Abstract

General ontology is a prominent theoretical foundation for information technology analysis, design, and development. Ontology is a branch of philosophy which studies what exists in reality. A widely used ontology in information systems, especially for conceptual modeling, is the BWW (Bunge–Wand–Weber), which is based on ideas of the philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge, as synthesized by Wand and Weber. The ontology was founded on an early subset of Bunge’s philosophy; however, many of Bunge’s ideas have evolved since then. An important question, therefore, is: do the more recent ideas expressed by Bunge call for a new ontology? In this paper, we conduct an analysis of Bunge’s earlier and more recent works to address this question. We present a new ontology based on Bunge’s later and broader works, which we refer to as Bunge’s Systemist Ontology (BSO). We then compare BSO to the constructs of BWW. The comparison reveals both considerable overlap between BSO and BWW, as well as substantial differences. From this comparison and the initial exposition of BSO, we provide suggestions for further ontology studies and identify research questions that could provide a fruitful agenda for future scholarship in conceptual modeling and other areas of information technology.

Highlights

  • Human society is relentlessly increasing its reliance on information technology (IT)

  • A general ontology can provide IT development with theoretically grounded, consistent, formalized and rigorous meaning for the basic notions of what exists in reality

  • The philosopher Mario Bunge made a profound impact on the fields of conceptual modeling, software engineering, information quality, and database design

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Summary

Introduction

Human society is relentlessly increasing its reliance on information technology (IT). A general ontology can provide IT development with theoretically grounded, consistent, formalized and rigorous meaning for the basic notions of what exists in reality.. A general ontology can provide IT development with theoretically grounded, consistent, formalized and rigorous meaning for the basic notions of what exists in reality.1 Due to their potential to put IT development on stronger methodological foundations, ontological studies are widely embraced by the IT community. The BWW has been applied in theoretical, empirical and design research across a wide range of disciplines [33, 115] It has provided the conceptual background to design and implement conceptual programming-based tools [43, 86], which facilitate the design of an ontology-driven conceptual modeling system. The new ontology is compared to BWW, the results of the comparison are discussed and implications for future research are detailed

Background
Fundamentals for constructing Bunge’s Systemist Ontology
Bunge’s Systemist Ontology versus BWW
BSO beyond BWW
Similarities and differences between BWW and BSO
Reinvigorating ontological debates in IT
Supporting modeling in new domains
Evaluation and development of modeling grammars
Support and guidance for novel design patterns
Work on formalizing BSO and evaluating its implications
Conclusion
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