  The aim of this paper is to promote the terms thing and thinging (which
refers to the act of defining a boundary around some portion of reality and
labeling it with a name) as valued notions that play an important role in
software engineering modeling. Additionally, we attempt to furnish operational
definitions for terms thing, object, process, and thinging. The substantive
discussion is based on the conception of an (abstract) machine, named the
Thinging Machine (TM), used in several research works. The TM creates,
processes, receives, releases, and transfers things. Accordingly, a
diagrammatic representation of the TM is used to model reality. In the
discussion section, this paper clarifies interesting issues related to
conceptual modeling in software engineering. The substance of this paper and
its conclusion suggest that thinging should be more meaningfully emphasized as
a valuable research and teaching topic, at least in the requirement analysis
phase of the software development cycle.
