Le Catastrophe by Any Other Name.

The application of the techniques of mathematical physics to the analysis of discontinuities is well known, but it rests on a detailed understanding of the continuous behavior of other parts of the process or system. In many cases, the soft sciences especially, such detailed knowledge is unlikely. As a part of mathematics, Catastrophe Theory a subset of singularity and bifurcation theories deals with the properties of discontinuities without reference to any specific underlying mechanism. It is thus most appropriate for the study of systems whose inner workings are not known, and for situations in which the only reliable observations are of the discontinuities or sudden changes in the state of the system.