To accomplish our task, we needed an intellectual tool to penetrate beneath the "surface structure" of individual pieces of IS research and to organize them in some intelligible manner. We believe to have found such a tool in the form of a philosophical framework for analyzing the assumptions which guide different lines of research on IS and which points out the ways in which each line of research is somehow limited but at the same time brings order into chaos by making visible which assumptions make the approaches so different and what the implictions for adhereing to alternative assumptions are. We point out that all systems development methodologies make implicit assumptions which we feel may be problematic. Let us take a concrete example. Most (but not necessarily all) modeling techniques focus on functions, data or objects as elementary building blocks. The implict and/or explicit underlying assumptions are that: (1) these building blocks exist in the world (realism) and (2) there is an objectively definable set of things whose definition is independent of the perceptions of the developer (objectivism). The implication of the first assumption is that it is the developer's job to "find" those objects as though they were the treasures of a sunken ship washed up on shore just waiting to be picked up by the first one to come along. The implication of the second assumption is that any two developers should come up with the same model (because they will find the same treasures) and if there are differences they are resolvable. If two developers do see things differently, assumption two suggests that one developer is not seeing the application as clearly as the other, or that one developer is simply not as good as the other.

As our analysis reveals alternative standpoints are possible as well. What if the objects are not given, but are to be constructed out of the pieces on the shore with the flotsam and jetsam of many cultures (the different user languages and views)? What if there are no universals, e.g. what are shells to one culture is money to another? Thinking along such lines, in this book we shall show: (1) that most studies on information systems development rely on a specific standpoint which we call here a functionalist world view, (2) that this view amounts to a distinct philosophical position, and (3) this position is problematic in understanding and engaging in many facets of systems development. If this point is accepted, then it is logical to ask what alternative philosophical positions are possible and what their implications for systems development and data modeling could be.

It turns out that at least four philosophical positions can be discerned in the literature and these can account for many of the contradictory results and insights in the field. Researchers or practitioners adhering to different philosophical positions simply see different objects on the beaches (or should we say in the trenches) while developing information systems. This observation sets the principal agenda for this book: to define the fundamental philosophical positions; and to explain how they apply to systems development in general and data modeling in particular. The refinement of these issues form the core of our argument in this book. This will be a long an involved argument, like a long winding road with many paths, but we have found it rewarding though difficult at times to roam. We hope that many readers will enjoy the same experience, and that they will never see the same beach again after closing this book.