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

Introduction Information "can be said in many ways", like being (Aristotle, Metaphysics G.2), and the correlation is probably not accidental. Information, with its cognate concepts like computation, data, communication etc., plays a key role in the ways we have come to understand, model and transform reality. Quite naturally, information has adapted to some of being's ridges. Because information is a multifaceted and polyvalent concept, the question "what is information?" is misleadingly simple, exactly like "what is being?". As an instance of the Socratic question "ti esti...?", it poses a fundamental and complex problem, intrinsically fascinating and no less challenging than "what is truth?", "what is virtue?" "what is knowledge?" or "what is meaning?". It is not a request for dictionary explorations but an ideal point of intersection of philosophical investigations, whose answers can diverge both because of the conclusions reached and because of the approaches adopted. Approaches

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