DEFINITION

What Is a Paradigm?

Paradigm came from the Greek words:

 “Paradeigma” which means “pattern, example, sample”
 “Paradeiknumi” meaning “exhibit, represent, expose” (“para”- beside, beyond;
“deikumi” – to show, to point out)

In science and philosophy, a paradigm /ˈpærədaɪm/ is a distinct set of concepts or thought

patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitutes
legitimate contributions to a field.

Essentially, a paradigm is a set of assumptions governing how we interact and interpret the
world.

A scientific paradigm is a framework containing all the commonly accepted views about a
subject, conventions about what direction research should take and how it should be
performed.

Paradigms contain all the distinct, established patterns, theories, common methods and standards
that allow us to recognize an experimental result as belonging to a field or not.

A paradigm is a way of organizing and condensing sensory information .

Like learning in general, paradigms help in the study of physical science by helping us to
organize information and understand our world.
Our paradigms also affect the way we design, record, and interpret our experiments and
observations, as scientists and as humans.
As the old saying goes, "You can get just as drunk on water as you can on land."

Paradigm is:

 a shared understanding among scientists or scholars working in a discipline regarding the

important problems, structures, values, and assumptions determining that discipline.
 a pattern that may serve as a model or example.
 An example, hypothesis, model, or pattern; a widely accepted explanation for a group of
biomedical or other phenomena that become accepted as data accumulate to corroborate
aspects of the paradigm's explanation or theory, as occurred in the 'central dogma' of
molecular biology.
 A human being's mental model of the world, which may or may not conform to that of
others but is often stereotypical.
  In the philosophy of science, a general conception of the nature of scientific operation
within which a particular scientific activity is undertaken. Paradigms are, of their nature,
persistent and hard to change. Major advances in science-such, for instance, as the
realization of the concept of the quantum or the significance of evolution in medicine-
involve painful paradigmic shifts which some people, notably the older scientists, find
hard to make.
 a generally accepted model for making sense of phenomena in a given discipline at a
particular time. When one paradigm is replaced by another, it is called a paradigm shift.
 a model or pattern. The set of values or concepts that represent an accepted way of doing
things within an organization or community.
 a pattern of thought, a similarity of conceptualization.

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Where Does a Paradigm Come From?

Kuhn was interested in how the overarching theories we have of reality itself influence the
models and theories we make about reality within that paradigm.

A paradigm dictates:

 what is observed and measured

 the questions  we ask about those observations
 how  the questions are formulated
 how  the results are interpreted
 how  research is carried out
 what equipment is appropriate

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Paradigms have these properties:
• They associate a scientific field (example biology) with a falsifiable scientific theory (example
evolution by natural selection).
• They forge a consensus between researchers about the meaning of a field and the prevailing
state of knowledge.
• They inspire research efforts meant to support, modify or contradict prevailing theories. In the
face of new empirical evidence, scientific fields sometimes replace one paradigm with another in
what is known as a paradigm shift19, but at any particular time all scientific fields are defined by
paradigms, precepts supported by tested theories and evidence. If new evidence falsifies a field’s
paradigms, and if no replacement is found, that field ceases to be a science – example astrology.
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THE PURPOSE OF A PARADIGM

Scientific paradigms are necessary for creating a basis to begin research. Scientific inquiry is a
quantitative science - relying on numbers, equations and constants in order to work. By its very
nature, science requires the researcher to make assumptions about the state of the world before
beginning an experiment. One assumption that is fundamental to scientific inquiry is that
processes we observe working now are the same as processes which occurred in the past and will
occur in the future. If we did not make this assumption, experiments could never be repeated and
expected to generate the same results. There would be randomness and unpredictability in all
scientific endeavors which is incompatible with the concrete answers science strives to generate.

Paradigms also help narrow the amount of possible theories for observed phenomenon by
rejecting those that do not work in the paradigm. For example, we assume gravity works on all
objects on the planet. If something is in the air it must have the ability to generate enough lift or
force to overpower gravity, as opposed to assuming the object is unaffected by gravity. By
setting up the ground rules, paradigms provide information about how to evaluate new theories
and ideas. In the end, if the paradigm is successful in generating good ideas, it will even generate
the next paradigm that will replace it.

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Scientific Vocabulary

Kuhn opens his discussion of paradigms by describing the necessity for an addition to scientific
vocabulary. His main thesis is that science can be studied not only for concepts that explain the
world around us, but also from a historic and analytic perspective. Even though older scientific
theories may have been disproved by newer ones, there is merit is studying how science itself
evolves and changes as discoveries are made. In order to understand the development of
scientific technique and rationalizations, there was a need for definition of the study of the
evolution of science and so was born the study of paradigms and paradigm shifts.

EXAMPLES:
Theories that survive comparison with reality, and that have sufficient generality, become
paradigms, foundational precepts by which scientific fields are defined. Examples include
General Relativity15 and Quantum Mechanics16 in physics, evolution by natural
selection17 in biology, and plate tectonics18 in geology.
The definition of a paradigm is a widely accepted example, belief or concept.
 1. An example of paradigm is evolution.
2. An example of paradigm is the earth being round.

Game theory is a framework for hypothetical social situations among competing players. In some
respects, game theory is the science of strategy, or at least the optimal decision-making of
independent and competing actors in a strategic setting. The key pioneers of game theory were
mathematicians John von Neumann and John Nash, as well as economist Oskar Morgenstern.
For example, the greater society will take more interest in research being done on a cure for
cancer than it might in the mating rituals of slugs. Such a choice is based on the values of the
society which shapes the paradigm. Such values feed back into science, especially when one
considers that funding for scientific inquiry largely comes from public dollars.

WHO PROPOSED PARADIGM?

Thomas S. Khun, a philosopher, gave the contemporary meaning of paradigm as: “a typical
example; a pattern or model” (Oxford Dictionary). In his book entitled “The structure of
scientific revolutions”, Khun defined Scientific paradigm as “universally recognized
achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and solutions for community of
practitioners”

Thomas Samuel Kuhn (/kuːn/; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an
American physicist, historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions was influential in both academic and popular circles,
introducing the term paradigm shift, which has since become an English-language idiom.

In his first book, The Copernican Revolution (1957), Kuhn studied the development of the
heliocentric theory of the solar system during the Renaissance. In his landmark second book, The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he argued that scientific research and thought are defined by
“paradigms,” or conceptual world-views, that consist of formal theories, classic experiments, and
trusted methods. Scientists typically accept a prevailing paradigm and try to extend its scope by
refining theories, explaining puzzling data, and establishing more precise measures of standards
and phenomena. Eventually, however, their efforts may generate insoluble theoretical problems
or experimental anomalies that expose a paradigm’s inadequacies or contradict it altogether. This
accumulation of difficulties triggers a crisis that can only be resolved by an intellectual
revolution that replaces an old paradigm with a new one. The overthrow of Ptolemaic cosmology
by Copernican heliocentrism, and the displacement of Newtonian mechanics by quantum physics
and general relativity, are both examples of major paradigm shifts.
Kuhn questioned the traditional conception of scientific progress as a gradual, cumulative
acquisition of knowledge based on rationally chosen experimental frameworks. Instead, he
argued that the paradigm determines the kinds of experiments scientists perform, the types of
questions they ask, and the problems they consider important. A shift in the paradigm alters the
fundamental concepts underlying research and inspires new standards of evidence, new research
techniques, and new pathways of theory and experiment that are radically incommensurate with
the old ones.

Kuhn’s book revolutionized the history and philosophy of science, and his concept of paradigm
shifts was extended to such disciplines as political science, economics, sociology, and even to
business management. Kuhn’s later works were a collection of essays, The Essential Tension
(1977), and the technical study Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity (1978).

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The Concept of a Paradigm

A mature science, according to Kuhn, experiences alternating phases of normal science and
revolutions. In normal science the key theories, instruments, values and metaphysical
assumptions that comprise the disciplinary matrix are kept fixed, permitting the cumulative
generation of puzzle-solutions, whereas in a scientific revolution the disciplinary matrix
undergoes revision, in order to permit the solution of the more serious anomalous puzzles that
disturbed the preceding period of normal science.

A particularly important part of Kuhn's thesis in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions focuses
upon one specific component of the disciplinary matrix. This is the consensus on exemplary
instances of scientific research. These exemplars of good science are what Kuhn refers to when
he uses the term ‘paradigm’ in a narrower sense. He cites Aristotle's analysis of motion,
Ptolemy's computations of plantery positions, Lavoisier's application of the balance, and
Maxwell's mathematization of the electromagnetic field as paradigms (1962/1970a, 23).
Exemplary instances of science are typically to be found in books and papers, and so Kuhn often
also describes great texts as paradigms—Ptolemy's Almagest, Lavoisier's Traité élémentaire de
chimie, and Newton's Principia Mathematica and Opticks (1962/1970a, 12). Such texts contain
not only the key theories and laws, but also—and this is what makes them paradigms—the
applications of those theories in the solution of important problems, along with the new
experimental or mathematical techniques (such as the chemical balance in Traité élémentaire de
chimie and the calculus in Principia Mathematica) employed in those applications.

In the postscript to the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn says of
paradigms in this sense that they are “the most novel and least understood aspect of this book”
(1962/1970a, 187). The claim that the consensus of a disciplinary matrix is primarily agreement
on paradigms-as-exemplars is intended to explain the nature of normal science and the process of
crisis, revolution, and renewal of normal science. It also explains the birth of a mature science.
Kuhn describes an immature science, in what he sometimes calls its ‘pre-paradigm’ period, as
lacking consensus. Competing schools of thought possess differing procedures, theories, even
metaphysical presuppositions. Consequently there is little opportunity for collective progress.
Even localized progress by a particular school is made difficult, since much intellectual energy is
put into arguing over the fundamentals with other schools instead of developing a research
tradition. However, progress is not impossible, and one school may make a breakthrough
whereby the shared problems of the competing schools are solved in a particularly impressive
fashion. This success draws away adherents from the other schools, and a widespread consensus
is formed around the new puzzle-solutions.

This widespread consensus now permits agreement on fundamentals. For a problem-solution will
embody particular theories, procedures and instrumentation, scientific language, metaphysics,
and so forth. Consensus on the puzzle-solution will thus bring consensus on these other aspects
of a disciplinary matrix also. The successful puzzle-solution, now a paradigm puzzle-solution,
will not solve all problems. Indeed, it will probably raise new puzzles. For example, the theories
it employs may involve a constant whose value is not known with precision; the paradigm
puzzle-solution may employ approximations that could be improved; it may suggest other
puzzles of the same kind; it may suggest new areas for investigation. Generating new puzzles is
one thing that the paradigm puzzle-solution does; helping solve them is another. In the most
favourable scenario, the new puzzles raised by the paradigm puzzle-solution can be addressed
and answered using precisely the techniques that the paradigm puzzle-solution employs. And
since the paradigm puzzle-solution is accepted as a great achievement, these very similar puzzle-
solutions will be accepted as successful solutions also. This is why Kuhn uses the terms
‘exemplar’ and ‘paradigm’. For the novel puzzle-solution which crystallizes consensus is
regarded and used as a model of exemplary science. In the research tradition it inaugurates, a
paradigm-as-exemplar fulfils three functions: (i) it suggests new puzzles; (ii) it suggests
approaches to solving those puzzles; (iii) it is the standard by which the quality of a proposed
puzzle-solution can be measured (1962/1970a, 38–9). In each case it is similarity to the exemplar
that is the scientists’ guide.

That normal science proceeds on the basis of perceived similarity to exemplars is an important
and distinctive feature of Kuhn's new picture of scientific development. The standard view
explained the cumulative addition of new knowledge in terms of the application of the scientific
method. Allegedly, the scientific method encapsulates the rules of scientific rationality. It may be
that those rules could not account for the creative side of science—the generation of new
hypotheses. The latter was thus designated ‘the context of discovery’, leaving the rules of
rationality to decide in the ‘context of justification’ whether a new hypothesis should, in the light
of the evidence, be added to the stock of accepted theories.

Kuhn rejected the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification
(1962/1970a, 8), and correspondingly rejected the standard account of each. As regards the
context of discovery, the standard view held that the philosophy of science had nothing to say on
the issue of the functioning of the creative imagination. But Kuhn's paradigms do provide a
partial explanation, since training with exemplars enables scientists to see new puzzle-situations
in terms of familiar puzzles and hence enables them to see potential solutions to their new
puzzles.

More important for Kuhn was the way his account of the context of justification diverged from
the standard picture. The functioning of exemplars is intended explicitly to contrast with the
operation of rules. The key determinant in the acceptability of a proposed puzzle-solution is its
similarity to the paradigmatic puzzle-solutions. Perception of similarity cannot be reduced to
rules, and a fortiori cannot be reduced to rules of rationality. This rejection of rules of rationality
was one of the factors that led Kuhn's critics to accuse him of irrationalism—regarding science
as irrational. In this respect at least the accusation is wide of the mark. For to deny that some
cognitive process is the outcome of applying rules of rationality is not to imply that it is an
irrational process: the perception of similarity in appearance between two members of the same
family also cannot be reduced to the application of rules of rationality. Kuhn's innovation in The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions was to suggest that a key element in cognition in science
operates in the same fashion.

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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a book about the history of science by the philosopher
Thomas S. Kuhn. Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philosophy, and sociology
of scientific knowledge.

TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THE BOOK:

1. The core idea of Structure is that scientific research is based on underlying theoretical
structures that provide a framework for research in a field for a sustained period of time. Kuhn’s
name for these structures was paradigm. Indeed it was Kuhn’s use of the word that inserted
“paradigm” into the popular lexicon.

2. There are a number of important examples of exemplary scientific research which later
scientists look back to as guiding inspiration for their own research. Examples of this include
Copernican heliocentric astronomy, Lavoisier’s oxygen-based chemistry and Darwin’s theory of
evolution by natural selection. All of these constituted paradigms for scientists working in these
areas for a significant period of time, both in the sense of providing an overarching set of beliefs
about the world and in the sense of providing examples of exemplary research.

3. Scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts tend to be catalyzed by crises, causing what
starts out as small groups of scientists to challenge norms and find innovative ways of moving
forward. When these paradigms are challenged, there is often pushback from the rest of the
community. And revolutions occur rapidly through competition between those participating in
normal science (generally of older generations) and those pushing for change (generally the
newly trained younger generations).