Conceptual Modeling of Events Based on One-Category Ontology (2203.00850v1)

Abstract: In previous works, we proposed a one-category (entitled thimac) conceptual model called a thinging machine (TM), which integrates staticity (e.g., objects) and dynamism (e.g., events) without losing valuable aspects of diagrammatic intuition in conceptual modeling. We proposed applying TM to conceptual modeling in software engineering (e.g., on or above the level of UML as a conceptual modeling language). In this paper, to show such an application in software engineering, we first present a complete high-level description of a library service system to demonstrate the TM s applicability. Furthermore, we explore the TM s features, emphasizing the realization of thimacs as events. The purpose is to develop better understanding of the TM notions by contrasting them with their uses in related fields. The notion of an event plays a prominent role in many fields of study, including philosophy, linguistics, literary theory, probability theory, artificial intelligence, physics, and history. A TM event is a static thimac with a time breath (time subthimac) that infuses dynamism into the thimac. It arises from how the TM static region is infected with time. Such a view is contrasted with some philosophical and linguistics definitions of an event (e.g., unit of experience of Whitehead). We also raise interesting issues (e.g., event movement) in this study.