A knowledge-base is a structured human-made repository that organizes information for retrieval, inference, and decision support. It comprises encoded facts, rules, or data structures maintained by humans for machine consumption. The boundary is defined by the schema or ontology that governs its contents, and persistence is ensured through digital storage systems and periodic updates. [formal: cognitio_bases | substrate: mind | horizon: a life | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
knowledge-bases
A knowledge-base is a structured human-made repository that organizes information for retrieval, inference, and decision support. It comprises encoded facts, rules, or data structures maintained by humans for machine consumption. The bound…
Definition
Why it is in scope
human-made structures for storing, organizing, and retrieving structured knowledge — from library catalogs and encyclopedias to digital databases. Built to persist beyond individual memory through systematic classification and indexing.
Names and aliases
- knowledge-basesen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmr784qq1000ks126wltnuaxhDEPENDS_ON →
Knowledge-bases require language to operate — without the capacity to encode and retrieve symbols, no knowledge-base functions. Language is the constitutive substrate for any stored knowledge structure.
- cmreawf22000vg8vu90kto3goDEPENDS_ON →
Knowledge-bases — human-made systems for organizing, storing, and retrieving information — constitutively require information as their subject matter. Remove information from the concept and a knowledge-base has nothing to organize. Present-tense necessity confirmed.
Relations to this entry
- cmslbtqpk06oynobp5phqjpzy← DEPENDS_ON
RAG operationally requires a knowledge base: given a query, it retrieves relevant passages from the knowledge store before generating. Remove the knowledge base component and RAG collapses to a plain language model — the retrieval-augmentation stops operating entirely. Direction: newer concept (RAG) depends on older concept (knowledge-bases).
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 18, 2026, 2:16 PM UTC
- Content hash
- 70c80e1cb6050eaa59f504968d7812b22c4e9b2c45d4cc5e7223d8ee45ec0ada