Need for an FM ontology

The overall success of FME-SoE will rely on reaching consensus about the FM area of research and teaching: sooner or later, some kind of FM («meta») domain analysis will be required. Ever since Carl Linnaeus times, the activity of framing a universe of discourse into classes has always been regarded as essential to the birth of effective science. Addressing this hot topic demands effective answers to questions such as

• What is a formal method?

  Answer in the Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: A scientific and engineering discipline of rigorous reasoning about correctness of computer programs, based on the use of symbolic logic.

  Perhaps the ultimate target of any formal method (in computing as elsewhere in engineering, as stressed by [10]) is captured by the following «stamp», which most software houses don't use at all:
  
  This entails the need for languages amenable to mathematical reasoning under a careful balance between descriptive power and calculational (reasoning) power .

• What is the borderline between mathematical foundations and formal methods «as such»?

• What is the borderline between informal and formal methods? What is a «rigorous» method?

We still have a long way to go.