Abstract. Building ground models is one of the three constituents of the engineering method for computer-based systems which is known as Abstract State Machine (ASM) method [16]. In this note we characterize ground models, whose epistemological role for a foundation of system design resembles the one Aristotle assigned to axioms to ground science in reality, avoiding infinite regress. We explain how ASM ground models help to resolve two major problems of requirements engineering, providing means a) to obtain for complex computer-based systems an adequate understanding by humans, and b) to cope with ever-changing requirements by faithfully capturing and tracing them via well-documented modeling–for–change. We point out that via an appropriate refinement method one can relate ground models to executable code. 1 IINTRODUCTION In a recent paper [6] Daniel Berry identifies requirements engineering as the main source for “the inevitable pain of software development”, explaining “why there

In social science, everything is somewhat correlated with everything (“crud factor”), so whether H0 is refuted depends solely on statistical power. In psychology, the directional counternull of interest, H*, is not equivalent to the substantive theory T, there being many plausible alternative explanations of a mere directional trend (weak use of significance tests). Testing against a predicted point value (the strong use of significant tests) can discorroborate T by refuting H*. If used thus to abandon T forthwith, it is too strong, not allowing for theoretical verisimilitude as distinguished from truth. Defense and amendment of an apparently falsified T are appropriate strategies only when T has accumulated a good track record (“money in the bank”) by making successful or near-miss predictions of low prior probability (Salmon’s “damn strange coincidences”). Two rough indexes are proposed for numerifying the track record, by considering jointly how intolerant (risky) and how close (accurate) are its predictions. For almost three quarters of a century, the received doctrine about appraising psychological theories has been to perform a statistical significance test. In the “soft ” areas (clinical, counseling, developmental, personality, and social psychology),

Althoh) wedo no pro::h to be capableo defining a `roM)j;h fo the mathematicalfohematica o SEoh! the next ten years, we can discernsoc impornhF steps that woat be extremely usefulfo the systematisatio o designknonhjq:B ThefoFB poFB is thecoh!;) o normal desal , intro?h]B: by [13] to describe the syste atic approM?M or ature engineering disciplines to standard design s. It is wohFM) o nohF that the athe atics (and science) used by engineers is not the sa e as tho?q used by athe aticians (and scientists). Using his categoFh];qMq) ot engineering knoneerin and a fra ewo:B based oe the episte oiste oi science develoh!M by the lo hF!) e piricists, we were able to ooe h! so e useful theohF!BM)h and ethoM?q?h];j! issues, which woM):Bh];j!q)hoq)hohF:MhF:qho ature SE praxis. Keywords Foundations, engineering, normal design, radical design, epistemology 1 INTRODUCTION Futuro.2`v is a difficult endeavot hFB; T is is particularly t e case if o h is asked to prod hF a `ro?FFh]!: an itin...

During the last three years we have been building an instantiation of a system's development paradigm, called ARTS. The paradigm consists of a view of what a system development environment is, in general terms, and a methodology for instantiating the paradigm for particular and specific domains of application. The motivation for and the explanation of the paradigm are derived from extant epistemological models of the method of Natural Science. We assert that these models are directly applicable to the domain of software and systems construction, and that, from them, we can derive principles and explanations for what a software development environment should be. We present a brief description of the Statement View of scientific theories, a conceptual architecture for software development environments whose rationale is given in terms of the Statement View and some examples of how the present instantiation of ARTS realises this conceptual architecture. 1# INTRODUCTION An envir...

the next ten years, we can discern some important steps that would be extremely useful for the systematisation of design knowledge. The focal point is the concept of normaldesign, introduced by [Vincenti] to describe the systematic approach of mature engineering disciplines to standard design problems. Using his categorisation of engineering knowledge and a framework based on the epistemology of science developed by the logical empiricists, we were able to outline some useful theoretical and methodological issues, which would contribute to developing a mature SE praxis.

The paper gives an overview of key themes of twentieth century philosophical treatment of the language of science, with special emphasis on the meaning variance of scientific terms and the comparison of alternative theories. These themes are dealt with via discussion of the topics of: (a) the logical positivist principle of verifiability and the problem of the meaning of theoretical terms, (b) the postpositivist thesis of semantic incommensurability, and (c) the scientific realist response to incommensurability based on the causal theory of reference.

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This paper reports on research geared toward recovering high level abstractions from structured specifications. Our research goal is to investigate how other sources besides code can be used in the reverse engineering of soflware systems. Departing from structured specifications we designed a process to recover business rules and domain facts. We use a simple representation scheme based on natural language with the objective to help the communication between software engineers and clients. Our results made us believe that our process is feasible and should aggregate value to the traditional code level reverse engineering approaches. 1