Have you ever stopped to look at all the little bits that make up the culture in which you live? Of course, there are many traditions and institutions, such as public schools, but what about the beliefs you share with others, such as friends and family? What is a paradigm? This, in simple words, is a combination of concepts and beliefs that make up the worldview.
Paradigm definition
The ideas, concepts, and beliefs that you and others share regarding religion, nationality, and other cultural objects are likely to be an important part of your individual and collective identity, but how often do you reflect on where they came from or how they might change? In simple words, a paradigm is a collection of beliefs and concepts, which is a set of theories, assumptions, and ideas that contribute to your worldview or create certain frameworks and limitations.
An example of a paradigm is the phrase "American way of life." This phrase refers to the totality of beliefs and ideas about what it means to be an American. For people who consider this paradigm very important, it can serve as the basis for how they see or interact with the world around them. This emphasizes one of the most important features of the paradigm, which is that it consists of beliefs and ideas that form the basis for approach and interaction with other things or people.
Where do the paradigms come from?
In sociology, examples of paradigms arose in the work of some key European philosophers, such as Karl Marx and Emil Durkheim, in the mid-to-late 19th century. Although they may not have specifically designated them as paradigms, these thinkers have built a number of theories to study how some elements of society are connected or solutions to social problems caused, inter alia, by the growing power of capitalism. Throughout the 20th century, sociologists based their ideas on these earlier concepts and theories to form the basis of modern sociological approaches and traditions.
Theoretical paradigms in sociology
Within the sociological tradition, there are two main types of paradigms that researchers use as the basis for the analysis of societies:
- Structural functionalism is a perspective that relates to how individual parts of a society or culture intersect and rely on each other to form a functioning whole. Paradigm example: in cities and towns there is an official government that exists to provide services and services to residents such as schools and highways, and in turn, these residents pay taxes to the government so that it continues to work. A functional perspective will consider them as interdependent relationships in which each side collaborates with the other to provide the entire function of the city.
- The scientific paradigm is a structure containing all generally accepted views on the subject, conventions on what direction the research should be undertaken and how it should be carried out. Philosopher Thomas Koon suggested that the paradigm includes "practices that define scientific discipline at a particular point in time." The study of the paradigm contains all the clear, established laws, theories, general methods and standards that allow us to recognize the experimental result as belonging to the field or not. Science goes through the accumulation of support for hypotheses, which eventually become models and theories. But they all exist in a larger theoretical framework. The vocabulary and concepts in Newton’s three laws or central dogma in biology are examples of the paradigm of scientific “open resources” that scientists have accepted.
Paradigms are historically and culturally related (Thomas Kuhn)
A modern Chinese medical researcher with experience in oriental medicine will act in a different paradigm than the western physician of the 1800s. Where does the paradigm come from? Philosopher Thomas Kuhn was interested in how the all-encompassing theories that we have from reality itself affect the models and theories that we use within the framework of a paradigm that dictates the following:
- what is observed and measured;
- questions we ask about these observations;
- how these questions are formulated;
- how to interpret the results;
- how the study is conducted;
- what equipment is suitable.
Many students who prefer to study science do this with the confidence that they are pursuing the most rational path to studying objective reality. But science, like any other discipline, is subject to ideological characteristics, prejudices and hidden assumptions. In fact, Kuhn strongly suggested that research in a deeply rooted paradigm invariably completes this paradigm, since anything that contradicts it is ignored or pursued by specified methods until it matches the already established dogma.
The body of already existing evidence in the field forms the collection and interpretation of all subsequent evidence. The belief that the current paradigm is reality itself is precisely what makes it so difficult to accept alternatives. Although Kuhn focused on the sciences, his observations on scientific paradigms are applicable to other disciplines.
New Theories: A Paradigm Shift
Scientists very often discard existing models and collect new theories. But from time to time, sufficient anomalies accumulate in a certain area, and the scientific paradigm itself must change to accommodate them. Kuhn believed that science has periods of patient data collection within the framework of a paradigm mixed with the periodic revolution as it matures. A paradigm shift is not a threat to science, unlike the manner in which it progresses.
Normal science is a step-by-step scientific process that takes care of previous research. Revolutionary science (often the “cornerstone science”) questions the paradigm. Kuhn believed that if the paradigm suddenly jumps from one foundation to another, a shift occurs. The following example can be given. Many physicists in the 19th century were convinced that the Newtonian paradigm that reigned for 200 years was the pinnacle of discovery, and scientific progress was more or less a matter of refinement.
Paradigm concept
When Einstein published his theories of the general theory of relativity, it was not just another idea that could conveniently fit into the existing paradigm. Instead, Newtonian physics itself was attributed to being a special subclass of a larger paradigm advanced by the general theory of relativity. Newton’s three laws are still taught in schools, but now we are acting in a paradigm that puts these laws in a wider context.
The concept of a paradigm is closely connected with the Platonic and Aristotelian views on knowledge. Aristotle believed that knowledge can be based only on what is already known, on the basis of the scientific method. Plato believed that knowledge should be judged by what could be the end result or the end goal. Plato's philosophy is more like the intuitive leaps that trigger the scientific revolution.
Examples of paradigm theories
- Geocentric model of the Ptolemy Universe (with the earth in the center).
- Heliocentric astronomy of Copernicus (with the sun in the center).
- Physics of Aristotle.
- The mechanics of Galileo.
- Newton's theory of gravity.
- Theory of the atom of Dalton.
- Darwin's Theory of Evolution.
- Einstein's theory of relativity.
- Quantum mechanics.
- Theory of plate tectonics in geology.
- The theory of microbes in medicine.
- Theory of genes in biology.
What is a paradigm shift?
Bias occurs when one paradigm theory is replaced by another. Here are some examples:
- Ptolemy's astronomy gives way to Copernicus astronomy.
- Aristotle's physics (in which it was argued that material objects had an essential nature that determines their behavior) gives way to the physics of Galileo and Newton (who considered the behavior of material objects as controlled by the laws of nature).
- Newtonian physics (which kept time and space the same everywhere, for all observers) gives way to physics of Einstein (which holds time and space relative to the observer's frame of reference).
Examples in different sciences
The characterization of paradigms depends on the area in which it is considered. For instance:
- Physics. The paradigm was that previously there was no connection between electric and magnetic fields until, in 1831, Michael Faraday learned to turn magnetism into electricity.
- Chemistry. In 1869, Dmitry Mendeleev discovered the periodic system; before him there was no ordering of chemical elements.
- Biology. Cloning was previously on the same line with fiction until the end of the last century.
- Ecology. Now they are increasingly talking about ozone holes and their consequences, and before they had not even heard of such a problem.
- Natural History. In past times, one worldview was recognized - religious. Now, on the whole, people themselves can choose what to believe in, religion or science, or both.
Existing paradigms often make it impossible to look at the world in a new way. In order to gain inner clarity, one sometimes needs to go beyond what is generally accepted, change destructive paradigms to transformative ones. Everything is changing, and what seemed unshakable in the past is currently causing laughter and tears.