Étant une représentation formelle et explicite des connaissances d'un domaine, les ontologies font régulièrement l'objet de nombreux changements et ont ainsi besoin d'être constamment adaptées pour notamment pouvoir être réutilisées et répondre aux nouveaux besoins. Leur réutilisation peut prendre différentes formes (évolution, alignement, fusion, etc.), et présente plusieurs verrous scientifiques. L'un des plus importants est la préservation de la consistance de l'ontologie lors de son changement. Afin d'y répondre, nous nous intéressons dans cette thèse à étudier les changements ontologiques et proposons un cadre formel capable de faire évoluer et de fusionner des ontologies sans affecter leur consistance. Premièrement, nous proposons TGGOnto (Typed Graph Grammars for Ontologies), un nouveau formalisme permettant la représentation des ontologies et leurs changements par les grammaires de graphes typés. Un couplage entre ces deux formalismes est défini afin de profiter des concepts des grammaires de graphes, notamment les NAC (Negative Application Conditions), pour la préservation de la consistance de l'ontologie adaptée.Deuxièmement, nous proposons EvOGG (Evolving Ontologies with Graph Grammars), une approche d'évolution d'ontologies qui se base sur le formalisme GGTOnto et traite les inconsistances d'une manière a priori. Nous nous intéressons aux ontologies OWL et nous traitons à la fois : (1) l'enrichissement d'ontologies en étudiant leur niveau structurel et (2) le peuplement d'ontologies en étudiant les changements qui affectent les individus et leurs assertions. L'approche EvOGG définit des changements ontologiques de différents types (élémentaires, composées et complexes) et assure leur implémentation par l'approche algébrique de transformation de graphes, SPO (Simple PushOut). Troisièmement, nous proposons GROM (Graph Rewriting for Ontology Merging), une approche de fusion d'ontologies capable d'éviter les redondances de données et de diminuer les conflits dans le résultat de fusion. L'approche proposée se décompose en trois étapes : (1) la recherche de similarité entre concepts en se basant sur des techniques syntaxiques, structurelles et sémantiques ; (2) la fusion d'ontologies par l'approche algébrique SPO ; (3) l'adaptation de l'ontologie globale résultante par le biais des règles de réécriture de graphes.Afin de valider les travaux menés dans cette thèse, nous avons développé plusieurs outils open source basés sur l'outil AGG (Attributed Graph Grammar). Ces outils ont été appliqués sur un ensemble d'ontologies, essentiellement sur celles développées dans le cadre du projet européen CCAlps (Creatives Companies in Alpine Space) qui a financé les travaux de cette thèse. / Ontologies are a formal and explicit knowledge representation. They represent a given domain by their concepts and axioms while creating a consensus between a user community. To satisfy the new requirements of the represented domain, ontologies have to be regularly updated and adapted to maintain their consistency. The adaptation may take different forms (evolution, alignment, merging, etc.), and represents several scientific challenges. One of the most important is to preserve the consistency of the ontology during the changes. To address this issue, we are interested in this thesis to study the ontology changes and we propose a formal framework that can evolve and merge ontologies without affecting their consistency.First we propose TGGOnto (Typed Graph Grammars for Ontologies), a new formalism for the representation of ontologies and their changes using typed graph grammars (TGG). A coupling between ontologies and TGG is defined in order to take advantage of the graph grammars concepts, such as the NAC (Negative Application Conditions), in preserving the adapted ontology consistency. Second, we propose EvOGG (Evolving Ontologies with Graph Grammars), an ontology evolution approach that is based on the TGGOnto formalism that avoids inconsistencies using an a priori approach. We focus on OWL ontologies and we address both : (1) ontology enrichment by studying their structural level and (2) ontology population by studying the changes affecting individuals and their assertions. EvOGG approach defines different types of ontology changes (elementary, composite and complex) and ensures their implementation by the algebraic approach of graph transformation, SPO (Single pushout).Third, we propose GROM (Graph Rewriting for Ontology Merging), an ontologies merging approach that avoids data redundancy and reduces conflict in the merged result. The proposed approach consists of three steps: (1) the similarity search between concepts based on syntactic, structural and semantic techniques; (2) the ontologies merging by the algebraic approach SPO; (3) the global ontology adaptation with graph rewriting rules.To validate our proposals, we have developed several open source tools based on AGG (Attributed Graph Grammar) tool. These tools were applied to a set of ontologies, mainly on those developed in the frame of the CCAlps (Creatives Companies in Alpine Space) European project, which funded this thesis work.

En prenant comme point de départ les débats célèbres des années 1970 et 1980 portés autour de l’universalité de l’herméneutique, des débats entraînant les grands acteurs de la pensée du XXe siècle comme Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas et Jacques Derrida, cette thèse s’efforce d’identifier, derrière la revendication à l’universalité de l’herméneutique, la véritable problématique philosophique qui est, à nos yeux, celle de l’intelligibilité herméneutique du temps. Nous tâchons de saisir cette intelligibilité, qui traduit l’articulation paradoxale de l’être et du temps comme différence, par une lecture des configurations que « l’oubli du sens de l’être » et « la distance temporelle » connaissent dans la pensée de Martin Heidegger et de Hans-Georg Gadamer. En effet, cette lecture figurale de l’oubli et de la distance temporelle, qui forme les deux grandes sections de notre travail, se veut une modalité de comprendre la manière paradoxale du temps de susciter la différence herméneutique, notamment sa capacité simultanée à générer l’occultation et le dévoilement du sens, d’accorder d’un seul geste le surcroît de sens et la finitude de la compréhension. Suite à cette lecture, nous concluons que l’herméneutique ontologique a le grand mérite d’avoir interrogé le phénomène de la différence entre compréhension et mécompréhension et d’y avoir décelé, à la fois comme préalable et comme condition de son effectivité, l’intelligibilité herméneutique du temps. Finalement, l’universalité herméneutique même révèle sa nature essentiellement temporelle : comme « aspect productif de la temporalité », elle se confond en dernier ressort avec la dynamique du ce qui est à comprendre. / By taking as starting point the famous debates from the 70s and the 80s around the universality of hermeneutics, which had inflamed some of the 20th century greatest thinkers, such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas et Jacques Derrida, this PhD thesis attempts to identify the actual philosophical question behind the hermeneutics’ claim of universality: the time’s hermeneutical intelligibility. I strive to express this intelligibility, which translates the paradoxical articulation of time and being as difference, by proposing an interpretation of two essential “figures” for the thinking of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer: “the forgetting of being” and “the temporal distance”. More precisely, this interpretation or, as I call it, “figural reading” intends to understand the time’s paradoxical way of engendering the hermeneutical difference, that is: its capacity to generate simultaneously the occultation and the revealing of meaning, its potential to give the surplus of meaning and, at the same time, the finitude of comprehension. As a result of this figural reading, I conclude that the hermeneutics has its worth in interrogating the phenomenon of the difference between understanding and misunderstanding, and more precisely in identifying, as a foregoing condition of this difference’s effectivity, the time’s hermeneutical intelligibility. Finally, the hermeneutical universality reveals its genuine temporal nature: taken as a “productive aspect of the temporality”, it merges into the dynamics “of what is to be understood”.

Vilken grundläggande idé utgår vi ifrån när vi talar om förnuft och rationalitet och vilka konsekvenser får detta för synen på individen, individen i samhället samt individen i datasystemet? Uppsaten belyser problematik rörande den icke-situerade individen, vilken inte är en individ utan snarare en skenbar produkt utav homogena värderingar.

This dissertation examines three novels by the author and critic A.S. Byatt, namely Possession (1990), Babel Tower (1996) and The Biographer’s Tale (2000), using a hermeneutic method of analysis. The investigation pays specific attention to the structure of the novels and how this compares to the structure of the ancient palimpsest. Theoretical information on the palimpsest as model is based on relevant writings by Thomas Carlyle (1830, 1833), Thomas De Quincey (1845) through to Josephine McDonagh (1987), Gérard Genette (1997) and Sarah Dillon (2007). The ensuing argument is that Byatt’s use of postmodernist pseudo-intertextuality and intertextuality cause her novels to have a palimpsestic structure of various layers, with the effect that textual boundaries are transgressed. Ultimately Byatt’s writing strategies result in ontological uncertainty for the reader. / MA (English), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014.

Gilles Deleuze’s ontology is often understood to ground a kind of radical pluralism, the political defense of which is thought to be articulated most strongly in the Capitalism and Schizophrenia books. It is clear, however, that this “politics” is defined in a wholly negative way, and that the revolutionary dimension of these books is animated by a strictly ethical logic. In my view, if there is a politics in Deleuze it must be understood in relation to the central problem of his ontology: namely, the problem of understanding how Being is produced. To grasp politics as a singularity, as a mode of ontological production, has a number of radical consequences – consequences, however, that Deleuze himself did not embrace. Ultimately, Deleuze’s conception of ontological production appears marked by an apolitics, in that any effective mobilization of Being’s transformative potential requires that we stand posed to sacrifice anything of the integrity and organizational capacity of political existence that limits the expression of Being itself.

This dissertation is centered around a set of apparently conflicting intuitions that we may have about mathematics. On the one hand, we are inclined to believe that the theorems of mathematics are true. Since many of these theorems are existence assertions, it seems that if we accept them as true, we also commit ourselves to the existence of mathematical objects. On the other hand, mathematical objects are usually thought of as abstract objects that are non-spatiotemporal and causally inert. This makes it difficult to understand how we can have knowledge of them and how they can have any relevance for our mathematical theories. I begin by characterizing a realist position in the philosophy of mathematics and discussing two of the most influential arguments for that kind of view. Next, after highlighting some of the difficulties that realism faces, I look at a few alternative approaches that attempt to account for our mathematical practice without making the assumption that there exist abstract mathematical entities. More specifically, I examine the fictionalist views developed by Hartry Field, Mark Balaguer, and Stephen Yablo, respectively. A common feature of these views is that they accept that mathematics interpreted at face value is committed to the existence of abstract objects. In order to avoid this commitment, they claim that mathematics, when taken at face value, is false. I argue that the fictionalist idea of mathematics as consisting of falsehoods is counter-intuitive and that we should aim for an account that can accommodate both the intuition that mathematics is true and the intuition that the causal inertness of abstract mathematical objects makes them irrelevant to mathematical practice and mathematical knowledge. The solution that I propose is based on Rudolf Carnap's distinction between an internal and an external perspective on existence. I argue that the most reasonable interpretation of the notions of mathematical truth and existence is that they are internal to mathematics and, hence, that mathematical truth cannot be used to draw the conclusion that mathematical objects exist in an external/ontological sense.

Gilles Deleuze’s ontology is often understood to ground a kind of radical pluralism, the political defense of which is thought to be articulated most strongly in the Capitalism and Schizophrenia books. It is clear, however, that this “politics” is defined in a wholly negative way, and that the revolutionary dimension of these books is animated by a strictly ethical logic. In my view, if there is a politics in Deleuze it must be understood in relation to the central problem of his ontology: namely, the problem of understanding how Being is produced. To grasp politics as a singularity, as a mode of ontological production, has a number of radical consequences – consequences, however, that Deleuze himself did not embrace. Ultimately, Deleuze’s conception of ontological production appears marked by an apolitics, in that any effective mobilization of Being’s transformative potential requires that we stand posed to sacrifice anything of the integrity and organizational capacity of political existence that limits the expression of Being itself.

This research determines the ground for a Christian theological anthropology that makes provision for a doctrine that supports human self-realization. It is evident from the study that anthropological self-realization is an involved process of becoming truly human, not an isolated course founded solely on the biblical knowledge of being created in the image and likeness of God. All sciences, and in particular anthropological sciences, enjoy the prerogative of unraveling and analyzing the human person. Whether these sciences are neuro-biological, psychological, theological, philosophical, biblical, spiritual or mystical in character, each with its specific method legitimately attempts to explain the complexities of the human person. In the light of this neither philosophy nor theology possess the exclusive claim to authentic human wisdom. In truth most scientific insights have a combined impact on the self-realizing growth and development of humanity. The process of self-realization links theology to real life questions such as evil, suffering, hope, love, justice and freedom, as well as with the immanent, the transcendent, the human and the divine. This thesis holds to the opinion that a theology of self-realization would contribute to the 'humanization' of theology since it brings praxis and theory into close alignment. This study equally expresses the conviction that the doctrine of consecrated vowed life, an ecclesiastical structure in the Roman Catholic Church, is particularly in need of humanization, as the notion of 'self' as a strength has been notably absent from traditional treatises on the practices of religious life. Conventional forms of consecrated vowed life called the woman to suppress and spiritualize at least some of her femininity. This was due to the distorted theological anthropology that sustained consecrated life in which God was presented as an idea to be grasped intellectually, and not an experience to be lived. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / Th. D. (Systematic Theology)

The growth of the Church in Africa, namely at numerical level, is tremendous. However, we notice that her impact on society and public life is not so visible as the growth is, since Christian values are embodied by Christians. Yet, the Church has huge human resources, pastors, missionaries, lay leaders and theologians. The challenge for the Church in Africa is to incarnate and inculturate these values and the living message of the Gospel. In this thesis we question the co-operation between the Church and mission agencies, between native pastors and western missionaries. We notice that since 150 years, there has been a huge gap between these two entities. This is due to the fact that Theology and Missiology look like two lines that never meet. This situation leads us to revisit not only the current paradigm Church-Mission but also the current link between Theology and Missiology. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D.Th. (Missiology)

Text in Afrikaans / Die doel van die studie is om krities te besin oor die noodsaaklikheid van Fundamentele Andragogiek in die opleiding van onderwysers in 'n kontemporer-moderne wereld, ten einde aan te toon dat dosente beter toegerus vir hulle begeleidingstaak sal wees indien hulle oor kennis van Fundamentele Andragogiek beskik. HOOFSTUK EEN Die tema word ingelei deur titel- en begripsverheldering, probleemstelling, doelformulering, metodologiese verantwoording en programaankondiging. HOOFSTUK TWEE Fundamentele Andragogiek word antropologies-ontologies begrond, enkele grondvorme van menswees word beskryf en uitgele en aandag word gegee aan die hunkeringe van die onderwysstudent-in-opleiding as ageinsgebeure. HOOFSTUK DRIE 'n Snel veranderende wereld waarin onderwysersopleiding voltrek word, word ondersoek om vas te stel in watter mate snelle verandering 'n bedreiging vir die grondvorme van menswees inhou. HOOFSTUK VIER Die opleiding van onderwysers in 'n kontemporer-moderne RSA word ondersoek, om vas te stel watter eise en verwagtinge die Ministerie van Onderwys en Opleiding het. HOOFSTUK VYF 'n Terugskou word op die studie gedoen en en enkele toekomstake word ge'identifiseer. / The study aimed at reflecting critically on the need for Fundamental Andragogics in the training of teachers in a contemporary modern world. CHAPTER ONE The theme is introduced through clarification of the title and concepts, stating problems, goal setting, methodological justification and exposition of further programme. CHAPTER TWO Fundamental Andragogics is anthropologic-ontologically grounded. Some basic forms of being human are described and attention is given to the yearnings of the teacher trainee. CHAPTER THREE The rapidly changing world is researched in order to ascertain to what extent rapid change poses a threat to the basic forms of being human. CHAPTER FOUR The training of teachers in a contemporary modern RSA is researched in order to ascertain what the demands and expectations of the Ministry of Education and Training are. CHAPTER FIVE The study is viewed in retrospect and some future objectives for teacher training are identified. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (Philosophy of Education)