Individual and general objects

Human language provides means for describing individual objects, but also general objects. An individual object is a concept that reflects a particular object instance (real world phenomenon or idea). Typically, individual objects are represented as list of individual properties (property values). A general object is a concept that defines common features of a group of individual objects. E.g. Paul Miller refers to an individual object, while person denotes a general object.

Since modeling is an abstract issue, in TM mainly general objects are considered. In some cases, terminology, however, is defined in the context of an individual object, e.g. an enterprise, i.e. concepts and terms get its specific meaning in the context of this enterprise.

Typically, the meaning of general objects is transferred by means of examples ("This is a tree"). After being introduced to a sufficient number of trees, even a child is able to recognize a tree without being able to define the concept of the general object tree. Thus, many concepts for general objects are known, but not defined in detail. In order to transfer knowledge between subject area experts and IT experts it is, however, not sufficient to "know", what a general object is, but it has to be defined precisely.

Knowledge presentation requires detailed definitions of general objects. Borderlines for object classes have to be defined in order to distinguish objects referring to different concepts.