Formalism and method

AbstractWe argue that the impact of formalisms would much benefit from adopting the habit of systematically and carefully relating formalisms to methods and to the engineering context, at various levels of granularity. Consequently, we oppose the attitude of conflating formalism and method, with the inevitable consequence of emphasizing the formalism or even just neglecting the methodological aspects. To make our reflections more concrete we illustrate our viewpoint addressing one particular activity within the software development process, namely the use of formal specification techniques. To qualify the essential ingredients of a formal method for specification, we propose a pattern covering the formal and the methodological aspects and also their mutual relationships. Our pattern includes some novel concepts such as the relationship between end-products and formal models, which allows to relate in a rigorous way different methods, outlining the concept of compositionality and of simulation of methods