Thoughts about Structuralization, Specialization, Instantiation, and Metaization

In knowledge engineering, ontology creation, and especially in knowledge-based configuration often used relations are: aggregate relations (has-parts, here called structural relations), specialization relation (is-a), and instantiation (instance-of). A combination of the later is called metaization, which denotes the use of multiple instantiation layers. Structural and specialization relations are mainly used for organizing the knowledge represented on one layer. Instantiation layers model different kind of knowledge, i.e. knowledge about sets, individuals, and knowledge about knowledge (metaknowledge). By applying reasoning techniques on each layer, reasoning on metaknowledge is enabled.