What is “paradigm”?
Erek Göktürk
Department of Informatics, University of Oslo
Postbox 1080 Blindern 0316 Oslo, Norway erek@ifi.uio.no
Abstract. Today, the word “paradigm” is being used with a vague definition. In this paper, an attempt at clarifying the meaning of the word “paradigm” is made, with reference to its philosophical roots and how it came to its proliferation of use.
1. Introduction
The last decades witnessed a proliferation of the use of the word “paradigm”, in connection with many subjects. But the question still runs unnoticed: What exactly is “paradigm? And where did it come from? This paper is an attempt to put together answers to these two questions.
The word surely escaped from the laboratory of philosophers, mostly due to the fact that its meaning is vague. Kuhn’s use of it as an inherited set of preconceptions, acting as a darkened glass from which we perceive the world, gave the word a mystic aura. Then it was only a natural consequence for everyone and anyone who are to make a claim in changing the way the world goes around to come about advocating their point of view as “the new paradigm” which gets rid of the “blinding effects of the previous one”! So the word’s popularity has grown in direct proportion to the watering down of its meaning, which was never exactly concrete to start with, and has grown thinner with every new use [7].
2. Etymology
Here are two definitions of paradigm, from two different dictionaries:
Paradigm 1. One that serves as a pattern or model.
2. A set or list of all the inflectional forms of a word or of one of its grammaticalcategories: the paradigm of an irregular verb.
3. A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way ofviewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline. [1]
Paradigm 1. An example; a model; a pattern.
2. (Gram.) An example of a conjugation or declension, showing a word in all itsdifferent forms of inflection.
3. (Rhet.) An illustration, as by a parable or fable. [2]
From these definitions, we may assert that the words “model” and “pattern” goes well with the meaning of a paradigm, even the word “example”. Although this type of definition correlates the meanings of these words with the meaning of paradigm, it does not describe its meaning. The meaning in the domain of grammar studies seems also more or less well-established, being almost the same in the two dictionaries. The third ones are not even related. It also interesting that the third meaning given in the second definition makes the word ‘paradigm’ stand in close connection to ‘allegory’.
So the dictionaries fall short of being a source from which we can learn about the concept of “paradigm”.
An etymological analysis shows us that the word comes from the latin word ‘paradigma’, and appears in Greek as ‘paradeigma’, whose English translation is ‘example’, or as its earlier form ‘paradeiknunai’. The prefix ‘para-‘ meaning ‘alongside’, and ‘deiknunai’ meaning ‘to show,’ so the two words together sound as ‘alongside shown’ or ‘what shows itself beside’ [3]. But what is it that we “show alongside” or that “appears alongside”?
3. Paradigms, Plato and Aristotle
To answer the question, we need to observe the way the word ‘paradigm’ has been used, trying to extract its meaning from its usage. To do that, let’s first go back to Plato and Aristotle, since they seem to be the oldest sources elaborating on the concept of paradigm.
In his talk at EGS, Giorgio Agamben mentions the work of Victor Goldschmidt, The Paradigm in Plato’s Dialectics, published in 1947. From his account of the book, it’s understood that usage of the word ‘paradeigma’ in Plato’s book is peculiar, in the sense that sometimes the paradigm acts from sensible things to ideas, whereas sometimes it acts from ideas to the things. To quote Agamben, Goldschmidt makes the following analysis regarding Plato’s use of the word ‘paradeigma’:
Goldschmidt shows that in the paradigm, the generality or the idea does not result from a logic consequence by means of induction from the exhaustive enumeration of the individual cases. Rather it is produced by the comparison by only one paradigm, one singular example, with the object or class that the paradigm will make intelligible.
Then Agamben continues with an attempt at giving an interpretation of the last section of Book VI of Plato’s The Republic [5], with regard to paradigms.
In Rhetorics [4] 1356b, Aristotle states that an example (‘paradeigma’) is (a kind of) rhetorical counterpart of dialectic induction. Then in 1357b, he states regarding to ‘an example’:
Its relation to the proposition it supports is not that of part to whole, nor whole to part, nor whole to whole, but of part to part, or like to like.
This is to say that we have deduction which goes from the universal to the particular, induction (in its modern meaning) which goes from the particular to the universal, and we have the paradigm (example) going from particular to particular [3]. Then Aristotle goes on to say:
When two statements are of the same order, but one is more familiar (knowable) than the other, the former is an "example (Gr. paradeigma)."
What is interesting in this statement is that although he does not categorically distinguish between the participants of the ‘being an example’ relationship which he mentions to be a binary one, but he says that the relationship itself is anti-symmetric, and this anti-symmetry redeems one of the participants as being called ‘example’ or ‘paradigm.’ Furthermore, he says that the paradigm is more knowable than the other participant, but does not discuss this issue any further.
4. Paradigm as Example
Before we proceed, we must deal with and close this issue of ‘paradigm’ meaning ‘example’. Agamben states in his talk, which is mostly on paradigm taken as an example, that philosophy very rarely refers to the problems of paradigm and analogy.
Following Goldschmidt, Agamben mentions the example being the typical element of a set, but not exactly by using the word typical. Thus we can’t be sure if he thought about a paradigm being a template for a class, with reference to the use of the word ‘template’ in knowledge management, but the relationship seems proper. Then he continues to state in a brilliant way, although the example provides the context for the understanding of the elements of a set, it is actually not a part of the set:
This is the paradoxical status of the example. What an example shows is its belonging to a class, but for this very reason, it steps out of this class at the very moment in which it exhibits and defines it. Showing its belonging to a class, it steps out from it and is excluded. So, does the rule (that functionally define the set, he means) apply to the example? It’s very difficult to answer. The answer is not easy since the rule applies to the example only as a normal case and not as an example. The example is excluded from the normal case not because it does not belong to it but because it exhibits its own belonging to it.
Thus he comes to say that the typical element of a set has two distinct semantic stances: one as being the example and one as being an element of the set. These two, he emphasizes, should not be confused for one other.
To give an example to this notion of paradigm being an example, and how the conception of paradigms might differ from person to person, think of the most typical kind of cheese for you. I guess many of us, in some point of our lives, have been confronted by a kind of an edible substance which was claimed to be a kind of “cheese” as well, yet was out of our conception of cheese, that is our conception of typical cheese and the class generated by it. It’s only more astonishing to see that this imaginary conception of the typical cheese kind gets twisted to include the new kind of cheese if we like it and choose to regard it as “cheese”, and each person has his/her conception of what is cheese, a personal cheese paradigm. The cheese paradigm is what we use to define the class, but it, as itself, isn’t necessarily an element of it. This human dependency of the “paradigm” appears as a recurrent theme, sometimes even regarded as the intangible aspects of it.
Kant also recognizes this typicality of the paradigmatic example, but he describes it as being secondary and dangerous as a means in understanding the rule that the example is to stand for. The very next passage is taken from The Critique of Pure Reason [6]:
Indeed, the grand and only use of examples, is to sharpen the judgement. For as regards the correctness and precision of the insight of the understanding, examples are commonly injurious rather than otherwise, because, as casus in terminis they seldom adequately fulfill the conditions of the rule. Besides, they often weaken the power of our understanding to apprehend rules or laws in their universality, independently of particular circumstances of experience; and hence, accustom us to employ them more as formulae than as principles. Examples are thus the go-cart of the judgement, which he who is naturally deficient in that faculty cannot afford to dispense with.
The usage of the word in grammar is also related to the paradigm being an example. Kuhn, when discussing the meaning of the word paradigm, describes it in a very intelligible and concise way:
In grammar, for example, ‘amo, amas, amat’ is a paradigm because it displays the pattern to be used in conjugating a large number of other Latin words, e.g., in producing ‘laudo, laudas, laudat.’
5. Contemporary Meaning
Michel Foucault and Thomas Kuhn appears to be the two prominent figures in the 20th century that caused an ever-since increasing attention to the word ‘paradigm’.
Agamben reports, in his talk in EGS, that Foucault uses the word ‘paradigm’ in his writings, never defining it. In the same talk, h