General ontology is a prominent theoretical foundation for information technology analysis, design, and development. Ontology is a branch of philosophy which studies what exists in reality. A widely used ontology in information systems, especially for conceptual modeling, is the BWW (Bunge–Wand–Weber), which is based on ideas of the philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge, as synthesized by Wand and Weber. The ontology was founded on an early subset of Bunge’s philosophy; however, many of Bunge’s ideas have evolved since then. An important question, therefore, is: do the more recent ideas expressed by Bunge call for a new ontology? In this paper, we conduct an analysis of Bunge’s earlier and more recent works to address this question. We present a new ontology based on Bunge’s later and broader works, which we refer to as Bunge’s Systemist Ontology (BSO). We then compare BSO to the constructs of BWW. The comparison reveals both considerable overlap between BSO and BWW, as well as substantial differences. From this comparison and the initial exposition of BSO, we provide suggestions for further ontology studies and identify research questions that could provide a fruitful agenda for future scholarship in conceptual modeling and other areas of information technology.

通用本体是信息技术分析、设计和开发的重要理论基础。本体论是哲学的一个分支，它研究现实中存在的东西。信息系统中广泛使用的本体，特别是概念建模，是 BWW（Bunge-Wand-Weber），它基于哲学家和物理学家 Mario Bunge 的想法，由 Wand 和 Weber 合成。本体建立在 Bunge 哲学的早期子集之上。然而，从那时起，邦吉的许多想法都得到了发展。因此，一个重要的问题是：邦吉最近表达的想法是否需要一种新的本体论？在本文中，我们对邦吉早期和最近的作品进行了分析，以解决这个问题。我们提出了一个基于 Bunge 后期和更广泛作品的新本体，我们将其称为邦吉的系统本体论（BSO）。然后我们将 BSO 与 BWW 的构造进行比较。比较揭示了 BSO 和 BWW 之间的相当大的重叠以及实质性差异。通过这种比较和 BSO 的初步阐述，我们为进一步的本体研究提供建议，并确定可以为概念建模和其他信息技术领域的未来学术研究提供富有成果的研究问题。