A paradigm (from the Greek paradeigma - “example”, “sample”) is a template or example to follow. It is a set of ideas, theories, models that serve as examples for thought or action.
Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure first used the term in linguistics. Now the term is used in various fields:
- linguistics;
- philosophy;
- programming;
- political science;
- education;
- rhetoric;
- psychology, etc.
Paradigms in programming
Programming paradigms are the template that a programmer follows when creating algorithms for electronic machines and developing computer programs. That is, how he thinks when solving a particular problem.
A paradigm can also be a certain pattern on the basis of which the program text (its source code) is built.
Basic programming paradigms
- imperative (procedural) programming;
- functional programming;
- logic programming;
- object-oriented.
The emergence of programming paradigms is associated with the development of programming languages. Programming languages can have multiple paradigms.
Examples in different sciences
The characteristics of paradigms depend on the area in which it is considered. For example:
- Physics. The paradigm was that there had previously been no connection between electric and magnetic fields until Michael Faraday learned to convert magnetism into electricity in 1831.
- Chemistry. In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev discovered the periodic table; before him, there was no ordering of chemical elements.
- Biology. Cloning used to be on the verge of science fiction until the end of the last century.
- Ecology. Nowadays we are increasingly talking about ozone holes and their consequences, but before we had never even heard of such a problem.
- Natural science. In past times, one worldview was recognized - religious. Now, in general, people can choose for themselves what to believe in, religion or science, or both.
Existing paradigms often do not provide the opportunity to look at the world in a new way. To gain inner clarity, you sometimes need to go beyond the generally accepted, change destructive paradigms to transformative ones. Everything changes, and what seemed unshakable in the past now causes laughter and tears.
Paradigms in education
In a broader sense, it is a model that answers the questions of why it is necessary to teach, what exactly needs to be taught, what cultural values need to be instilled.
In a narrower form, it is a model on the basis of which the entire training course is built. The paradigm includes the curriculum: disciplines that will be studied, duration of study, vacation dates and dates of exams and sessions, deadlines for submitting work, etc.; how the interaction between teachers and students will take place.
New theories: a paradigm shift
Scientists very often discard existing models and assemble new theories. But from time to time, enough anomalies accumulate in a particular area that the scientific paradigm itself must change to accommodate them. Kuhn believed that science has periods of patient data collection within a paradigm, mixed with periodic revolution as it matures. A paradigm shift is not a threat to science, but the very manner in which it progresses is.
Normal science is a step-by-step scientific process that respects previous research. Revolutionary science (often “cornerstone science”) questions the paradigm. Kuhn believed that if a 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, which reigned for 200 years, was the pinnacle of discovery, and scientific progress was more or less a matter of refinement.
Paradigm in rhetoric
It is a way of understanding something by giving an example and comparing one concept with another.
Marcus Fabius Quintilian, a Roman orator and teacher, taught his students rhetoric: beautiful speech, the art of persuasion. In his work “The Education of the Orator” (Institutio oratoria), he wrote that examples (or Greek paradeigmata - “paradigms”) are necessary in the art of persuasion.
For Quintilian, examples (paradigms) are analogous to the introduction to a speech. This is a way to convince the listener through argumentation, which consists of judgments and conclusions from them (syllogistic argumentation). He used examples from history, poetry, proverbs and phraseological units.
What the experts say:
Arkady Perlov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Director of the International Scientific Center "Higher School of European Cultures"
The word “paradigm” came into wider circulation from linguistics, where it means “a system of forms of a changing word” (for example, a pattern of verb conjugation or declension of a name) or “a class of language units opposed to each other and at the same time united by the presence in them any common feature” (“New Dictionary of Foreign Words”).
It seems that Thomas Kuhn's famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, first published in 1962, with its then provocative statement that scientific knowledge develops “non-cumulatively,” played a decisive role in expanding the meaning of the word “paradigm.” In other words, new ideas do not complement the old ones, but are equivalent to them and depend on the conditions of their use.
Kuhn insists: the picture of linear accumulation of knowledge, in which increments and refutations can be proven correctly, is being replaced not by evolution, but by revolution. Thus, the contradictions and flaws of “old” theories give rise to “new” ones, which then become dominant in the context of certain scientific spaces or historical periods. Thus, we can talk about two different paradigms in physics: Newtonian and Einsteinian, which abruptly replaced each other. However, a paradigm shift is not just the legitimation of a certain theory, but a change in the logic of thinking: the world, which was once subject to the laws of “mechanics,” has expanded significantly and become a world of “relativity.”
The word “paradigm” used by Kuhn turned out to be too provocative, and he was immediately criticized both for the “revolutionary” and uncomfortable idea of \u200b\u200bscience, and for the fact that a clear definition of the word “paradigm” was not given in the 1962 edition. In 1969, under the influence of criticism, Kuhn published the article “1969 Supplement” to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Here he introduced a new term “disciplinary matrix”, in which his revolutionary “paradigm” became just one of the components of this matrix, along with the “categorical apparatus” or “values”. In fact, Kuhn revolutionized the scientific and research world by declaring that dominant theories largely depend on the context of their use, categorical apparatuses, or even values. Returning to the example mentioned, the apple falling on Newton's head was influenced by gravity, but Einstein would disagree since objects are also affected by the mass of matter. Until the 20th century, such a theory simply could not appear, because the world of the past largely depended on church interpretations of the world order, into the idyll of which the “space-time” model could hardly fit.
In this narrower sense, a “paradigm” is a set of patterns for solving puzzles: after a scientist has solved a thousand problems in one way at school and university, it is unlikely that he will begin to solve the first thousand differently.
Arseniy Kumankov, Candidate of Philosophy, Lecturer at the School of Philosophy and Humanities at the Higher School of Economics
For a long time, the concept of paradigm remained an exclusively scientific term, which was used with varying degrees of activity in various humanities disciplines. But in the 20th century, philosophers such as Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault revolutionized the use of this concept, making it widely used.
Despite the protests of Kuhn, who intended to use the concept of paradigm only to describe the development of the natural sciences, the word in its new meaning was adopted by representatives of the social and humanities disciplines, and it quickly became entrenched in everyday language. It is now used to denote an archetype of behavior or to indicate a belief system dominant in a community. Particularly popular are expressions in which the word “new” is placed before the word paradigm. We can talk about a new paradigm in financial markets, management, alcoholism treatment, road construction or higher education.
Since I come from the academic field, I am most interested in the latter. The old paradigm of higher education refers to a system that produces highly specialized professional experts. As a result, within the framework of this system, the teacher is endowed with a special, almost divine status as the custodian of Knowledge, which is not accessible to everyone. The teacher is positioned as a special being who leads his padawans to the Absolute Truth. Students are trained in a specific specialty, and the educational program is made up of compulsory disciplines, without which one cannot become a good engineer, doctor or agronomist.
The key word of the new paradigm is freedom. The student is focused not only on acquiring basic knowledge in his chosen discipline, but also on developing a wide range of competencies: the ability to solve complex problems, creativity, critical thinking, allowing him to adapt in various professional fields. Accordingly, he has the right to independently choose part of the courses he needs. The teacher is perceived as an equal, albeit more experienced colleague. His task is not limited to the transfer of knowledge, he must point out the available methods and ways of acquiring knowledge. Digital technologies are becoming especially important. The new paradigm is also a global standardization of educational principles. An example is the Bologna process, aimed at creating a unified system of training cycles, degrees, points and ratings, as well as developing inter-university mobility of teachers and students. The old paradigm of education produced a ready-made specialist who would devote his life to his chosen profession. The new paradigm creates a person with a certain set of competencies, who freely changes professional fields and continues to study for the rest of his life.
As you can see, the choice of an education paradigm directly depends on the choice of a success paradigm, which, in turn, depends on the life path paradigm.
Paradigm shift
Thomas Kuhn also introduced the concept of paradigm shift. This term refers to a situation when old paradigms (models, patterns, theories and methods) are replaced by new ones. A synonym is the term “scientific revolution”, a situation in which the idea of something in the scientific community completely changes.
Examples of paradigm shifts in science:
- Charles Darwin's theory of evolution;
- Einstein's general theory of relativity;
- John Dalton's atomic theory;
- Nicolaus Copernicus's theory of the rotation of planets around the Sun;
- Isaac Newton's law of universal gravitation;
- germ theory, etc.
A paradigm shift can also occur in one specific person. This is a situation when his attitudes, point of view, and behavior pattern change radically. The reason may be a new acquired experience or a new emotion not previously experienced by a person.
Find out more about Life Values.
Paradigms are historically and culturally related (Thomas Kuhn)
A modern Chinese medical researcher with a background in Eastern medicine will operate within a different paradigm than a Western physician of the 1800s. Where does a paradigm come from? Philosopher Thomas Kuhn was interested in how the overarching theories we have of reality itself influence the models and theories we use within a paradigm that dictates the following:
- what is observed and measured;
- the questions we ask about these observations;
- how these questions are formulated;
- how to interpret the results;
- how the research is conducted;
- what equipment is suitable.
Many students who choose to study science do so with the belief that they are pursuing the most rational path to learning about objective reality. But science, like any other discipline, is subject to ideologies, biases, and hidden assumptions. In fact, Kuhn strongly suggested that research into a deeply entrenched paradigm invariably terminates that paradigm, since anything that contradicts it is ignored or persecuted by given methods until it conforms to the already established dogma.
The body of existing evidence in the field shapes 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 about scientific paradigms apply to other disciplines.
Pedagogy
What is an educational paradigm? The definition of this term can also be found in the dictionary. This is a body of scientific knowledge, ways of teaching it, as well as the implementation of educational activities aimed at becoming a model for students.
In pedagogical theory, this term is used to characterize conceptual models of education.
Within the framework of the historical development of the latter and society as an important institution, more than one paradigm was formed. The definition in education is revealed by their diversity:
- knowledge paradigm (traditionalist, conservative);
- behavioral (rationalistic);
- humanistic (phenomenological);
- humanitarian;
- neo-institutional;
- technocratic;
- learning "through discovery";
- esoteric.
Pages of history
This concept appears in Plato's dialogue Timaeus. It talks about the fact that God, based on the paradigm, created the whole world. The word was coined by the Greeks (παράδειγμα, meaning “pattern, example, set of concepts, pattern”). In this way, they stated that thought (an idea, a certain image) was primary, thanks to which all existing matter was created.
You might be interested in: Rules for forming nouns in English
In another dialogue - “The Politician” - this famous sage argued that a politician should, like a weaver, create patterns of his power and moral principles. The more threads he weaves into his “product,” the more supporters he has among citizens. At the same time, his authority among ordinary people increases, and the chances of gaining respect in the eyes of admirers increase. The ancient Greek philosopher, discussing what a paradigm is, associated the definition specifically with politics.
In morphology, the term “paradigm” has two main meanings:
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inflection, scheme, pattern;
- a system of word forms that form one lexeme.
The following types of paradigms are distinguished:
- nominal (declension)/verbal (conjugation);
- full (general)/private.
The definition of the concept paradigm in the full case is a type that assumes the presence of a complete set of forms of inflection of a certain category. For example, for a noun it suggests 12 word forms.
An incomplete paradigm is a form that is characterized by an incomplete set of inflections in any category.
