Interacting physical systems in the neighborhood of criticality (and massiv
e continuum field theories) can often be characterized by just two physical
scales: a (macroscopic) correlation length and a (microscopic) interaction
range, related to the coupling and measured by the Ginzburg number G. A cr
itical crossover limit can be defined when both scales become large while t
heir ratio stays finite. The corresponding scaling functions are universal,
and they are related to the standard field-theory renormalization-group fu
nctions. The critical crossover describes the unique flow from the Gaussian
to the nonclassical fixed point.