Many of us are familiar with the phrase “A Paradigm Shift” that gets spouted almost to the point of effeteness in popular parlance. It is used to denote a major altering of the way that we see, understand or perceive things. Many people assume its a phrase that comes out of popular psychology and business success literature. Truth be told it is thanks to master Kuhn that we have that phrase in popular usage as well as the accompanying perceptual leap that the phrase implies. The word paradigm originally comes to us from the Greek word “deiknunei” which means to show or teach. So in essence the best way to understand a paradigm is to consider it as a ‘world view construct‘ that has been handed to you by the people that you learn from, be it teachers, parents, peers or role models. As one gets older we are able to create our own constructs as well, but in most instances our constructs or paradigms are just extensions of the ones we had before. The thrust of Kuhn’s argument was that scientific research and thought, and by extension ‘scientific models’ are defined by “paradigms,” or conceptual world-views. What happens is that scientists tend to accept these prevailing constructs as they are made up of classic experiments, formal theories and trusted methods and then by refining the assumptions that the paradigm is made up from they attempt to extend its scope. The problem with this though, is that it doesn’t usually lead to any astounding breakthroughs because the very paradigm itself is determining the types of tools and methodologies that are being used and therefore ultimately the resultant outcomes . A simple way of looking at it is ‘ If I only measure oxygen in a square box I will come to the conclusion that oxygen is square, then I will spend the rest of my time figuring out how square it actually is’.  My paradigm is therefore determining the outcome of my research.  My data is confined by the limitations of the  sphere of my perception. 

The thing is, our greatest scientific revolutions come about when new thinking refuses to take up residence with the musty fusty tangle of thinking that resulted in the knowing of more and more about less and less. The business of paradigms are to oust old ways of thinking. A paradigm not only changes the way you think but more overly the way you act, it creates an irreversible shift in conscience. As late as the 1870’s it was considered normal to wear bloodstained frocks when doing surgery and even as recent as the 1890’s surgeons thought nothing of operating without head coverings or even worse dirty implements, it was only because of the synthesis of the work of four men, the chemist Louis Pasteur, the surgeon Joseph Lister, the physician Robert Koch and the Hungarian physician Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, that the world was introduced to a new paradigm called “Germ Theory”, and from then on millions of lives were saved from the helping hands that were in fact hurting them. 

I need to make special mention here of Semmelweis. Today he is recognised as the man who introduced antisepsis into the medical profession. When he was alive though his theories were rejected by the authority of the then current medical fraternities and he was treated with hostility by various universities and medical institutions. This ultimately led to him being admitted to a mental institution where he died, ironically of the very thing that he had been fighting his whole life to prevent (an infected wound). His paradigm shift was monumental and has saved millions of people, and yet it was so simple. All he insisted on was that medical practioners wash their hands in a solution of chlorinated lime before each examination.  As we can see with Semmelweis’ example, a paradigm shift overthrows and displaces that which went before, the tragedy is that in some instances thousands may even die before the ’Authorities’ of the day come to accept it . Fortunately when Copernican heliocentrism unashamedly overturned Ptolemaic cosmology, as did quantum physics and general relativity when they deported to the annals of history Newtonian mechanics, the human cost wasn’t so great. 

Most astoundingly successful businessmen tap into the paradigm shift in remarkable ways, by seeing the world in a different way, which in turn by their sheer effort and convictions changes the way the world is seen by others. These breakthroughs are in essence break-withs the current ways of thinking and doing things. We could’ve had a world in which we had massively more sophisticated telephone poles but instead we have satellites and mobile communication, we could have had ox-wagons with mag wheels and fairings but instead we have motor vehicles, we could have had a world with massive hot air-balloon carriers but we have supersonic aeroplanes. The caveat to paradigms though is that they are as limiting as they are liberating, and it is therefore important to keep an open mind about what is really going on around us. A paradigm is also not about a collection of great thoughts about a myriad of different things, sometimes its just a small thought about a little thing that ends up having massive consequences. Your small thoughts about money, relationships, people, the economic climate etc will all have massive after effects in your life. In your paradigms lay the seeds of your prejudices, which means that none of us really see the world for what ‘it’ is, in truth we only see the world for what ‘we’ are. My personal insight here is that the old dictum of ‘Seeing is Believing’ be replaced by a self defining paradigm, and that is ‘Believing…. is Seeing’.