since the association with theology is not the meaning of ontology intended here, it may be well to begin with a definition and description.