“Paradigm shift” is one of the terms that everyone uses, but no one understands.
"Paradigm" is a buzzword that people from the world of science, culture and other fields boldly operate on. However, the breadth of use of this term often baffles commoners. In the modern sense, the concept of paradigm was introduced by the American science historian Thomas Kun, and today it is firmly established in the vocabulary of the "intellectual elite".
Etymology
The word “paradigm” is a derivative of the Greek noun παράδειγμα - “template, example, model, sample”, which combines two tokens: παρά “near” and δεῖγμα “shown, sample, test” - a derivative of the verb δείκνυμι “show I indicate. "
Thomas Kuhn's Theory of Scientific Paradigms
How to visualize the development of science? Is it possible to take, for example, a bucket into which, from the very onset of scientific thought and to this day, scientists all over the world are throwing away “knowledge”? Theoretically, why not ... But what will be the volume of this bucket? “Bottomless,” you answer, and you will probably be right. But can it be said that a certain “unit” of knowledge, falling into this bucket, forever and irrevocably finds its place there? Let's not rush to answer this question.
Let us return to the material world and discuss where scientific knowledge is stored. How does each of us know that the Earth is round, and that man belongs to the animal kingdom? Of course, from books, at least from textbooks. What is the average thickness of a textbook? Pages 200-300 ... Is this volume enough to reflect the content of our bottomless vessel, the filling of which people have been working for several thousand years?
“Stop fooling us,” you say, “because only the foundations of a particular area are reflected in school textbooks, the basis that is sufficient to understand the basic laws of the world order!” And again you will be absolutely right! But the fact is that if the "getting" of any scientific idea into our bucket were irreversible, then the textbooks would begin with the categorical statement that the Earth is flat, but would end with a contradictory statement that it is still round ... But in fact, being once a universally recognized scientific fact, turtles and elephants holding the Earth, at one point, a bullet flew out of a bucket, and in their place a ball reigned, which, incidentally, also recently left its warm place, giving way ellipsoid (and if you go to the end and in his tediousness, the geoid is now firmly settled in a bucket)!
So, in simple words, the paradigm is those basic ideas and approaches adopted by the scientific community as axioms that serve as a starting point for further research.
Scientific revolution and paradigm shift
We have already agreed that the paradigm is a basic idea, accepted as a scientific fact and a starting point for research. So how is it that the theory that the Earth is flat, which does not need proof, suddenly ceased to be relevant? The fact is that, according to Kuhn's theory, any, even the most stable and seemingly indestructible paradigm sooner or later encounters the appearance of the so-called anomalies - inexplicable phenomena within the framework of the accepted axiomatic base; at this moment, science comes into crisis. Initially, one or two scientists in the world notice this, begin to check the current paradigm, verify, find weaknesses, and, in the end, it turns out that these revolutionaries are conducting alternative research in a direction perpendicular to contemporaries. They publish articles, speak at conferences and ... meet with complete misunderstanding and rejection of colleagues and society. On that, Giordano Bruno was burnt, by the way! And Ernest Rutherford and Niels Bohr, with their ideas about the structure of the atom, have long been considered dreamers. However, life is flowing on its own, and the seed of doubt, planted by the "opposition" from the world of science, sprouts in the minds of an increasing number of scientists, conflicting scientific schools appear.
This is how the scientific revolution takes place, as a result of which, sooner or later, a new paradigm is formed, and the old, as we have already agreed, leaves its familiar place.
Examples of modern paradigms in the exact sciences
In the modern world, the theory presented by Kuhn, which we examined earlier, looks too simplified. Let me explain with an example: at school we study the so-called Euclidean geometry. One of the main axioms is that parallel lines do not intersect. At the end of the XIX century, Nikolai Lobachevsky published a work in which he refuted this generally accepted scientific postulate. Obviously, the alternative view was not very welcome, but there were isolated supporters of this idea. Only more than a hundred years later, Lobachevsky’s geometry not only established itself, but also served as the basis for other non-Euclidean geometries of spatial relations. Now these theories are widely used in physics, astronomy, etc. However, neither the geometry of our great compatriot nor other "non-Euclidean" ideas supplanted the classical one - they supplemented it, built on it, that is, paradigms exist in parallel, describing the same object in different aspects.
A similar situation is observed in programming paradigms. The term “polyparadigmality” is even used in relation to this field of knowledge.
New paradigms do not take away the old ones, but offer methods for solving certain problems with reduced time and financial costs. At the same time, the “old” paradigms remain in order, being used either as the basis for new ones or as an independent set of tools. For example, the Python programming language allows you to write code using any of the existing paradigms - imperative, functional, object-oriented, or a combination thereof.
Paradigms in the humanities
In the humanities, the theory of paradigms is slightly modified: paradigms describe not a phenomenon, but mainly an approach to its study. So, for example, in linguistics at the beginning of the last century, in the mainstream studies, language was studied in a comparative historical aspect, that is, either a change in language over time was described, or different languages were compared. Then, in linguistics, a system-structural paradigm was established - language was understood as an ordered system (research in this vein is still ongoing). Today, it is believed that the anthropocentric paradigm prevails: “language in man and man in language” are being investigated.
In modern sociology, it is believed that there are several sustainable paradigms. Some researchers hold the view that this is evidence of the crisis state of science about the laws of society. Others, on the contrary, affirm the multi-paradigm of sociology (George Ritzer's term), based on the idea of the complex and multidimensional nature of social phenomena.
Development paradigm
The term "paradigm" in recent decades has gone beyond usage in the Kunov sense. Increasingly, one can find the phrase “development paradigm”: in the names of conferences, collections of scientific articles, and even in newspaper headlines. This phrase was approved after the 1992 UN Conference on the problems of the environment and the evolution of civilization. The paradigms of sustainable development and innovative development (it was in this language that they were announced at the conference) are essentially complementary and interrelated concepts of the progress of the global structure. The general idea is that, provided continuous economic growth is achieved, the state’s internal policy should be aimed at developing human potential, maintaining and / or restoring the environment through the introduction of scientific and technological developments.
Personality paradigm
The term “personality paradigm” is (in simple words) a system of representations of an individual person about the surrounding reality. In the sciences of man, the concept of "picture of the world" is used in the same meaning. The personal paradigm depends on a large number of factors, starting from historical (the era in which a person lives) and geographical, ending with moral principles and individual life experience. That is, each of us is a carrier of a unique personality paradigm.
Other meanings of the word “paradigm”
In linguistics, the term "paradigm" is rooted before popularization by Kuhn and may include several meanings:
- "Assortment" of a particular grammatical category. For example, the paradigm of number in Russian is much narrower than in English and includes present, past and future tenses (compare with the variety of tense systems of verbs in English);
- a system for changing the forms of a word in accordance with grammatical categories, for example, conjugation or declension, etc.
In history, under the paradigm and its change quite often, especially in the Western tradition, we mean significant events that drastically change the way of life, in particular, the agrarian and industrial revolution. Now they are talking about a digital historical paradigm.