In reality, any cell is constantly integrating hundreds or thousands of different kinds of cues. Little is known, however, about the interactions of these cues or the tipping points that may cause a cell to either flourish or commit suicide. In other fields, fancy electrodes allow neuroscientists to record the activity of many neurons at once. Gene chips make it possible to determine which combination of thousands of genes are activated at the same time. The descendants of the tipping-point concept may eventually prove useful for thinking about these more complex systems.
Scientific ideas can also have tipping points.
But history has shown that the correctness of an idea is no guarantee of its success. The hypothesis that the Earth spins on its axis and moves around the sun did not gain acceptance until it had been resurrected and championed by the likes of Copernicus and Galileo. Scientific ideas often develop their stickiness by establishing practical or conceptual usefulness. The explosive growth of the Internet in the last five years, which few could have predicted in 1994, is a technosocial example of the tipping point in action. Obviously, not all ideas reach their tipping point.