Change control
Revision history
The canonical definition is maintained like an engineering specification: numbered revisions, dated, each preceded by adversarial review and each carrying a change note. Superseded revisions are retained, not deleted.
Revisions §
| Revision | Date | Summary | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rev0 | First issue. The four-condition test; the premise as a five-property, writable object; six exclusions; eight worked examples; a hostile self-review recorded as an annex. | Superseded | |
| Rev1 | Structural corrections after two adversarial reviews (a structural and logical attack; an originality and reduction attack). The test re-founded on three conditions plus a structural condition — detection changes the exposure, not the phenomenon. Muteness quantified as a property of routing, with an explicit horizon. The obsolescence boundary rebuilt on what is compared. Expiry stated as graded, with local materiality. Lineage credited by name — Turner, Reason, Rasmussen, Lehman, Dewar, Leveson, Reliability-Centered Maintenance, SR 11-7, PMBOK, the design-rationale literature — and the contribution restated as a configuration. Review annex rewritten to record defects found and closed. | Superseded | |
| Rev2 | Additive clarifications after three further reviews (a counterexample hunt; a utility review; an external forensic review). Relationship to ISO 9001’s own context and change clauses. The effectiveness audit named as a lagging comparison. The competing-explanations test run against the manufacturing example. The two boundaries that keep the instrument finite, and the record an organization would show if asked. Positioning stated as a claim: a diagnostic state with a unit of record, not a newly discovered phenomenon. Scope of “protection”; condition 1’s causal history; property 5’s reach. No condition, property, exclusion or example removed or reworded. | Superseded | |
| Rev3 | Corrections after an adversarial empirical validation against primary accident-investigation and regulatory sources. Nine candidate cases were reconstructed; seven were rejected. The operative clause of the definition changed from “documented, executed and verified” to “documented, in force and verified as compliant”, because the strongest validated case is a control that had never been performed and was fully compliant throughout. “Continues to operate exactly as designed” became “continues to behave exactly as specified”, which covers an interval returning not due, a threshold within limit, a calculation still valid, a proof test passing and an approval still in force. Condition 2 restated: the premise may be documented elsewhere; what matters is that the control’s own verification never interrogates it. Condition 3 made harder to satisfy, with received warnings, informed regulators and considered decisions not to act named as explicit exclusions. A note added on compliant non-execution. No condition added or removed; the short form unchanged. | Current | |
| Rev4 | — | Not scheduled. Candidates: findings from the Field Manual’s evidence program; a reader-facing edition of the review record; verified editions for every reference; completion of the literature test left partial at Rev3. | Planned |
What has not changed since Rev0 §
- The canonical short-form definition, word for word.
- The five properties of a premise.
- The referents of the exclusions — what the term refuses.
- The eight worked examples.
- The three diagnostic questions: Date, Witness, Counterfactual.
Revision policy §
- Adversarial review first. A revision is issued only after the current text has been attacked in writing and the findings dispositioned one by one.
- Additive by default. A clarification is added beside the text it clarifies. A condition, property, exclusion or example is reworded or removed only with a stated reason in the change note.
- Nothing disappears. Superseded revisions are retained in full and remain citable by revision number.
- Anchors are stable. Section and paragraph anchors on this site do not change between revisions, so a link made today resolves after the next revision (stable anchors).
- The short form is constitutional. Changing the canonical short-form definition would be a new concept, not a new revision.
Where the texts are §
Rev3 is published in full on the Canonical Definition page and as a download. Rev1 and Rev0 are retained by the author and are available for citation verification; a public archive of superseded revisions at stable URLs is planned (see About).