General Morphological Analysis as a Basic Scientific Modelling Method

General Morphological Analysis (GMA) is a method for structuring a conceptual problem space – called a morphospace – and, through a process of existential combinatorics, synthesising a solution space. As such, it is a basic modelling method, on a par with other scientific modelling methods including System Dynamics Modelling, Bayesian Networks and various types graph-based “influence diagrams”. The purpose of this article is 1) to present the theoretical and methodological basics of morphological modelling; 2) to situate GMA within a broader modelling theoretical framework by developing a (morphological) model representing different modelling methods, and 3) to demonstrate some of the basic modelling techniques that can be carried out with GMA using dedicated computer support.