Do You Have Change for a Paradigm?

— Or, [Paradigm] Shift Happens!

— I Hate It When That Happens!

According to James Burke, "I suppose my view of history tends away from the orderly and toward the chaotic, in the sense of that much overused phrase from chaos theory about the movement of a butterfly's wing in China causing a storm on the other side of the world.

"Which is why I decided to have a go at reproducing the butterfly effect on the great web of knowledge across which I travel in the essays." James Burke, Circles.

Reaching an Epiphany

First, let's define our terms:

An epiphany is a sudden change in which one views the essential nature of things.

A paradigm is "A philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated."

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary

Thus, when a paradigm shifts, you reach an illuminating discovery and the literally universe changes for you on that day. You reach an epiphany.

Example 1: The day you discovered that babies don't come from storks — that is an epiphany.

Example 2: The day you realize that boys and girls are different — that is an epiphany.

Example 3: The day you go to war and see people being killed — that is an epiphany.

Example 4: The day you go to the ITEC lab and discover that you can't use it because a group of non-ITEC students [thanks to a grant to the ITEC Department] is the lab's new primary user group — that is an epiphany.

Example 5: The day you realize that the sun does not revolve around the earth — that is an epiphany.

Consider Example 5, supra. For several thousand years, people thought that the sun revolved around the earth. In fact, the whole universe revolved around the earth. The earth was, literally and figuratively, the center of the universe.

Copernicus, a Polish astronomer, changed that. It was yet another day that the universe changed. He was developed the scientific theory that the Earth rotates on an axis and revolves around a stationary Sun [not the other way around]. The earth is just one planet revolving around one sun in one solar system in one small part of the universe. Copernicus was not very popular with the Christian right of that era.

According to Burke, "The cognitive model - or to give it a better name, the paradigm - controls all decisions. If you believe the cosmos is made up of omelette, you build instruments specifically designed to find traces of intergalactic yolk. In that paradigm you reject phenomena like pulsars and black holes as paranormal garbage. In an omelette cosmos, the beginning of the universe becomes a chicken and egg problem, doesn't it?

"Every paradigm, at every time, in every place, is internally valid. By definition it has to be, for the organism or the group to function. Everybody has to have some version of reality - "the way things are for them," their definition of which way is up. This is perfectly valid at the time. All you can logically say about a guy who thinks he's a poached egg is that he's in the minority."

http://info.rutgers.edu/Library/Reference/Etext/Impact.of.Science.On.Society.hd/1/2

Returning to our earth-sun revolution scenario, the earth rising and setting looks exactly the same to the medieval eye as it does to us. Who is right? That literally depends on when you ask that question. For purposes of this analysis, timing may be the ultimate context. Before Copernicus, the sun revolve around the earth view was the correct paradigm. After Copernicus, the earth and other planets revolve around the sun view was correct..

The key is that one cannot think past his/her view of how things are and how they work based on his/her schema, or frame of reference, at that time. One usually can't think outside of the box, literally and figuratively. He/she literally doesn't know any better. In ITEC terms, if it's outside of one's scheme, one cannot think outside of the box. But not for all of us, fortunately.

According to the Washington Post, "James Burke is one of the most intriguing minds of our time." He does have a unique way to not only think outside the box but to stack boxes together in different ways.

For a look at how Burke structured The Knowledge Web:

Click to continue.

For a continuation of this Burke discussion:

Click to continue.

For examples of Burke's connections:

Click to continue.