Object Morphology - A Protean Generalization of Object-Oriented Paradigm

Modeling protean objects, i.e. objects adapting their structure and behavior dynamically with respect to a changeable environment, is often challenging in traditional object-oriented languages. According to the author, the root cause of this problem lies in the class-based conceptual framework embedded in the foundation of the object-oriented paradigm. The proposed paradigm Object Morphology (OM) is greatly influenced by prototype theory developed in the field of cognitive psychology. OM abandons the notion of class and suggests, instead, that the abstractions of protean objects should be established through the construction of morph models describing the possible forms of those objects. This paper provides a condensed introduction to the theoretical foundations of OM accompanied by a series of examples. In separate sections, this paper gives a brief description of prototypical analysis, the reference implementation and OM applications.