There were articles by Hector Sussmann and Raphael Zahler in Synthese critiquing Zeeman's ideas (basically arguing that the results he obtained using catastrophe theory are self-evident and that Thom's theorems don't support Zeeman's interpretation). Some of it even spilled out into popular press.
I would not say self evident, but it's true that the important ideas of discontinuity, hysteresis, non accessibility etc aren't specific to catastrophe theory and can be achieved in less annoying ways (but with less pretty pictures!)
What S&Z were saying is that either one doesn't need catastrophe theory to arrive at the stated conclusion or Zeeman's invocation of Thom's classification of elementary catastrophes goes beyond what the result says rigorously (e.g., as regards the meaning of terms like "generic," "local," etc.).