In domains concerned with global change, achieving resilience in socio-ecological systems is highly desired; however making this concept operational in reality has been a struggle partly due to the conflation of the term by these domains. Although resilience is vastly researched in sustainability science, climate change and disaster management for some reason this concept is not dealt with from an ontological perspective. In this paper, the foundation for a formal theory of resilience is laid out. I propose that the common view of resilience as ‘the ability of a system to cope with a disturbance’ is a disposition that is realized through processes since resilience cannot exist without its bearer i.e. a system and can only be discerned over a period of time when a potential disturbance is identified. To this end, the constructs of the Basic Formal Ontology are applied to ground the proposed categorization of resilience. In so doing, I adhere to the notion of semantic reference frames by employing a top-level ontology to anchor the notion of resilience.