Metasystem Transition Theory is founded on a thoroughly analyzed systems theoretic vocabulary of
concepts and terms. This conceptual basis is intended to be
both foundational and evolving, one aspect of a meta-foundational system.
The following list of nodes, linked to their definitions and cross-references, provides a first attempt to organize the fundamental concepts in the form of a semantic network. These nodes were developed by the PCP editors in August 1992, and originally implemented by Cliff Joslyn in HyperTeX, an extension of the TeX mathematical typesetting language with elementary hypertext capacities. They were converted to HTML by Johan Bollen in March 1994.
The following clickable map represents the semantic network formed by the collection of linked concepts. Links are represented by arrows, labeled with the link type. Unlabeled links are of the "is-a" type. Roots
are shaded. Concepts with rectangles (not rounded) are clickable.
Many of the concepts referred to in these definitions are still undefined, and need to be developed later. Note that concepts for which there was no consensus on the definition have been split up into two (or more) concepts, tagged with the first letter of their author's last name. E.g. HJ-distinction is a definition of the "distinction" concept as proposed by Heylighen and Joslyn, T-distinction is the corresponding definition proposed by Turchin. Different senses of the same word have been tagged with subsequent numbers to distinguish them. This list of terms gives a first idea of the process of semantic analysis which is at the basis of PCP development.
