Carving Nature/Conceptual Models at Joints Using Thinging Machines

Sabah Al-Fedaghi

REVIEW 4 major objections 6 minor 18 references

Carving Nature/Conceptual Models at Joints Using Thinging Machines

T0 review · 4 major / 6 minor · reviewed 2026-08-15 · deepseek-v4-flash

Challenge this review Re-run · record.json Download PDF Read on arXiv ↗ Review JSON

Pith's one-line read The paper argues that carving events in conceptual models bottoms out in five generic actions: create, process, release, transfer, receive.

desk verdict A clear, well-illustrated extension of Al-Fedaghi's TM framework to carving events, but the foundational claim rests on an unproven base of five generic actions. read the letter →

arxiv 2505.13656 v1 pith:KGY226PO submitted 2025-05-19 cs.SE

Sabah Al-Fedaghi This is my paper · ORCID

classification cs.SE

keywords conceptualmodelingcarvingnatureatitsjointsthingingmachinethimaceventfivegenericactionsontologicaldiagrammatic

verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal

The pith

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The reading

The paper argues that the old metaphor of carving nature at its joints can be turned into a concrete rule for conceptual modeling: every event, when cut apart, should bottom out in the five generic actions of a thinging machine: create, process, release, transfer, and receive. It defines an event as a thimac, a thing/machine, with a time feature added to a static diagram called a region, and it claims that both structural carving, what exists, and processual carving, what happens, end at the same five-action base. The payoff, if the claim holds, would be a modeling language that describes static structure and dynamic events with one vocabulary instead of mixing them, as the paper says common models do. The paper explicitly does not present a finished solution for carving static TM models into events; it generalizes the problem and treats the five-action base as the foundation for a new type of reality carving.

What carries the argument

The load-bearing machinery is the thimac, defined in one phrase as a thing/machine whose whole makeup is five generic actions: create, process, release, transfer, and receive. Its static diagrammatic space is a region; adding time turns a region into an event; and an exicon, a slice of pure existence that lacks the create action, is introduced as what upholds events as existing. The five actions do the carving work: flow between thimacs supervenes on release, transfer, and receive, and the paper uses this base to decompose example events such as air entering the lungs or inserting a new patient into small diagrams.

What would settle it

Find one real workflow step that cannot be faithfully decomposed into the five actions without adding a new primitive, for example, a timeout-and-wait step, the destruction or consumption of a resource, or a spontaneous event with no creator and no receiver. Sketching that step as a TM diagram and showing the indispensable extra action would refute the claim that carving bottoms out at the five generic actions.

Watch

Extended reading notes

Core claim

The central claim is that carving at the joints bottoms out at the base level of the five generic actions. For the paper, categories, entities, and relationships are not separate primitives; they are thimacs or subthimacs, and an event is a thimac supplied with time, a region plus the dynamism that makes it happen. This gives two kinds of carving: structural carving, which divides static regions, and processual carving, which divides dynamic events. The paper claims that the recognition of both types of carving based on these non-entity actions is unique to the TM model, and that the five actions determine a single way the world is, so a TM diagram is a new type of reality carving rather than just a notation.

Load-bearing premise

The load-bearing premise is that the five generic actions, create, process, release, transfer, and receive, are complete and atomic, so every event can be carved into them; if some process cannot be decomposed this way, the claimed base for TM carving fails.

Editorial extensions

If this is right

Events in a TM model can be cut at the boundaries of the five generic actions, which gives a uniform answer to where the joints are.
Static structure and dynamic events are expressed in the same diagrammatic vocabulary, so structural and processual carving become two views of one thimac.
A modeler who accepts the five-action base can translate categorical distinctions, such as patient, diagnosis, and the Has relationship, into flow patterns of release, transfer, receive, and process.
The paper's case studies suggest that database transactions, such as inserting a patient or a diagnosis, can be specified as explicit event chronologies without leaving the TM notation.

Reading between the lines

Editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

One testable extension is to take a standard workflow with waiting, cancellation, or destruction and ask which of the five actions carries those semantics; if none does, the atomicity claim would need a new primitive.
The exicon notion points toward a design rule: events must be able to appear and disappear without being created, so any ontology built the same way would need an existence container that is not itself a thing.
A natural check is whether the mapping from familiar modeling constructs, entities, attributes, relationships, into the five actions is injective; if two different relationships collapse to one flow pattern, the carving vocabulary would be too coarse to distinguish them.

Share X Bluesky LinkedIn Reddit HN

Signed reviews

No signed human review yet.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, and a circularity audit.

Desk Editor's Note

read the letter

Short version: if you work on conceptual modeling, this is worth a skim, but don't expect a rigorous answer to the carving question. Al-Fedaghi applies his thinging machine (TM) framework to the old 'carving nature at its joints' metaphor. The genuinely new bit is the explicit focus on carving events, not just static entities, and the introduction of structural vs processual carving. The worked examples—blood circulation, a hospital database—are helpful and show how the notation handles dynamic structure. The paper is clearly written and the diagrams are legible, which is more than most modeling-language papers manage.

But the central claim is shaky. TM carving bottoms out on five generic actions: create, process, release, transfer, receive. The paper says these are the atomic joints and that 'the generic actions determine a single way that the world is.' Yet the paper itself shows they are not atomic. Receive is defined as a simplification of arrive+accept. Create is 'made out of other thimacs,' so it internally refers to other actions. Process covers 'changed, handled, and examined'—a heterogeneous grab bag. More tellingly, Section III.A admits that if you make each generic action an event, you get 'too many (unnatural) events.' That is a direct admission that the five actions are not the natural event joints. So the bottom level is stipulated, not demonstrated.

The uniqueness claim (only the TM model recognizes structural and processual carving) is also unsupported. No serious comparison with other event or process ontologies is offered. The ER contrast in Section VI is a start, but it only shows that ER is static; it doesn't show that no other approach handles both. And Section I.B says the paper will not present a solution for carving events, yet the conclusion says the results 'provide a foundation for establishing a new type of carving reality.' That's a mismatch.

None of this is fatal if you read the paper as a proposal for a modeling notation, not as a metaphysical discovery. As a notation, the TM framework does offer a single vocabulary for static and dynamic structure, and the examples are plausible. But the paper claims more than that, and the extra claims are not earned. The self-citation pattern is heavy (refs [8], [12] are the author's own prior framework), but that's the program, so it's not in itself a problem.

Worth a serious referee? Yes, conditionally. A reviewer could reasonably ask for a formal specification of the five actions, a demonstration that they are complete for some defined class of processes, or a dropped uniqueness claim. If the author softens the claims and adds a comparison with existing event-based modeling approaches, the paper could be a decent conceptual modeling contribution. As it stands, it's a foundation in need of a foundation.

Recommendation: send to peer review with the expectation of major revision. The core idea is worth engaging with, but the current form overstates what's been shown.

Referee Report

4 major / 6 minor

Summary. The paper proposes applying the 'carving nature at its joints' metaphor to conceptual modeling within the thinging machine (TM) framework. It defines events as thimacs with a time feature that infuses dynamism into static regions, where a region is a diagrammatic description built from five generic actions: create, process, release, transfer, and receive. The stated central problem is how to carve events when building a TM model, but in Section I.B the author explicitly says the paper will not present a solution to that problem; instead, it generalizes the carving problem to include structural carving and dynamic (processual) events. The paper presents two worked examples (a circulatory system and a hospital database with patient diagnoses), introduces an 'exicon' as a non-thimac existence container, and claims that TM carving bottoms out on the five generic actions and that the recognition of structural and processual carving is unique to the TM model.

Significance. If the central claims were established, the paper would offer a unified diagrammatic language for modeling both static structure and dynamics through a small action vocabulary, which could be valuable for conceptual modeling and software engineering pedagogy. The worked examples illustrate how TM diagrams can represent flows and events, and the explicit distinction between static regions and dynamic events is a useful organizational principle. I credit the author for including detailed diagrams and for acknowledging in Section III.A that making every generic action an event yields 'too many (unnatural) events.' However, the current significance is largely programmatic: the core claims are asserted rather than demonstrated, the five actions are stipulated rather than justified, and the paper contains no formal semantics, no comparison with existing process ontologies, and no evaluation. The paper also does not ship machine-checked proofs or reproducible experiments, so its contribution rests entirely on the plausibility of its conceptual arguments.

major comments (4)

[I.B, Abstract, Conclusion] Section I.B states that 'we will not present a solution for the problem of carving static TM model into events,' yet the abstract and conclusion claim that 'the study's results provide a foundation for establishing a new type of reality carving.' Because the central problem is identified as 'how to carve events,' the paper cannot coherently claim to provide a foundation for event carving while disclaiming any solution. Please either provide a concrete carving procedure or restrict the conclusions to a preliminary framework.
[II.B, V] The load-bearing claim that 'carving at the joints bottoms out on the base level of the generic actions' (Section V) rests on an unjustified assumption that create, process, release, transfer, and receive are complete and atomic. Section II.B defines receive as a simplification that merges arrive and accept, so receive is not atomic by the paper's own account; create is said to make a new thimac 'out of other thimacs,' implying possible decomposition; and process covers 'changed, handled, and examined,' a heterogeneous list. Section III.A also concedes that making each generic action an event produces 'too many (unnatural) events.' Without a formal definition of atomicity and completeness for this vocabulary, the foundational claim is unsupported.
[V] The claim that the recognition of structural and processual carving 'is unique to the TM model' is not supported. The paper offers no comparison with other process-oriented conceptual modeling languages or event ontologies, no literature survey, and no argument that other frameworks cannot express the same distinction. Please either provide a comparative analysis or replace the uniqueness claim with a more modest statement about TM's particular combination of features.
[IV.A] The exicon is introduced as a 'TM non-thing agent that is responsible for the existence mode of events' and is said to be 'definitely not a thimac because it lacks the create action.' This is a major ontological assertion that is not derived from the five-action framework and is not used in the subsequent carving analysis. If the exicon is meant to be part of the foundation, it needs a separate justification; if it is speculative, the paper should say so explicitly.

minor comments (6)

[Abstract] The phrase 'The study s results' should be 'The study's results.'
[I.A] The sentence 'This paper concerns with applying the notion of carving' is ungrammatical; it should be 'This paper concerns applying the notion of carving.'
[VI] The phrase 'discusses the curving phenomena' should be 'discusses the carving phenomena.'
[III.B] The heading 'Slightly Confused Gork' appears to be a typo for 'Grok,' and the parenthetical note about 'thinking' is confusing and should be clarified or removed.
[Figures 6 and 24] The region labels and event annotations in Figures 6 and 24 are difficult to read at the reproduced resolution; please enlarge the diagrams or add a separate caption with explanations.
[Conclusion] The conclusion largely repeats the abstract and Section I.B; it should instead summarize what the worked examples actually show and state the precise scope of the claimed foundation.

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged · score 0.0 of 10

No significant circularity: the five-action base is stipulated as TM's primitive vocabulary, not derived or predicted, and the paper explicitly disclaims solving the carving problem.

full rationale

The paper is a conceptual-modeling proposal rather than an empirical derivation. The five generic actions (create, process, release, transfer, receive) are introduced as definitions of a thimac/region in Section II ("Thimacs are defined in terms of five actions"), so Section V's statement that "carving at the joints bottoms out on the base level of the generic actions" is an analytic consequence of the framework's own vocabulary, not an independent result being passed off as a prediction. The paper contains no fitted parameters renamed as predictions, no external benchmark, and no invocation of a uniqueness theorem. Self-citations to [8] and [12] supply background ontology (e.g., the exicon) and are not used as load-bearing proof for the paper's carving discussion. The paper even disclaims a solution to the central problem: "In this paper, we will not present a solution for the problem of carving static TM model into events" (Section I.B), and it concedes that making each generic action an event "would produce too many (unnatural) events" (Section III.A), which undercuts any claim that the five actions are natural event joints. The Section V uniqueness claim ("We claim that the recognition of these types of nonentities based carving is unique to the TM model") is unsupported, but lack of evidence is a correctness risk, not circularity under the review rules. No quoted step reduces to its own input by construction in a way that would count as circular.

Assumptions & free parameters 0 free parameters · 4 assumptions · 2 invented entities

The paper's central claim rests on a set of domain assumptions about the universality of the five TM actions and on metaphysical postulates (exicon). None of these are derived or empirically validated. No free parameters are fitted, as the paper makes no quantitative claims.

assumptions (4)

domain assumption All entities and events are thimacs, unified thing/machine units.
Section II.A states the world is divided into thimacs; this is the ontological basis of TM, not derived.
domain assumption The five actions (create, process, release, transfer, receive) are the atomic base of all carving.
Section II.B defines a thimac with these actions; Section V says carving bottoms out on them. Completeness is assumed.
domain assumption An event is a thimac with a time feature added to a static region.
The event definition is given in the introduction and Section II; it is a postulate of the framework.
ad hoc to paper The exicon is a non-thimac slice of existence that is responsible for the existence mode of events.
Introduced in Section IV to explain existence; no independent evidence and no falsifiable predictions.

invented entities (2)

thimac
purpose: Fundamental unit of reality; combines thing and machine; used to model both static and dynamic aspects.
Postulated in Section II.A; not observable or testable independently of the TM framework.
exicon
purpose: A slice of existence that upholds events, analogous to an Aristotelian soul; explains what it is to exist.
Introduced in Section IV; purely metaphysical, no connection to measurement.

how reviews work

0 comments

Cite this review

Pith. "Pith review of Carving Nature/Conceptual Models at Joints Using Thinging Machines." pith.science (2026). https://pith.science/paper/KGY226PO

@misc{pith2026250513656,
  author       = {Pith},
  title        = {Pith review of: Carving Nature/Conceptual Models at Joints Using Thinging Machines},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://pith.science/paper/KGY226PO}},
  note         = {Machine review of arXiv:2505.13656}
}

read the original abstract

To handle the complexity of our world, the carving metaphor has been used to build a conceptual system of reality. In such an endeavor, we can choose various joints to carve at; that is, we can conceptualize various aspects of reality. Conceptual modeling concerns carving (e.g., categorization) and specifying a conceptual picture of a subject domain. This paper concerns with applying the notion of carving to conceptual models. Specifically, it concerns modeling based on the so-called thinging machine (TM). The central problem is how to carve events when building a TM model. In TMs, an event is defined as a thimac (thing/machine) with a time feature that infuses dynamism into the static thimac, called a region. A region is a diagrammatic description based on five generic actions: create, process, release, transfer, and receive. The paper contains new material about TM modeling and generalization and focuses on the carving problem to include structural carving and dynamic events. The study s results provide a foundation for establishing a new type of reality carving based on the TM model diagrams.

Discussion (0). Continue with ORCID to comment.

Reference graph

Works this paper leans on

18 extracted references · 15 canonical work pages

[8]

Preconceptual modeling in software engineering: metaphysics of diagrammatic representations,

S. Al-Fedaghi, “Preconceptual modeling in software engineering: metaphysics of diagrammatic representations,” HAL archives,
[12]

Exploring conceptual modeling metaphysics: existence containers, Leibniz's monads and Avicenna's essence,

S. Al-Fedaghi, “Exploring conceptual modeling metaphysics: existence containers, Leibniz's monads and Avicenna's essence,” arXiv preprint, arXiv:2405.01549, February, 20, 2024

arXiv 2024
[1]

We need to discuss the relationship: revisiting relationships as modeling constructs,

N. Guarino and G. Guizzardi, “We need to discuss the relationship: revisiting relationships as modeling constructs,” Lect. Notes Comput. Sci., vol. 9097, 279-294, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19069-3_18

work page doi:10.1007/978-3-319-19069-3_18 2015
[2]

Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987

G. Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987. https://lecturayescrituraunrn.wordpress.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/03/unidad-5-lakoff-women-fire-and- danger.pdf

work page 1987
[3]

Event ontology vs object ontology,

A. Boldachev, “Event ontology vs object ontology,” Medium blog, June 20, 2023. https://medium.com/@boldachev/event- ontology-vs-object-ontology-cef764feb12c

work page 2023
[4]

Introduction : lessons from the scientific butchery,

M. H. Slater and A. Borghini, “Introduction : lessons from the scientific butchery,” in Carving Nature at its Joints: Natural Kinds in Metaphysics and Science, J. K. Campbell, M. O'Rourke, and M. H. Slater, Eds. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011

work page 2011
[5]

L. A. Paul, A one category ontology, in Being, Freedom, and Method: Themes from the Philosophy of Peter van Inwagen, J. A. Keller, Ed, Oxford Scholarship Online, January 2017, https://lapaul.org/papers/Paul-OneCategory.pdf

work page 2017
[6]

Taxonomy: what’s in a name? Doesn’t a rose by any other name smell as sweet?

C. H Calisher, “Taxonomy: what’s in a name? Doesn’t a rose by any other name smell as sweet?” Croat Med J., vol. 48, no 2, 268-270, April 2007

work page 2007

Show all 18 references

[7]

Criteria for naturalness in conceptual spaces,

C. Strößner, “Criteria for naturalness in conceptual spaces,” Synthese, vol. 200, no, 78, 2022

2022
[9]

T. Morton. The Ecological Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010

2010
[10]

Biology Notes for IGCSE,

“Biology Notes for IGCSE,” blogspot.com, 2014. https://biology-igcse.weebly.com/the-circulatory-system.html

2014
[11]

Being as place: introduction to metaphysics – part two (the limitation of being),

A. C. Rollino, “Being as place: introduction to metaphysics – part two (the limitation of being),” April 16, 2022. https://rethinkingspaceandplace.com/2022/04/16/being-as-place- introduction-to-metaphysics-part-two-the-limitation-of-being/

2022
[13]

Substance: the foundation to Aristotle’s metaphysics,

A. P. Tabifor, V. B. Ngalim, and N. Shang, “Substance: the foundation to Aristotle’s metaphysics,” Social Science and Humanities Journal, vol. 8, no. 3, March 2024

2024
[14]

Substance,

H. Robinson and R. Weir, "Substance," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2024 Edition), E. N. Zalta and U. Nodelman, Eds. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/substance/

2024
[15]

Carving nature at its inherent joints: the problem of the independent criterion,

S. Page, “Carving nature at its inherent joints: the problem of the independent criterion,” Auslegung: A Journal of Philosophy, vol. 29, no. 1, fall/winter 2007

2007
[16]

Kahn, The Tao of Conversation, Oakland: New Harbinger, 1995

M. Kahn, The Tao of Conversation, Oakland: New Harbinger, 1995

1995
[17]

Multidimensional data modeling for complex data,

T. B. Pedersen and C. S. Jensen, “Multidimensional data modeling for complex data,” Proceedings 15th International Conference on Data Engineering, Sydney, NSW, Australia, March 23-26, 336-345, 1999

1999
[2024]

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-04576184

Pith tools

Reviewed August 15, 2026 · model on record in the stance chip above.

[1] [8]

Preconceptual modeling in software engineering: metaphysics of diagrammatic representations,

S. Al-Fedaghi, “Preconceptual modeling in software engineering: metaphysics of diagrammatic representations,” HAL archives,

[2] [12]

Exploring conceptual modeling metaphysics: existence containers, Leibniz's monads and Avicenna's essence,

S. Al-Fedaghi, “Exploring conceptual modeling metaphysics: existence containers, Leibniz's monads and Avicenna's essence,” arXiv preprint, arXiv:2405.01549, February, 20, 2024

arXiv 2024

[3] [1]

We need to discuss the relationship: revisiting relationships as modeling constructs,

N. Guarino and G. Guizzardi, “We need to discuss the relationship: revisiting relationships as modeling constructs,” Lect. Notes Comput. Sci., vol. 9097, 279-294, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19069-3_18

work page doi:10.1007/978-3-319-19069-3_18 2015

[4] [2]

Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987

G. Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987. https://lecturayescrituraunrn.wordpress.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/03/unidad-5-lakoff-women-fire-and- danger.pdf

work page 1987

[5] [3]

Event ontology vs object ontology,

A. Boldachev, “Event ontology vs object ontology,” Medium blog, June 20, 2023. https://medium.com/@boldachev/event- ontology-vs-object-ontology-cef764feb12c

work page 2023

[6] [4]

Introduction : lessons from the scientific butchery,

M. H. Slater and A. Borghini, “Introduction : lessons from the scientific butchery,” in Carving Nature at its Joints: Natural Kinds in Metaphysics and Science, J. K. Campbell, M. O'Rourke, and M. H. Slater, Eds. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011

work page 2011

[7] [5]

L. A. Paul, A one category ontology, in Being, Freedom, and Method: Themes from the Philosophy of Peter van Inwagen, J. A. Keller, Ed, Oxford Scholarship Online, January 2017, https://lapaul.org/papers/Paul-OneCategory.pdf

work page 2017

[8] [6]

Taxonomy: what’s in a name? Doesn’t a rose by any other name smell as sweet?

C. H Calisher, “Taxonomy: what’s in a name? Doesn’t a rose by any other name smell as sweet?” Croat Med J., vol. 48, no 2, 268-270, April 2007

work page 2007