This folder is about meaning: how signs point to things, how language carries meaning, how categories are defined, how arguments go wrong, and how shared vocabularies make complex systems possible. That may sound abstract, but it is a practical rebuild capability. Communities fail when people use the same words for different things, different words for the same thing, or untested assumptions as if they were facts.
The folder is mixed. Some documents are critical-thinking posters and conversation rules, which are useful at A1. The ontology and systems-engineering material belongs closer to A2 because it supports formal classification, requirements, taxonomies, knowledge models, and technical coordination. For this library, the topic matters because InfoPreserver itself is a taxonomy and meaning-management project.
Semiotics studies signs and sign systems. Semantics studies meaning. Linguistics studies language. Ontology, in this context, studies what kinds of things exist in a domain and how they relate. A road sign, a map symbol, a medical label, a folder name, a part number, and a technical requirement are all signs that must be interpreted correctly.
When a community is rebuilding knowledge, terminology is infrastructure. If "water treatment," "sanitation," "sterilization," and "disinfection" are confused, people make dangerous decisions. If a workshop uses inconsistent names for parts, maintenance fails. If a taxonomy hides dependency levels, recovery planning becomes misleading.
An ontology is a structured model of concepts and relationships. It says what the categories are, what belongs to them, and how they connect. In practical terms, ontologies support catalogs, databases, engineering requirements, medical vocabularies, maintenance systems, and libraries like this one.
The local Ontology_2015.31774.pdf and the NASA systems engineering handbook point toward formal knowledge organization. The critical-thinking cards and posters support the human side: avoiding fallacies, bias, ambiguity, and bad arguments.
Rules of civil conversation, fallacy recognition, bias awareness, and creative-thinking prompts are not decorative. They help groups test claims without destroying cooperation. A rebuild community needs disagreement that improves decisions, not disagreement that freezes action or fragments trust.
This folder should stay cross-cutting. It does not belong only to philosophy or computing; it supports every capability family.
This folder contains 13 documents. Useful starting points include:
Ontology_2015.31774.pdf - ontology-focused reference.nasa_systems_engineering_handbook_0.pdf - systems engineering and requirements context.01 Fallacies Poster_24x36.pdf and 02 Fallacies Poster_A3.pdf - fallacy references.03 Biases Poster_24x36.pdf and 04 Biases Poster_A3.pdf - cognitive bias references.05 Rules Of Civil Conversation Posters.pdf - group reasoning norms.06 Critical Thinking Cards USLetter.pdf - practical teaching cards.30_A2_Industrial_Seed\Foundational_Knowledge\Semiotics_Semantics_Ontology_LinguisticsThe following source PDFs are preserved in this folder and are listed here so they remain discoverable even when their filenames are historical, abbreviated, or irregular: