“General Morphology was developed by Fritz Zwicky, the Bulgarian-born, Swiss-national astrophysicist based at the California Institute of Technology. Among others, Zwicky applied Morphological Analysis (MA) to astronomical studies and the development of jet and rocket propulsion systems. As a problem-structuring and problem-solving technique, MA was designed for multi-dimensional, non-quantifiable problems where causal modeling and simulation do not function well, or at all. Zwicky developed this approach to address seemingly non-reducible complexity: using the technique of cross-consistency assessment (CCA) (Ritchey, 1998), the system allows for reduction by identifying the possible solutions that actually exist, eliminating the illogical solution combinations in a grid box rather than reducing the number of variables involved. A detailed introduction to morphological modeling is given in Ritchey (2002, 2006).”

Morphological_analysis_(problem-solving)

• Morphological methods for design of modular systems (a survey) > http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.1712
• General Morphological Analysis. A general method for non-quantified modeling > http://www.swemorph.com/ma.html