"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 use boldly. However, the breadth of use of this term often confuses the townsfolk. In the modern sense, the concept of a paradigm was introduced by the American historian of science Thomas Kuhn, and today it is firmly established in the lexicon of the "intellectual elite".
Etymology
The word "paradigm" is a derivative of the Greek noun παράδειγΜα - "template, example, model, sample", which combines two lexemes: παρά "near" and δεῖγΜα "showed, sample, sample" - derived from verb δείκνυΜι "showing, pointing out".
Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific paradigms
How to figuratively imagine the development of science? Is it possible to take as an illustration, for example, a bucket into which, from the very birth of scientific thought to the present day, scientists from all over the world throw off"knowledge"? Theoretically, why not… But what will be the volume of this bucket? “Bottomless,” you answer, and you will probably be right. But is it possible to say that some “unit” of knowledge, falling into this bucket, forever and irrevocably finds its place there? Let's take our time answering this question.
Let's 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 textbook thickness? 200-300 pages… Is this really enough to reflect the content of our bottomless vessel, which people have been working to fill for several thousand years?
“Stop fooling us,” you say, “because school textbooks reflect only the basics of a particular area, that base, which is enough to understand the elementary laws of the world order!” And again you will be absolutely right! But the fact is that if the "hit" of any scientific idea in our bucket was irreversible, then the textbooks would begin with a categorical statement that the Earth is flat, and would end with a contradictory statement that it is also round … But in fact, being a once generally accepted scientific fact, the turtles and elephants holding the Earth, at one fine moment, flew out of the bucket like a bullet, and in their place a ball reigned, which, by the way, also left its warm place relatively recently, giving way ellipsoid (and if you go to the end in your tediousness, now the geoid has settled tightly in the bucket)!
So, in simple words, the paradigm is the basic ideas and approaches accepted by the scientific community as axioms, serving as a starting point for further research.
Scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts
We have already agreed that a paradigm is a basic idea accepted as a scientific fact and a starting point for research. So how did it happen 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 faces the emergence of so-called anomalies - inexplicable phenomena within the accepted axiomatic base; at this point, science comes to a crisis. Initially, one or two scientists in the world notice this, begin to test the current paradigm, verify it, find weaknesses, and, in the end, it turns out that these revolutionaries are conducting alternative research in a direction perpendicular to their contemporaries. They publish articles, speak at conferences and … meet with complete misunderstanding and rejection of colleagues and society. On that, Giordano Bruno got burned, 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 goes on as usual, and the seed of doubt, sown by the “oppositionists” from the world of science, germinates in the minds of an increasing number of scientists, there are opposing scientificschools.
This is how the scientific revolution occurs, as a result of which, sooner or later, a new paradigm is formed, and the old one, as we have already agreed, leaves its place.
Examples of modern paradigms in exact sciences
In today's world, Kuhn's theory, which we discussed earlier, looks oversimplified. Let me explain with an example: at school we study the so-called geometry of Euclid. One of the basic axioms is that parallel lines do not intersect. At the end of the 19th century, Nikolai Lobachevsky published a work in which he refuted this generally accepted scientific postulate. It is obvious that the alternative view was met not very friendly, but there were also 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 displaced 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 area of knowledge.
New paradigms do not replace the old ones, but offer methods for solving certain problems with a reduction in time and financial costs. At the same time, the "old" paradigms remain in service, being used either as a 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 objective-oriented, or a combination of them.
Paradigms in the humanities
In the humanities, the theory of paradigms is slightly modified: paradigms do not describe a phenomenon, but mainly an approach to its study. So, for example, in linguistics at the beginning of the last century, mainstream studies studied language in a comparative historical aspect, that is, either a change in the language over time was described, or different languages were compared. Then a system-structural paradigm was established in linguistics - the language was understood as an ordered system (research in this direction is still ongoing). Today it is believed that the anthropocentric paradigm dominates: “language in man and man in language” are being studied.
In modern sociology, it is believed that there are several stable paradigms. Some researchers are of the view that this is evidence of the crisis in the science of the laws of society. Others, on the contrary, assert the multi-paradigmatic nature of sociology (George Ritzer's term), based onidea of the complex and multidimensional nature of social phenomena.
Development paradigm
The term "paradigm" in recent decades has gone beyond the use in the Kuhnian sense. Increasingly, the phrase “development paradigm” can be found in the titles 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 formulation that they were announced at the conference) are, in fact, complementary and interrelated concepts of the progress of the world order. The general idea is that, subject to the achievement of constant economic growth, the domestic policy of the state should be aimed at developing human potential, preserving and / or restoring the environment through the introduction of scientific and technological developments.
Personal paradigm
The term "personal paradigm" is (in simple terms) a system of ideas of an individual about the surrounding reality. In the human sciences, the concept of “picture of the world” is used in the same sense. The personal paradigm depends on a large number of factors, ranging 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 the bearer of a unique personalparadigms.
Other meanings of the word "paradigm"
In linguistics, the term "paradigm" took root before Kuhn's popularization and can include several meanings:
- "assortment" of a separate grammatical category. For example, the number paradigm in Russian is much narrower than in English and includes the present, past and future tense (compare with the diversity of the English verb tense system);
- a system for changing word forms in accordance with grammatical categories, such as conjugation or declension, etc.
In history, the paradigm and its change quite often, especially in the Western tradition, are understood as significant events that drastically change the way of life, in particular, the agrarian and industrial revolutions. Now they are talking about the digital historical paradigm.
