Paradigm

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A notion that has properly entered the pantheon of bull-pucky management nonsense, but is in its natural state an excellent idea, first finding voice in Thomas Kuhn’s spectacular The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

It is to do with how science operates, and how scientific theories are challenged, and fall.

As Kuhn noticed, pace Karl Popper, one does not abandon a scientific theory just because you see some contradictory evidence: you tap the dial, you re-run the experiment, you devise “numerous articulations and ad hoc modifications” to eliminate the apparent conflict.

If the data won’t do what they’re meant to, sometimes you reject the 'question as being irrelevant, and not the answer predicted by the theory.

All this takes place inside what Kuhn describes as a “paradigm” - a “particular coherent tradition of scientific research" governing not only the theory but the education, instrumentation, rules and standards of practice. The scientific community decides which questions even relevant to the development of scientific research by reference to the paradigm, and not the other way around: observation is in this way theory-dependent.

A paradigm has exclusive jurisdiction over its own subject matter. One can only pronounce on a scientific problem once one has been fully inducted into it: biologists will not take seriously the biological assertions of fundamentalist Christians, for example. Fundamentalist Christians who take biology exams will fail, and thereby will never be able to authoritatively comment on biological matters.

But the same thing would happen if Richard Dawkins entered the seminary.

So plenty of scope — need, even — for cognitive dissonance.

See also

• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions