373

Catastrophe theory : A reply to Thom. E.C. Zeeman.

René Thom's artiele on the present and future perspectives of

catastrophe theory in the previous issue of Manifold was very much in his own
inimitable style : a fascinating mixture of tantal ising hints and deeply profound
remarks about mathematics and science, spieed with a few provocative cracks
at the experimental ists, and garnished with some fairly wild speculations. In
a sense Thom was forced to invent catastrophe theory [148J in order to provide
himself with a canvas large enough to display the diversity of his interests.
Ever since the disappearance of natural philosophy from our universities and
the fragmentation of mathematicians into pure and applied, our canvases have
steadily been growing smaller and smaller. At least catastrophe theory marks
a revival of natural philosophy, to be enjoyed once again for a while at any
rate. One could wish that more mathematicians should enliven our literature
by writing in this vein, were it not for the fact that the speculation by lesser
men often leads to nonsense. In fact it makes an amusing 1ittle appl ication of
the cusp catastrophe.

sens€'

Figure 1.

nonsense

mathematical
content , =tÇ
--/-

Speculatlve content
Thom certainly puts himself out of the ordinary by his courageous speculative
ventures, but however close he sails to the edge, he somehow always manages
to stay on the upper surface .

Nevertheless I must confess that I often find his writing obscure and
difficult to understand, and occasionally I have to fill in 99 lines of my own
between each 2 of his before I am convineed. Of course sometimes this is
just due to sheer laziness on his part over mathematical details, but at other
times the obscurity is the reverse side of a much more important coin : in
order to create profound new ideas, profound because they can be developed a
long way with immense consequences, it is necessary to invent a personal
shorthand for one's own thinking. The further the development, the more subtie
must be the shorthand , until eventually the shorthand becomes part of the
paradigm. But, until it does, the shorthand needs decoding. Meanwhile Thom
has thought ahead for so many years that now, when he speaks to us, he often
uses his shorthand and forgets to decade it. Maybe this is because the IHES
has no undergraduates. When I get stuck at same point in his writing, and
happen to ask him, his repl ies gene rally reveal a vast new unsuspected goldmine
 374

of ideas. In trying to "trier le bon grain de 1'ivraie" I discover "plus du bon

grain" . Therefore in this spirit let me retu rn to the topics in his article.

Mathematics.

It is in mathematics itsel f, as Thom modestly omits to mention , that

catastrophe theory has already made its greatest contribution to date. lagree
that there is strictly speaking no "catastrophe theory", but then this is more
or less true for any non-axiomatic theory in mathematics that attempts to
describe nature. For instance the "theory of differential equations" is not
well defined : it uses odd bits of analysis, topology and algebra in its foundations
and then proliferates into a ragbag of techniques. This is why differential
equations are perpetually awkward to fit into any undergraduate syllabus. It is
only those pieces of mathematics that are far from nature that make tidy
theories, because all the messy interrelationships with other branches of
mathematics can be artifically ruled out of the game by judicious choice of
axioms. The comparison between differential equations and catastrophe theory
is an interesting one : Newton invented differential equations in order to describe
smooth phenomena in nature, and this in turn forced the development of calculus,
analysis, Taylor series etc. Similarly Thom invented catastrophe theory in
order to describe discontinuous phenomena in nature, and this in turn forced
major developments in the theories of singularities, unfolding, stratifications ,
the preparation theorem etc.

Let us take one example, the preparation theorem. In a sense this

is more fundamental than the Taylor series, and no doubt will slowly transform
the face of applied mathematics of the future . For up till now applied
mathematicians, in using Taylor expansions, have impl icîtly had to artificially
restrict themselves to analytic functions in order that the series should
converge, which is a very severe straight jacket due to the uniqueness of analytic
continuation. Now, with Malgrange's preparation theorem, they have the sudden
freedom and flexibil ity to use C""- functions; there is no longer any need for
the series to converge, only for the jet to be determinate. Whereas before,
the tail of the Taylor series wagged the dog, in future it can be amputated
with impunity, because, by the uniqueness of unfoldings, germs can be replaced
by jets, and 50 the ",,-dimensional problem in analysis can be replaced by a
finite dimensional problem in algebraic geometry. It was in struggling to
prove the uniqueness of unfoldings (which is the heart of the classification
theorem) that Thom narrowed the gap in the proof down to the preparation
theorem, and so persuaded Malgrange firstly (against his will) that it was true
and secondly to prove it [30]. In this sense catastrophe theory is a driving
force determining mainstream direction of research within mathematics .

I do not know whether Thom has ever written down that del ightful
analogy he once gave in a lecture on mathematical education at Warwick; it runs
as follows: Just as, when learning to speak, a baby babbles in all the phoneme
of all the languages of the world, but after listening to its mother's replies,
soon learns to babble in only the phonemes of its mother' s language, so we
mathematicians babble in all the possible branches of mathematics , and ought
to listen to mother nature in order to find out which branches of mathematics
are natu ral.
 375

Physics.

I find the application of catastrophe theory to phase transition very

difficult, and do not fully understand it yet [114,133-6,148,150J. Van der Waals'
equation for liquid-gas is easy enough, and gives a beautiful canonical cusp
catastrophe surface , but what is strikingly absent is any dynamic minimising
the potential. Nor can there be, because if there were, then boiling and
condensation would obey the delay rule rather than Maxwell's rule. It is true
that they can be exceptionally delayed in states of supersaturation and
superevaporation , but normally boil ing point equals condensation point, and so
Maxwell' s rule prevails. Out of the hundred or more applications of catastrophe
theory in several different fields this is the only one I know that unambiguously
obeys Maxwell's rule. Now there must be a mathematical reason underlying
Maxwell's rule. By this I mean Maxwell's rule must be a theorem rather
than a hypothesis , in the same way that the delay rule is a theorem based on
the hypothesis of the exïstence of an underlying dynamic minimising the
potential. The question is : what is the corresponding hypothesis that would
lead to Maxwell's rule? L. Schulman ['I33J has pointed out that the answer
must He in statistical mechanics, with the internal variables in a Hilbert space
of states. Now there is no rigorous treatment yet of catastrophe theory for
an infinite dimensional state-space. But suppose there were : then the free
ene rgy exp ressed as an integ ral ove r the state-space is dom inated by, and
therefore approximated by, the state with minimum energy - hen ce Maxwell's
rule. Perhaps an analysis of this approximation will reveal why the elementary
model is inexact at the critical point. A full understanding may entail a
rewriting of the foundations of statistical mechanics.

To my mind the other outstanding catastrophe theory problem in

physics is the breaking of waves Q48,166J. Although I ag ree that the hyperbolic
umbilic seems to be diffeomorphic to the shape of a wave breaking on the
sea-shore, I do not yet see hOW to identify the catastrophe variables with the
classical variables of hydrodynamies • Such a programme is ambitious in the
sense that it implies that both water and air are obeying the same differential
equation. This observation gives insight that the programme may be too naive,
because there does not seem to be any variabIe in water that falls off by the
square-root of the distance from the surface , as does one of the internal
variables of the hyperbol ie umbilic. It is possible that the breaking wave is
not the hype rbol ic umbil ic after all, but a 3-dimensional Maxwell section of the
double-cusp that happens to be diffeomorphic to the hyperbolic umbilic, just as
phase transition is a 1-dimensional Maxwell section of the cusp diffeomorphie
to two folds. In which case the breaking wave is more compl icated than
phase-transition and for a full understanding must involve the statistical
mechanics underlying hydrodynamics.

Another possible application of catastrophe theory suggested by

T. Poston [130J is to soap bubbles, but this again, as in most appl ications in
physics, requires an infinite dimensional state-space, as weIl as hard geometrie
analysis. In engineering there are several potential appl ications including
structural stresses, non-l inear oscillations , cybernetics, and various types of
regulators. Perhaps the richest appl ication of the umbil ics so far have been in
light caustics [117,119,125,144 J and elasticity [157-9J.
 376

1 think Thom is a I ittle hard on the biologists in his Manifold a·rticle.

But I unde rstand his impatience, because it is over 5 years since he first
explatned the idea to them [141-4,147-9]. And it is such a magnificent idea - the
first rational explanation of how the local genetic coding could possibly cause
the global unfolding of the embryo. However it is a very difficult appli.cation to
understand, because at first sight the only observable feature is part of the
bifurcation set in the space of external variables , space-time. The space of
internal variables must be of so high a dimension that it has to remain
implicit. And the potential is probably only a L iapunov function, in other words
is a purely mathematical construction. one step even further removed from the
concrete. By the time we have used the classification theorem in order to
reduce the dimensions to those of the useable models of the elementary
catastrophes, even if we manage to achieve an interpretation and identify the
1 or 2 internal variables of the model wi.th some elusive morphogens, the
potentialof the model will almost certainly be biologicatly meaningless. Only
the bifurcation set of the model will retain its marvetlous clarity of meaning.

The biologists can hardly be blamed for their despair of understanding

the mathematical subtleties of what can be explicit, what must remain implicit,
what can be meaningful, and what must perforce be biologically meaningless.
No wonder they fall back upon the defence of "how can I test this model against
other models?" This point of view is in effect a simple insurance po1i.cy,
because if they can dispose of a theory by proving it wrong experimentally, it
saves the time and effort of having to wade through all that formidabie looking
mathematics. What they do not, and must find difficult to, appreciate is the
infinite and all-embracing variety of models that the theory automatically
encompasses and classifies. Eventually the only way to fully appreciate this
fact is to go through all the details of the proof of the classification theorem [84 ];
only then does one feel that true weight of mathematical power behind the few
elementary modeIs. I must confess it took me several years to achieve this
objective myself, and it is only the very exceptional biologist who would have
the expertise, time and inc1i.nation to follow suit. On the other hand a slow
migration is beginning of mathematical students into experimental biology, and
it is through them that I anticipate communication will eventually take place.
At present the leading biologists freely admit the void of explanation in
developmental biology, and would eagerly welcome a theory. But, and here I
differ from Thom in emphasi.s, any theory must face up to the
classical scientific method of prediction, experiment and verification. I see
no reason why his theories should be sacrosanct on the grounds of being
qualitative rather than quantitative. There are plenty of qualitative predictions
in science, and plenty of quantitative experiments in which the quanti.ties
depend upon the individual, but the qual ity is common to all individuals .

Thom has already shown how several morphologies in embryology are

geometrically similar to elementary catastrophes ~48, 149]; what is now needed
is a closer identification of the catastrophe variables involved with space-time
variables and morphogens. Better still if there can be alternative identifications ,
i.e. alternative models within catastrophe theory itself, which the experimenters
can test between • Towards this end Thom himself is at times unfortunately
counterproductive, because each time he writes he tends to embroider upon his
previous models with interesting new ideas, but without distinguishing clearly
between those features that can be deduced from the original catastrophe theory,
 377

and those that are part of the embroidery; this is particularly confusing when
he justifies the embroidery only by analogy, rather than by also basing it upon
clearly stated additional mathematical hypotheses.

A glaring example is his interpretation* of the middle unstable sheet

of the cusp catastrophe as the formation of mesoderm in amphibian
gastrulation [149J. He is tempted into this pitfall by the fact that mesoderm
forms as an intermediary layer between ectoderm and endoderm, analogous to
the accidental topological situation occuring in the canonical model of the cusp
catastrophe, where since the space of internal variables happens to be
1-dimensional, the unstable sheet happens to I ie in between the two stabie
sheets representing ectoderm and endoderm. Now, except in appl ications such
as light caustics, where the geodesic path is not necessarily the shortest, the
saddles and maxima in catastrophe theory play a totally different role to the
minima, and it is not only mathematically contradictory to mix the two, but
also very confusing to the biologist who is trying to master the theory. In this
particular case there are perfectly good alternative models of mesoderm within
the theory, us ing e ithe r the butte rfly catastrophe, or a p rimary wave switching
ectoderm into mesoderm [174].

The same fault implicitly occurs when Thom refers to the mushroom
shape of the parabol ic umbil ic, [148 p. 102 J because, although a mushroom
does occur as a section of the bifurcation set, the stalk of the mushroom bounds
a region of minima while the head of the mushroom bounds a region of saddles,
which are quite different. I confess that I do not yet fully understand the
embryological appl ications of the elI iptic and parabol ic umbil ics; for me they
do not yet have the beautiful translucence of the appl ications of the cusp and
swallow-tail to gastrulation .

.Another example where Thom's use of analogy is misleading is in his

discussion of cliff regulation [14~. To explain the formation of a regulator
from a potential weIl he appeals to the analogy of perturbations having some

Figure 2.

>

* Thom repl ies that this piece of embroidery is the mysterious phenomenon of
"threshold stabil isation", apparently weIl known to physicists. In support he
appeals to (1) the analogy of wet sand cl inging to a maximum (which impl icitly
involves more mathematical hypotheses) or (2) the maximum reached by the
L iouville measure of the energy-Ievel of a saddle (but this argument only works
for 2-dimensions).
 378

eroding effect upon the substrate. Here I think th is is a fallacious appeal to

physical intuition, because the curves are only mathematically meaningful in
the sense that they represent the stationary values of the catastrophe potential.
To appeal to the concept of "erosion" is implicitly to attach a mathematical
meaning to the difference between the insides and outsides of the curves.
However the fact that the curves are of codimension 1 is again an accident
arising from the use of the canonical model with only 1 internal variabIe. As
soon as one uses 2 or more inte rnal variables , which must certainly be the
case if one appeals to the "substrate" , then the curves are of codimension 2
or more, and consequently no longer have insides or outsides to be eroded.
Nevertheless the concept of cl iff regulation is a splendid notion, as Thom says
obviously fundamental to the future understanding of physiology, and there are
alternative ways of introducing it mathematically into the theory. For example
given a dynamical system on Rn, and given an attractor point, having a
1-dimensional slow manifold with bounded basin of attraction thereon, then
homeostasis impl ies a cl iff regulator (see [168J).

Summarising the situation in biology : Thom is fully justified in his

impatience that this magnificent theory has not yet had greater impact upon
developmental biology, but I think he should tu rn some of his criticism away
from the biologists and redirect it towards us, his fellow mathematicians, who
are far too ignorant of embryology, and have done far too I ittle to analyse and
develop the models of specific morphologies. Another promising area for
catastrophe theory in biology, as yet practically unexplored, is evolution [112, 162J

Human sciences.

Most of my own contributions to catastrophe theory have been in the

human sciences, biology, psychology, sociology and economics.
In psychology, as Thom points out, one is studying the regulators in the brain
underlying behavioural patterns. There has been plenty of research in both
laboratory and cl inic upon the behavioural changes caused by dosing the brain
with chemicaIs, but as yet very I ittle has been achieved on the connection
between behaviour and the electrochemical activity of the normal undosed brain.
It is an exci.ting prospect that catastrophe theory may provide one of the first
systematic links between the psychology and neurology of a normal brain [170J.

But just as frutiful areas for appl ications are the social sciences, where
many individuals are involved instead of one. Economists are al ready demanding
models that can allow for catastrophic changes and divergent effects . And I
bel ieve that sociology may well be one of the first fields to feel the full impact
of this new type of appl ied mathematics, in spite of the prevail ing mood at
Princeton, and in spite of Thom's own doubts about the social morphologies
not being yet sufficiently explicit. It is true that in sociology there is less
likely to be a general theory so much as a variety of particular models to
describe the divisions and swings of opinion, emergence of compromise, voting
habits, soci.al habits, social changes, effects of stress, effects of overpopulation
and pollution , policy changes, political moves, emergence of classes, divergence
of taste, evolution of laws, etc. Moreover this type of individual model will
in general be much easier to understand than those in physics and biology
because the internal variables tend to be explicit and few in number. The
external and internal variables tend to play the rele of cause and effect, the
former representing control factors influencing the latter, which represent the
resulting behaviour. The potential is often best understood as a probability
function, and the dynamic as a soci.ological or psychological pressure . Let
 379

us give a simple example (see also [122-4,160-61,177-9]).

Example : strength of opinion~

Consider the opinions held by the individuals of a population on some

issue. For simplicity suppose there are just two possible opinions, called
left and right. Let the behaviour variabie x measure the strength of the
opinion :

Xl str"ongly held lert-wing ,::>pinion

wcakly loeld lefi-wirlg opir,ion
o neutréll
weakly held r'iqrlt-wir'J opinion
strongly held right-wi ng op inion

The two main control factors c1,c2 influencing opinion are bias and involvement.
The bias to the left or right may be due to self-interest, heredity, environ'ment,
political persuasion, information, ignorance or prejudice. The involvement may
be voluntary or involuntary. The potential function P c(x) is the probabil ity of
opinion x given control factors c = (c1,c2)' In the case of probability functions
the maxima are important, rather than the minima. Bias wilt be a normal
factor. We take as hypothesis that involvement is a splitting factor, in other
words the more involved he is, the more strongly the 'individual is likely to
adhere to his chosen opinion, and the less I ikely he is to be neutral even though
he may be relatively unbiased. Therefore oP/ox = 0 gives as model the cusp
catastrophe surface. So far everything we have described is explicit, and

Figure 3.

L bias coo(;o(:.--------~---J-----------?" R bias

1 -:i~wmcnt
possibly collectabie by a suitably designed questionnaire : for instance the
individual might be asked to position himself or herself on three continuous
scales indicating political point of view, involvement and strength of opinion
(the word "bias" has perhaps the wrong overtones for soliciting the desired
information from a questionnaire).

What is implicit in the model is some underlying dynamic representing

 380

the influence of communication on people as they make up their minds, pushing

them towards the most probable opinion. The peaks of probability represent
not only most probable behaviour, but also the asymptotic behaviour. Here of
course the model can only be a first approximation to the truth, due to the
random elements in communication, and the irrational elements in human
nature, and this may be the basis of Thom's doubts. Nevertheless it is often
only a first such approximation that the sociologist themselves are trying to
capture, while fully admitting to the unpredictabil ity of the free choice of
individuals , and I suggest even this crude model may give some qual itative
insight as follows.

We may regard the individuals as a cloud of points clustered in the

neighbourhood of the catastrophe surface • If the issue is such that more and
more people become involved. for instance as in the Dreyfuss affair or the
Watergate affair, we can envisage this as a slow drift of the points along the
surface in the direction of the c2-axis. Unbiased individuals find themseIves
caught into taking sides, and even families are liable to be split. Those most
involved find themselves sharply divided in opinion along the c2-axis; at the
same time there is a continuous change of opinion along a path going round the
top of the cusp through the less invol ved, and a 51 ight ove rlap amongst the
more involved due to individuals near the centre who may have changed their
bias yet paradoxically remain entrenched in the old opinion. Both latter
features are common to "polarised" populations , but seldom exhibited 50
clearly in a model.

Suppose that we now change the bias of individuals by propaganda and

persuasion , moving the points parallel to the c1-axis. The uninvolved will
hardly register any change of opinion, the slightly involved wilt change their
minds smoothly, and the more involved will tend to suddenly switch opinion
after some delay, not uncommonly to the surprise of both friend and foe, while
the fanatics will be very hard to change, but once persuaded, will tend to
become fanatical and irreversible converts.

The whole model can be elaborated to include the emergence of a

compromise opinion by using the butterfly catastrophe [124]. 50 much for th is
elementary example illustrating the type of model possible in sociology; let us
now return to the general discussion •

At present there seem to be two types of sociologist, the majority

approaching the subject from the point of view of the humanities , and the
minority approaching from the sciences. The latter tend to use statistics as
their main tooI, and are often accused by the former of missing the real
point. In turn the latter accuse the former of basing their theories upon
intuition rather than upon scientifically collected evidence. Nevertheless it
may well be that the former have a better understanding of that underlying
social morphologies, and are justifiably d istressed by the way the certain
quantitative analyses may seem to miss the point. One of the main benefits
of catastrophe theory to sociology may well be to reinforce some of the
theories of the non-mathematical sociologists. For, by providing models in
which continuous causes can produce discontinuous and divergent effects ,
catastrophe theory may enable them to retain, indeed confirm and develop,
theories which at present are being thrown into doubt by misinterpretation of
q.Jantitative data.
 881

Summarising : the two ways in which catastrophe theory may alter

the face of sociology are in the design of experiment, and the synthesis of
data. In future the sociologist may redesign his experiment with not only
the objective of drawing a smooth curve to iHustrate the trend, but also the
aim of detecting those critical points where the curve, or its derivative, may
be discontinuous, and hence reveaHng the social morphology that is taking
place.

L inguistics.

Thom's appHcation of catastrophe theory to linguistics [145,151-4] is

another extremely exciting possibH ity, because this is the first coherent attempt
to explain the brain activity behind language. Linguists make little attempt to
Hnk neurology and linguistics, and even Chomsky falls back on the suggestion
that abH ity to appreciate the deep structure of language must be hereditary,
without indicating how the genes inside each cell could possibly store such an
abHity. This blind faith in heredity is one step even further removed from
credibH ity than the biochemists' euphemism about developmental instructions
being " coded in the genes".

By contrast Thom suggests that the deep structure of language is yet

another aspect of universal morphologies, and his approach would at the same
time explain how animals , or children before they have learnt to speak, can
reason logicaHy (a simple observation all too often overlooked by Hnguists and
philosophers). His main idea is that a basic sentence begins as a single
thought, represented by a bifurcation of a dynamical system describing the
neurological activity, with the attractors of the system representing the nouns,
and the surfaces separating their basins of attraction representing the verb.
Speech is a mechanism that subsequently 1ists the component parts of the
bifurcation, and speech-recognition is the reverse mechanism that synthesises
a duplicate model of the same bifurcation, and thereby simulates another
single thought analogous to the original thought. The simplest bifurcations are
the elementary catastrophes, and Thom suggests that these give rise to the
basic types of spacio-temporal sentences , which are the foundation stone of any
language. I find this idea very convincing. However when Thom gets down to
the business of formulating the relationship between the mathematics and the
neurology I find him less convincing, and possibly open to improvement, as
follows.

He rests his model [148,1).336 and 145,p.232J on a fibering f : X ... R 4 ,

from a manifold X representing the relevant brain-states, to R 4 representing
conceptual space-time, which he suggests arises from our early awareness of
space-time. The synaptic connections in the brain, he goes on to say,
determine a dynamic on the fibre F, parametrised by R4. The basic sentences
are represented by bifurcations over paths in R4, and these are classified by
the elementary catastrophes with control-space R4 and state-space F. The
faHacy is that at any given moment the brain st:tte x E X can only He in one
attractor (or in the basin of one attractor), of the dynamic on F. Therefore
the brain can only think of one actor, or one noun, at a time, whereas what
Thom really wants in his model is for the brain to think of the whole sentence
simultaneously.

After discussions with p. Winbourne and N. Godwin, I should Hke to

propose an alternative formulation as follows. We begin with an analogy of
 382

visual perception . Let C~(02) denote the space of non-negative

C""-functions on a disk 0 2 • A function p E C~(02) represents a picture in 0 2 ,
with p(y) representing the 1ight intensity at y E 0 2 . The maxima of p
represent the brightest spots. If 0 2 now denotes the visual field, then the
visual mechanism gives a map C~(02) .... X, from pictures to brain-states.
Meanwhile the faculty of visual perception must imply the existence (to within
some tolerance) of an i.nverse map f:X .... C,+(02), where 0 2 i.s now the
conceptual (as opposed to the external) visual field, otherwise the mi.nd could
not make head nor tail of the resul ting jumble of brain-states. When the
brain-state i.s at x the mind-state or perceived pi.cture is fx.

We now return to Thom's suggestion of our early awareness of

space-time. Our early experience of space is primarily an awareness of
matter. If 0 3 denotes a region of space, the most direct mathematical
description of matter is a (possibly discontinuous) density distribution m:0 3 .... R +'
where m(y) denotes the density of matter at y E 0 3 • However from the
psychological point of view of awareness this direct description is inadequate
for two reasons • Firstly we cannot see or touch i.nside sol id objects to teIl
how dense they are. Secondly animate objects (including ourselves) tend to
have a nest of significant neighbourhoods around them, of which we are aware.
For instance the insides of a person are more vulnerable than his skin, his
10-centimetre neighbourhood is a territory that he has a strong instinct to
defend if invaded, his 1-metre neighbourhood 1 ies within his re ach , his 2-metre
neighbourhood lies within striking distance, and outside his 10-metre
neighbourhood is outside his immediate striking area, unless he has a gun* •
Both these inadequacies are met to some extent if we replace m by some
smoothed density distribution s E C+(03); for example we might define
s:03 .... R+ by the transform

s(y) S
03
e - IY-z r
m(z) dz

Then the nests of neighbourhoods are given by the level surfaces of s.

Summarising : awareness of space can be formally represented by smooth
density distributions.

We now take as our main hypothesis that space-time awareness is

represented by a brain .... mind map

f:X .... C+(03 x T),

where X is a mantfold representing the brain-states underlying spacio-temporal

thoughts, 0 3 is a conceptual region of space, and T a conceptual interval of
time. The justification for this hypothesis is twofold, firstly the analogue
above, implied by visual perception, and secondly the representation of space-
awareness by the smooth density di.stributions. We now show how this
hypothesis leads to a type of catastrophe theory that is simpIer than Thom's
model, and subtly different. Since C~(03 x T) = C""(T ,C,+(03)), given a
brain-state x E X, then the resulting mind-state s = fx is a conceptual time-path
St, t ET, of srnooth density distributions St:03 .... R , Mathematically we can
regard s as a catastrophe potential, with control-sp~ce Tand state-space 0 3 ,

* Notice the sI ight out-of-context jump in the mind at the word "gun". A larger
catastrophic jump occurs in the perceived neighbourhoods of a person if he
pulls out a gun,
 383

which is much simpIer than Thom's model. The maxima of St will represent
the "centres" of solid objects in 0 3 , in other words the actors of Thom, or
the nouns of the corresponding basic sentence. However this set-up d iffers
from the usual catastrophe theory application, because there is no dynamic*
maximising St. Therefore in this case the maxima themselves are less
important then their nests of neighbourhoods given by the level surfaces of St.

Consider a particular example, the message sentence "A gives B to C"

- see ~451. At any given time t, it is important to know whether AB together
form a "closer" subset than, for example, BC. Psychologically we would
recognise this by observing that the matter (or rather the smoothed distribution)
in between A and B is denser than that between Band C. Mathematically we
can detect this by checking that the saddle between A and B is higher than
that between AB and C (Figure 4a).
Figure 4. (a) (b)

A catastrophe happens if the two saddles are at the same level, (Figure 4b),
and semantically this occurs at the moment that the message B leaves A's
hand and enters C's hand. Therefore we might call it a transfer of proximity
catastrophe. These catastrophes are characterised by the Maxwell sets
between saddles of index 1 lying on the same component of level surface . I
think that this formulation leads to mathematics that is much closer to Thom's
original conception .

Summarising in this appl ication to I inguistics there are three types

of 1-dimensional catastrophe, entrances and exits, represented by the familiar
fold together with an orientation, and the above transfer of proximity. What
needs to be studied is the various sequences of folds and transfers that can
occur along paths in higher dimensional control spaces , near the organising
centres of higher catastrophes. When classifying the higher catastrophes the
same restriction appears as for probabil ity functions [124], because distribution
functions are positive, and therefore bounded below. This restriction eliminates
all the original 7 elementary catastrophes except for the cusp, x 4 , and the
butterfly, x 6 • The classification up to dimension 8 contains only two more
cuspoids, x 8 and x 10, and the double cusp, x 4 + y4. The two cuspoids would
represent sentences whose 4 or 5 actors must all be in single file, such as
the messenger sentence "A sends B by C to 0". The most interesting key to
I inguistics, therefore , seems to I ie in the study of paths in the double cusp,
and the associated sequences of entrances , exits and transfers between the 4
actors in'il'olved, and the comparison of these paths with Thom's original
classification C145 ] of basic sentences .

~ In the notation of [177] is an application at Level 1 rather than Level 2.