Science, Philosophy, and Applied Ontology A common project for a unitary description of reality

In this paper, mutual interactions between science and philosophy are analysed from the point of view of contemporary applied ontology. Firstly, we shall address the question as to whether science needs philosophy, offering some perspectives that might be helpful in developing a synergetic relationship between these different domains. Secondly, we shall point out how it is possible to bring together the work of scientists and philosophers from a practical perspective. In particular, we shall focus our attention on the GEOLAT project, which offers a practical exemplification of the interaction between science and philosophy in the contemporary debate. The aim of GEOLAT project is to make accessible the Latin literature through a query interface of geographic/cartographic type. Since all texts written in the classical period are rooted in geographic space, they all contain references to geographic places in some respect. Therefore, it becomes interesting to use a web resource that includes references to geographic context. Most research is based on the use of a gazetteer in which a place is normally represented by point locations. The limited spatial semantics associated with these approaches narrows the scope of their ability to retrieve useful resources for spatial queries. All these information are collected in a comprehensive and informative geographical ontology, which plays a central role in intelligent spatial search on the web and serves as a shared vocabulary for spatial mark-up ofWeb sources. This ontology plays a specific role in representing information in four different domains: contemporary and ancient geography, informatics, Latin literature, as well as philosophical ontology of geography. The examination of this ontology allows us to rethink the relationship between science and philosophy on new bases, considering these disciplines as parts of a common project for a unitary description of reality.