Paradigm
Paradigm
Paradigm
Contents
[hide]
1Etymology
2Scientific paradigm
3Paradigm shifts
o 3.1Paradigm paralysis
4Incommensurability
5Subsequent developments
o 5.1Imre Lakatos and research programmes
o 5.2Larry Laudan: Dormant anomalies, fading credibility, and
research traditions
6In social sciences
7Other uses
8See also
9References
o 9.1Citations
o 9.2Sources
Etymology[edit]
See also: Paradeigma
Paradigm comes from Greek παράδειγμα (paradeigma), "pattern, example, sample"[1] from the
verb παραδείκνυμι (paradeiknumi), "exhibit, represent, expose"[2] and that from παρά (para),
"beside, beyond"[3] and δείκνυμι (deiknumi), "to show, to point out".[4]
In rhetoric, paradeigma is known as a type of proof. The purpose of paradeigma is to provide an
audience with an illustration of similar occurrences. This illustration is not meant to take the
audience to a conclusion, however it is used to help guide them there. A personal accountant is a
good comparison of paradeigma to explain how it is meant to guide the audience. It is not the job
of a personal accountant to tell their client exactly what (and what not) to spend their money on,
but to aid in guiding their client as to how money should be spent based on their financial
goals. Anaximenes defined paradeigma as, "actions that have occurred previously and are
similar to, or the opposite of, those which we are now discussing."[5]
The original Greek term παράδειγμα (paradeigma) was used in Greek texts such
as Plato's Timaeus (28A) as the model or the pattern that the Demiurge (god) used to create the
cosmos. The term had a technical meaning in the field of grammar: the 1900 Merriam-
Webster dictionary defines its technical use only in the context of grammar or, in rhetoric, as a
term for an illustrative parable or fable. In linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure used paradigm to
refer to a class of elements with similarities.
The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines this usage as "a philosophical and theoretical
framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and
the experiments performed in support of them are formulated; broadly: a philosophical or
theoretical framework of any kind."[6]
The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy attributes the following description of the term to Thomas
Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:
Kuhn suggests that certain scientific works, such as Newton's Principia or John Dalton's New
System of Chemical Philosophy (1808), provide an open-ended resource: a framework of
concepts, results, and procedures within which subsequent work is structured. Normal science
proceeds within such a framework or paradigm. A paradigm does not impose a rigid or
mechanical approach, but can be taken more or less creatively and flexibly.[7]
Scientific paradigm[edit]
Main articles: Paradigm shift, Sociology of knowledge, Systemics, Commensurability (philosophy
of science), and Confirmation holism
See also: Paradigm (experimental) and Scientific consensus
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the basic meaning of the term paradigm as "a typical
example or pattern of something; a pattern or model".[8] The historian of science Thomas
Kuhn gave it its contemporary meaning when he adopted the word to refer to the set of concepts
and practices that define a scientific discipline at any particular period of time. In his book The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions (first published in 1962), Kuhn defines a scientific paradigm
as: "universally recognized scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and
solutions for a community of practitioners,[9] i.e.,
Paradigm shifts[edit]
Main article: Paradigm shift
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn wrote that "the successive transition from one
paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science" (p. 12).
Paradigm shifts tend to appear in response to the accumulation of critical anomalies as well as
the proposal of a new theory with the power to encompass both older relevant data and explain
relevant anomalies. New paradigms tend to be most dramatic in sciences that appear to be
stable and mature, as in physics at the end of the 19th century. At that time, a statement
generally attributed to physicist Lord Kelvin famously claimed, "There is nothing new to be
discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." [16] Five
years later, Albert Einstein published his paper on special relativity, which challenged the set of
rules laid down by Newtonian mechanics, which had been used to describe force and motion for
over two hundred years. In this case, the new paradigm reduces the old to a special case in the
sense that Newtonian mechanics is still a good model for approximation for speeds that are slow
compared to the speed of light. Many philosophers and historians of science, including Kuhn
himself, ultimately accepted a modified version of Kuhn's model, which synthesizes his original
view with the gradualist model that preceded it. Kuhn's original model is now generally seen as
too limited[citation needed].
Kuhn's idea was itself revolutionary in its time, as it caused a major change in the way that
academics talk about science. Thus, it may be that it caused or was itself part of a "paradigm
shift" in the history and sociology of science. However, Kuhn would not recognize such a
paradigm shift. Being in the social sciences, people can still use earlier ideas to discuss the
history of science.
Paradigm paralysis[edit]
Perhaps the greatest barrier to a paradigm shift, in some cases, is the reality of paradigm
paralysis: the inability or refusal to see beyond the current models of thinking. [17] This is similar to
what psychologists term Confirmation bias. Examples include rejection of Aristarchus of
Samos', Copernicus', and Galileo's theory of a heliocentric solar system, the discovery
of electrostatic photography, xerography and the quartz clock.[citation needed]
Incommensurability[edit]
Kuhn pointed out that it could be difficult to assess whether a particular paradigm shift had
actually led to progress, in the sense of explaining more facts, explaining more important facts, or
providing better explanations, because the understanding of "more important", "better", etc.
changed with the paradigm. The two versions of reality are thus incommensurable. Kuhn's
version of incommensurability has an important psychological dimension; this is apparent from
his analogy between a paradigm shift and the flip-over involved in some optical illusions.
[18]
However, he subsequently diluted his commitment to incommensurability considerably, partly
in the light of other studies of scientific development that did not involve revolutionary change.
One of the examples of incommensurability that Kuhn used was the change in the style of
[19]
chemical investigations that followed the work of Lavoisier on atomic theory in the late 18th
Century.[13] In this change, the focus had shifted from the bulk properties of matter (such as
hardness, colour, reactivity, etc.) to studies of atomic weights and quantitative studies of
reactions. He suggested that it was impossible to make the comparison needed to judge which
body of knowledge was better or more advanced. However, this change in research style (and
paradigm) eventually (after more than a century) led to a theory of atomic structure that accounts
well for the bulk properties of matter; see, for example, Brady's General Chemistry.[20] According
to P J Smith, this ability of science to back off, move sideways, and then advance is
characteristic of the natural sciences,[21] but contrasts with the position in some social sciences,
notably economics.[22]
This apparent ability does not guarantee that the account is veridical at any one time, of course,
and most modern philosophers of science are fallibilists. However, members of other disciplines
do see the issue of incommensurability as a much greater obstacle to evaluations of "progress";
see, for example, Martin Slattery's Key Ideas in Sociology.[23][24]
Subsequent developments[edit]
Opaque Kuhnian paradigms and paradigm shifts do exist. A few years after the discovery of the
mirror-neurons that provide a hard-wired basis for the human capacity for empathy, the scientists
involved were unable to identify the incidents that had directed their attention to the issue. Over
the course of the investigation, their language and metaphors had changed so that they
themselves could no longer interpret all of their own earlier laboratory notes and records. [25]
Imre Lakatos and research programmes[edit]
However, many instances exist in which change in a discipline's core model of reality has
happened in a more evolutionary manner, with individual scientists exploring the usefulness of
alternatives in a way that would not be possible if they were constrained by a paradigm. Imre
Lakatos suggested (as an alternative to Kuhn's formulation) that scientists actually work
within research programmes.[26] In Lakatos' sense, a research programme is a sequence of
problems, placed in order of priority. This set of priorities, and the associated set of preferred
techniques, is the positive heuristic of a programme. Each programme also has a negative
heuristic; this consists of a set of fundamental assumptions that – temporarily, at least – takes
priority over observational evidence when the two appear to conflict.
This latter aspect of research programmes is inherited from Kuhn's work on paradigms, [citation
needed]
and represents an important departure from the elementary account of how science works.
According to this, science proceeds through repeated cycles of observation, induction,
hypothesis-testing, etc., with the test of consistency with empirical evidencebeing imposed at
each stage. Paradigms and research programmes allow anomalies to be set aside, where there
is reason to believe that they arise from incomplete knowledge (about either the substantive
topic, or some aspect of the theories implicitly used in making observations.
Larry Laudan: Dormant anomalies, fading credibility, and research
traditions[edit]
Larry Laudan[27] has also made two important contributions to the debate. Laudan believed that
something akin to paradigms exist in the social sciences (Kuhn had contested this, see below);
he referred to these as research traditions. Laudan noted that some anomalies become
"dormant", if they survive a long period during which no competing alternative has shown itself
capable of resolving the anomaly. He also presented cases in which a dominant paradigm had
withered away because its lost credibility when viewed against changes in the wider intellectual
milieu.
In social sciences[edit]
Kuhn himself did not consider the concept of paradigm as appropriate for the social sciences. He
explains in his preface to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that he developed the concept
of paradigm precisely to distinguish the social from the natural sciences. While visiting the Center
for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1958 and 1959, surrounded by social
scientists, he observed that they were never in agreement about the nature of legitimate scientific
problems and methods. He explains that he wrote this book precisely to show that there can
never be any paradigms in the social sciences. Mattei Dogan, a French sociologist, in his article
"Paradigms in the Social Sciences," develops Kuhn's original thesis that there are no paradigms
at all in the social sciences since the concepts are polysemic, involving the deliberate mutual
ignorance between scholars and the proliferation of schools in these disciplines. Dogan provides
many examples of the non-existence of paradigms in the social sciences in his essay, particularly
in sociology, political science and political anthropology.
However, both Kuhn's original work and Dogan's commentary are directed at disciplines that are
defined by conventional labels (such as "sociology"). While it is true that such broad groupings in
the social sciences are usually not based on a Kuhnian paradigm, each of the competing sub-
disciplines may still be underpinned by a paradigm, research programme, research tradition, and/
or professional imagery. These structures will be motivating research, providing it with an
agenda, defining what is and is not anomalous evidence, and inhibiting debate with other groups
that fall under the same broad disciplinary label. (A good example is provided by the contrast
between Skinnerian behaviourism and Personal Construct Theory (PCT) within psychology. The
most significant of the many ways these two sub-disciplines of psychology differ concerns
meanings and intentions. In PCT, they are seen as the central concern of psychology; in
behaviourism, they are not scientific evidence at all, as they cannot be directly observed.)
Such considerations explain the conflict between the Kuhn/ Dogan view, and the views of others
(including Larry Laudan, see above), who do apply these concepts to social sciences.
Handa,[28] M.L. (1986) introduced the idea of "social paradigm" in the context of social sciences.
He identified the basic components of a social paradigm. Like Kuhn, Handa addressed the issue
of changing paradigm; the process popularly known as "paradigm shift". In this respect, he
focused on social circumstances that precipitate such a shift and the effects of the shift on social
institutions, including the institution of education. This broad shift in the social arena, in turn,
changes the way the individual perceives reality.
Another use of the word paradigm is in the sense of "worldview". For example, in social science,
the term is used to describe the set of experiences, beliefs and values that affect the way an
individual perceives reality and responds to that perception. Social scientists have adopted the
Kuhnian phrase "paradigm shift" to denote a change in how a given society goes about
organizing and understanding reality. A "dominant paradigm" refers to the values, or system of
thought, in a society that are most standard and widely held at a given time. Dominant paradigms
are shaped both by the community's cultural background and by the context of the historical
moment. Hutchin [29] outlines some conditions that facilitate a system of thought to become an
accepted dominant paradigm:
See also[edit]
Look up paradigm in
Wiktionary, the free
dictionary.
Concept
Conceptual framework
Conceptual schema
Contextualism
Dogma
Heuristic
Perspectivism
Programming paradigm
The history of the various paradigms in evolutionary
biology (Wikiversity)
Metanarrative
Methodology
Poststructuralism
World view
Mental model
Mental representation
Mindset
Set (psychology)
Schema (psychology)
Basic beliefs
References[edit]
Citations[edit]
Sources[edit]
[show]
Philosophy of science
[show]
Technology
[show]
World view
590-2
Categories:
Epistemology of science
Aesthetics
Consensus reality
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