Relative complexity

I'm told that software engineers don't understand taxonomies and ontologies, which confuses me a little - or actually a hell of a lot because I'm not sure what this statement actually means?

Are we saying that our software engineers are on one hand stupid but on the other hand build complex class hierarchies and relationships then navigate through the various mechanisms for building instances of those?

I currently have to construct an ontology/taxonomy for data/information with some real bizarre simplicity requirements which will ultimately reduce something inherently simple down to something unusable and without any real worth. Primarily because I am told that software engineers won't understand anything complex.

This troubles me.

Must go, off to another debate about syntax, or specifically the naming of things; or probably the colour of the picture in Powerpoint - wrong shade of pastel blue again....Wadler strikes again...