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Dear Klaus, Your final comment [PhD-Design 23.04.2004; 06:06+2] "i could also talk about the oppressive use of ontologies, which are constructed by someone, but then imposed on others who are asked to compare their knowledge to it, denying the constructedness of ontology." is very interesting and relevant in the context of the growth industry called Ontological Engineering: the construction of Ontologies (note the Capital 'O' here, to distinguish all this from the "ontology" we have been talking about so far) for the Semantic Web and for so called Knowledge Management and Knowledge Sharing applications. Here, not only are the poor software agents (computer programs), that will supposedly do wonderful things for us, such as make all our travel arrangements, forced to use Ontologies built by others (people), but the field even expects, people to use these Ontologies as the way to "share knowledge". The result is--we can see it already--that knowledge is thought of and treated as something separable from people (explicitly represented), and, more worrying, that people are left out of the basic picture, and only allowed in if they agree to accept the impose Ontologies. This might be an acceptable way to treat software agents, but it has, in my view, a seriously de-humanising effect on people: and I speak as a researcher seriously engaged in various projects in this area. Soon, I think, we will need to start singing "Where have all the knowledges gone" (with apologies to Pete Seeger [1]). Best regards, Tim [1] Where have all the flowers gone; <http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/where.html> Tim Smithers Donostia / San Sebastián The Basque Country