According to the American Heritage Dictionary a paradigm is: “a set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.”
In simple terms a paradigm is the way a group of people see the world.
A paradigm is their “reality.”
It is like a set of “glasses” or “lenses” through which one views the world.
Paradigms can change, just like when one changes a pair of glasses. However, these paradigm shifts are not common.
Example: the dominant paradigm in Western culture (Europe, US, etc.) in 1750 was the Judeo–Christian belief system, based on the Bible.
Two Key Assumptions of the Judeo–Christian Paradigm
All species were created once and are fixed (not changing).
The earth was very young.
In 1650, James Ussher, using genealogies in the Bible, calculated that the earth was created in 4004 B.C.E.
The Judeo–Christian Paradigm and Linnaeus: A Case Study in World Views
How The Dominant Paradigm Dictates How You See the World
Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778) desired to find order in the diversity of life.
In searching for this order he founded the science of taxonomy—the branch of biology concerned with organizing, classifying, and properly naming all living things.
He gave us the binomial system (bi: two; nomial: name) that we still use today: genus and species.
Example: Homo sapiens (genus Homo, species sapiens)
Linnaeus's Paradigm
Species were created once by God, and they never changed.
His classification system had no evolutionary assumptions: organisms were similar to one another, not because they shared any evolutionary history, but because God chose to create organisms using similar body plans.
Paradigm Shift #1: James Hutton, The Man Who Found Time
A paradigm shift occurs when a new set of ideas overthrows an old paradigm.
James Hutton was the first person to suggest that the earth was much older than 4004 B.C.E.
He is considered the “father of geology” (the study of the Earth).
His “ah-hah” moment occurred at Siccar Point, north of Edinburgh, Scotland, pictured here.
Hutton realized that weathering processes (rain, snow, ice, wind, etc.) causes rock to be broken down into sediment which washes into the ocean forming horizontal beds.
This sediment, over time, becomes sedimentary rock.
This led to three great ideas:
New Paradigm #1: Gradualism: Hutton realized these processes took time and were gradual.
Hutton's idea of gradualism claims that geological processes are the result of these slow, continual processes.
People had tried to explain geological phenomenon as the result of the dominant paradigm—catastrophism—that a large flood as described in the Bible was responsible; Hutton saw things differently.
New Paradigm #2: Uniformitarianism: Hutton proposed the idea that the geological processes going on today are the same as those that occurred in the past (mountain building, weathering, etc.).
The idea that geological processes have been “uniform” throughout time.
New Paradigm #3: Deep Time: Hutton realized that the earth is much older than 4004 B.C.E.
Siccar Point “rocked” his world and was probably the place where he had his “ah-hah” moment.
