More recently, Thom [Thom, R. 1975. Structural Stability and Morphogenesis: an Outline of a general theory of models, Reading, Mass, W. A. Benjamins] has elaborated a catastrophe theory to deal with any discontinuous transition that occurs when a system can have more than one stable state or can follow more than one stable pathway of change. The catastrophe is the jump from one state or pathway to another […] The notion behind catastrophe theory is however controversial to biologists and geologists (and even linguists) because it proposes a new view of change which is contrary to mathematical principles which were ideally designed to analyse smooth, continuous change.
- Romaine (1988), a pag.53