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An old concept from AI, the semantic network, may have a second life in the Semantic Web. In a semantic network, ontologies of distinct types are interpreted within evaluation networks that get their meaning from the semantic relations in which they participate. In a sense, the subjects of the ontolgies discover their roles by consequence of relationships rather than by declaration or assignment. This can be seen as a direct result of RDF 'entailment rules' and the consequent 'entailment nets'.

In the biological sciences, there is a huge movement afoot to create a workable set of medical ontologies. According the definition of 'semantic web' provided by Genomics & Proteomics ( nestled between 'self-organization and 'semiochemical', the goal is the "unification of all scientific content by computer languages and technologies that permit the interrelationships between scientific concepts to be communicated between machines".

Later sections will cover the subject of semantic networks and the Knowledge Web in great detail.