A journey to BSO: Evaluating earlier and more recent ideas of mario bunge as a foundation for information systems and software development

Abstract

A prominent theoretical foundation for IT analysis, design and development is general ontology - a branch of philosophy which studies what exists in reality. A widely used general ontology is BWW (Bunge-Wand-Weber) – based on ideas of the philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge, synthesized by Wand and Weber. It is regarded as a major contribution to conceptual modeling, database design, data collection design and information quality, as well as theory of IT. At the same time, the ontology was founded on an early subset of Bunge’s philosophy and 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 research by Bunge aiming at addressing this question. We compare the constructs of BWW with what we call Bunge’s Systemist Ontology (BSO) – a new ontology based on broader and more recent ideas developed by Bunge. Informed by this comparison we offer suggestions for ontology studies as well as future applications of Bunge in conceptual modeling and other areas of IT.