L’eredità di Barry Smith e David Mark per le ontologie informatiche della geografia

This article is intended as a reconstruction of Barry Smith and D.M. Mark’s Geographical Categories: an Ontological Investigation, which represents a fundamental reference for the contemporary debate on geo-ontologies. The first section is concerned with the ontological presuppositions of geo-ontologies, which, according to the two authors, encompass philosophy, computer science and geography. As a second step, this preliminary analysis is taken to be a helpful device in showing the importance of geographical naive conceptualizations (section two) and how non-expert subjects think of geospatial phenomena (section three). Finally, the fourth section is focused on the classification of the main contemporary geoontologies in spatial, physical/natural and human ontologies, and on the reception of Smith and Mark’s thesis (presuppositions, experiments and results) in the contemporary debate.