Preconceptual Modeling in Software Engineering: Metaphysics of Diagrammatic Representations

TL;DR

This paper explores the foundational metaphysical principles behind preconceptual modeling in software engineering, using the thinging machine approach to clarify how reality's entities and processes can be systematically represented.

Contribution

It introduces a metaphysical basis for preconceptual modeling, integrating static and dynamic aspects of reality through the thinging machine framework.

Findings

TM modeling clarifies the nature of entities and processes

Pre-CM metaphysics aids in ontological clarity

Insights into the perceptibility of regions and events

Abstract

According to many researchers, conceptual model (CM) development is a hard task, and system requirements are difficult to collect, causing many miscommunication problems. CMs require more than modeling ability alone - they first require an understanding of the targeted domain that the model attempts to represent. Accordingly, a preconceptual modeling (pre-CM) stage is intended to address ontological issues before typical CM development is initiated. It involves defining a portion of reality when entities and processes are differentiated and integrated as unified wholes. This pre-CM phase forms the focus of research in this paper. The purpose is not show how to model; rather, it is to demonstrate how to establish a metaphysical basis of the involved portion of reality. To demonstrate such a venture, we employ the so-called thinging machine (TM) modeling that has been proposed as a high-level CM. A TM model integrates staticity and dynamism grounded in a fundamental construct called a thimac (things/machine). It involves two modes of reality, existence (events) and subsistence (regions - roughly, specifications of things and processes). Currently, the dominant approach in CM has evolved to limit its scope of application to develop ontological categorization (types of things). In the TM approach, pre-CM metaphysics is viewed as a part and parcel of CM itself. The general research problem is how to map TM constructs to what is out there in the targeted domain. Discussions involve the nature of thimacs (things and processes) and subsistence and existence as they are superimposed over each other in reality. Specifically, we make two claims, (a) the perceptibility of regions as a phenomenon and (b) the distinctiveness of existence as a construct for events. The results contribute to further the understanding of TM modeling in addition to introducing some metaphysical insights.