Paradigms & Culture

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas at the same time, and still retain the ability to function F. Scott Fitzgerald

PARADIGM
The way you see something, your point of view, frame of reference, or belief.

Paradigm in brief
Different people interpret things in different ways. A mental construction by which we organize our reasoning and classify our knowledge. Two people look at a vast, beautiful mountain. One sees evidence of a good God; the other sees a geological formation. Lights are present in the sky. One person sees UFOs; the other sees a freak weather phenomenon.

Using logic in paradigms

A simple model of deduction may present a logically valid argument where the premises and the syllogism as a whole are sound.

I am a man.

All men are mortal.

I am mortal
If our premises are true, the correct application of the rules of logic guarantee the truth of the conclusion.

How do paradigms affect the way we think?

Think of logical deductions based on a short story below:

The old man had just turned off the lights in the store and was preparing to lock up and go home when a youth appeared and demanded money. The owner opened the cash register, the contents were grabbed, and the man ran away. The police were informed immediately.
What do we know of this incident and what we dont? What are our assumptions?

Questions..
i) ii) iii) iv) v)

Did the young man appear after the lights had been turned off? Was the old man preparing to go home? Was the gender of the owner revealed in the story? Was the robber a man? Did the man run away after demanding for the cash?

the reader naturally makes all sorts of assumptions

The robbery paradigm

The cash register contained money, but we not told how much money.

The old man is the owner.

The demand for cash was from a robber.

Some cash was stolen from the store.

The robber is a man.

A crucial aspect of the robbery paradigm is that it remains hidden unless we have reason to bring it out into the open. This means that its central influence on what we know can go unnoticed.

The robbery paradigm consists of all the expectations that we have about robberies. Other possible aspects of the paradigm relating simply to the man who demanded the money (who said it was a robbery?) might be:
i. ii. iii. iv.

His age (was he over 70 years old?) His race (do you hold stereotypical views of race?) His clothing (was he wearing a suit or a balaclava?) What was he carrying (do you think he had an umbrella, a gun or a heavy pile of books?)

The mind fills in the missing details it assumes certain things and to do this it must rely on certain guiding principles, certain stories about stories (meta-stories). These are our paradigms.

A paradigm is like a map in our head. We assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be.

It is the way we perceive, understand and interpret the world.

Does everyone use the same paradigm?

How do we choose our paradigms?

Our knowledge is heavily influenced by our paradigms, then we need to be very careful that our paradigms are reliable or we have no hope of making progress. So how do we choose them?

How do we choose our paradigms?

It is clear that we have little or no conscious choice over many of our paradigms, and our backgrounds are quite influential. To take stock and review reflect on the paradigm, weigh the empirical and rational reasons for belief, and make a judgment about it. Critical analysis of the paradigm is called for. If a paradigm fail the test of a logical consistency and the ability to stand up to available evidence, the paradigm should be abandoned and rethought.

More on choosing
We should not be deceived into respecting ridiculous beliefs just because they are part of someone elses paradigm. Closed-mindedness and bigotry. Paradigms may be seriously flawed, but so may ours. There is no sure-fire method of choosing the right paradigm any more than there is a sure way of finding a true scientific theory of writing a beautiful piece of music. The best we can do is to be aware of where our own beliefs lie, and to test them continually against experience and reason.

What is a prison to you?

1.

A prison is a place where: Society takes revenge against criminals. Criminals are punished so that they do not re-offend. Society protects itself by locking criminals away. Criminals are re-educated so that they do not reoffend. Life is made so unpleasant that potential criminals are deterred from crime. Consider the following three stories

2.

3.

4.

5.

First story
I am a farmer from Tanzania. My farm is by the coast, and I have much work to feed my family of six children and five grandchildren. One day I was walking home for food when a group of white men came upon me, attacked me and carried me off to their ship. They made me work for eight months on the voyage to France, cleaning the decks. When we arrived I had a chance to escape, so I ran, but I was weak and one of the sailors caught me. We fought, and I was crazy for freedom, and my life. I pushed him into a rough sea and he drowned. In court I was found guilty of murder. My sentence is to be here until I die

Second story
I am here for theft. Alas I have no excuse I stole from my kind and generous employer when he left me in charge of the house. I could be freed if I could repay him, but I do not have the money to do so. I deserve this sentence the punishment is just. I do not ask for your leniency. My trial was fair and my sentence was just. I have begged my employer for forgiveness, but I cannot repay the money I took from him. At least I can repay my debt to society. Thank you for considering to release me, but I am sure there are others who deserve freedom more than I do.

Third story I was in love with the daughter of a rich man, and she
loved me too. But my family was poor, and the father thought I was not good enough for her. So one day when his daughter was not there he gave me a diamond ring, and told me that he would give me a thousand gold coins if he never saw me again. His daughter appeared before I could reply, and I did not tell her. But I also did not accept the offer. The next day the police came to my home, searched it and found the ring and I was taken to jail. At the trial, the father said that I had stolen the ring and as he was rich the judge took his word over mine. My beloved still waits for me; she suspects the truth. Please release me from this unjust imprisonment.

Only one can go free

First story: The warden said the some of the mans children had visited, and that he was a kind and gentle man who was much liked in the prison. Second story: The employer had pardoned the prisoner and asked the judge to let him go, but the judge felt that he needed to make an example of a thief. Third story: The warden mentioned that the father had later been arrested and was in jail on charges of corruption. The daughter visited regularly and often told the warden that her father had wrongly had her lover jailed.

Who would you have released?

Consider the following factors before you decide who to release.

Would you have released: the most deserving prisoner, the prisoner whose release would serve justice best or the prisoner who is ready to return to society? Consider the effect of releasing each of the three prisoners on: i) the rich merchant whose ring the court had judged stolen ii) the daughter who was waiting for her lover to be released iii) the family of the man who waits for his release from a foreign prison iv) the community and the judge who have convicted the confessed thief

The Grand Paradigms

Paradigms affect the way we filter and interpret evidence. However, there are bigger paradigms of which we may not be aware. We have a set of beliefs about ourselves, ranging from the trivial to the profound. But what about our place in the universe and how do we fit into the bigger picture? Where are we in a grand paradigm?

A model of what it is to be human in this Universe

The basic western model of mans place in the Universe, constructed by the Ancient Greeks around 500BC, changed very little as it was adopted by the Romans, suffered a few setbacks in the Dark Ages after the fall of the Roman Empire, but was resurrected in the Middle Ages, and was not challenged until 1543.

So what was this paradigm?

The Classical Paradigm

Humans are at the centre of the Universe. Humans are placed there by God(s). Human purpose is the worship of God(s). Religion is the path to truth.

God(s) Humans Animals Anything Else

The changing paradigm

Certain modifications have occurred over time.
1. 2. 3. 4.

5.

The view of the classical Olympians was replaced by one God. Pagan augurs and soothsayers were replaced by the Church. The shadowy Greek Hades was replaced by the Christian Heaven and Hell. Platos theory that man exists to contemplate God was replaced by the idea that man exists to worship Him. Man is superior to everything except God was the basic conception

UNTIL1543

Some discoveries simply cannot fit into the model, and when that occurs, and the new discovery is certain and important enough, then the model itself has to change. A new piece of knowledge is so fundamentally different to previous ideas that we throw all our ideas out and build a new paradigm around this discovery. such a thing happened in 1543.

1543
A polish astronomer named Nicolaus Copernicus published a work called On the Revolution of the Heavenly Orbs. He questioned the first belief in the paradigm set, the belief that the Earth was at the centre of the Universe. His belief and argument met with violent opposition from the Catholic Church (including his successors Kepler and Galileo) and was persecuted for his discovery. In the following centuries man was certain of his superiority not through his faith, but through his scientific inquiry. We call this the Enlightenment paradigm.

The Enlightenment Paradigm

Man is rationally superior to all things Reason is a gift of God Mans purpose is to investigate the Universe Science is the source of truth

God Mind Design Order Chaos Nothing

Enlightenment Paradigm
Applied to the 18th century the desire for scientific understanding displaced the need for theological dispute. Man became obsessed with understanding the world around him. Man was able to alter his living environment; build houses out of bricks, make weapons out of metal ore, plough fields and make them produce crops, use steam to drive an engine, alter the landscape to make it more beautiful than nature. This sense of purpose of adapting nature to our own ends is characteristic of Enlightenment thought. Though such adaptation had existed thousands of years, it had never been paradigmatic.

A succession of great discoveries

Copernicus proof of the heliocentric (having the sun as the centre) system was a shattering blow to human confidence in human superiority. Charles Darwin theory of evolution offered an alternative to Creation, and the reverberations of the theory are still echoing through the intellectual discourse (e.g. Richard Dawkins). Sigmund Freud showed that we are not fully in control of our behaviour; below our conscious thoughts lie subconscious thoughts that drive us to do inexplicable things. A host of other discoverers such as Albert Einstein, Weiner Heisenberg, etc. have caused paradigms to alter and Man is subjected to rethink his role in a new paradigm.

In our era
We live in a unique time: in the last few decades we have watched scientists genetically alter living matter. We have seen men walking on the moon, babies conceived outside the womb, the cloning of animals, etc. Could it be possible, in these turbulent times, that there is still a paradigm to which we all more or less subscribe? After the findings of Copernicus, Darwin, Freud (and others), how should todays paradigm look like? Spend some time thinking about todays paradigm. How do you think it would look like?

Modern paradigm
Humans are random evolutionary accidents. Humankind is one of a billion biological species. There is no God. There is no purpose to life. There is no path to truth.
There is no hierarchy, and there is no favoured place for man. Such a paradigm seems to be accepted by many in the scientific community.

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Stephan Hawking
We have developed from the geocentric cosmologies of Ptolemy and his forebears, through the heliocentric cosmology of Copernicus and Galileo, to the modern picture in which the Earth is a medium-sized planet orbiting around an average star in the outer suburbs of an ordinary spiral galaxy, which is itself only one of about a million galaxies in the observable universe. Yet [some]would claim that this whole vast construction exists simply for our sake. This is hard to believe
A Brief History of Time

Another look at the paradigms

Classical paradigm Enlightenment paradigm Man is rationally superior to all things. Reason is a gift of God. Mans purpose is to investigate the Universe. Science is the source of all truth. Modern paradigm

Humans are at the center of the Universe. Humans are placed there by God(s). Human purpose is the worship of God(s). Religion is the path to truth.

Humans are random evolutionary accidents. Humankind is one of a billion biological species. There is no God. There is no purpose in life. There is no path to truth.

Culture
Culture mediates almost every aspect of our daily lives and experiences; how we eat, how we dress, our relationships, how we speak to others, how we expect to be treated, and so on. Different cultures hold certain values which may not be shared by other cultures, hence practices differ around the world. Culture as a paradigm it forms a filter for us to interpret the world, and it should be clear that cultures based on national/ racial lines are just one type of culture.

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Culture as a paradigm
Spoken language, media, religious beliefs, academic trends, political movements, body language, personal space habits, cuisine, etc. Cultural eating habits eating habits vary from one culture to another. One may view that eating with your hands as unacceptable whereas for some others it is a cultural practice. Dishes such as nasi padang and biryani are meant to be eaten with your fingers, as their strong aroma of spices will linger as a memento of a really good meal. Eating with hands is a common religious practice in many parts of the world, including Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Of course, we need to be careful that we reject other cultural habits for good reasons and not just because they come from other cultures. Otherwise, we are guilty of blind prejudice.

Cultural paradigms to everyday life

Each of us have cultural presuppositions that we adhere to and perhaps we tend to pre-judge others based on our worldly views. Consider the following statements. Which of them do you agree with?
i) ii) iii) iv) v)

Spitting in public. When invited to a party, bringing a friend is fine. A womans primary role in life is to serve her husband and raise his children. Parents decide who their children will marry. Young people usually live with their parents after they get married.

Video 1
Japanese Dining Etiquette Watch the video and note how the foreigner feels about Japanese eating habits.

Also note what IB Learner Profile attributes assist in understanding how to be respectful and tolerant to different cultural practices.

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Chopsticks Etiquette
Sticking chopsticks vertically straight up into a bowl of rice is considered taboo because this resembles the offering bowl of uncooked rice at a Buddhist altar during funerals.

Video 2: A key element to our understanding of paradigms and interpretations is that of language. Evidently, not knowing the language of a particular culture will cause displacement and alienation.

Video 3: Cultural Differences/ displacement

What the video and discuss how the travellers experience the cultural displacement.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

What was their experience on the flight to their destination? How do the locals view the foreigners? What are their (foreigners) complaints? How were they culturally displaced? Note their feelings.

Our knowledge is heavily influenced by our paradigms

By now you know some aspects of a paradigm. You may have a paradigm that others may not agree with. Not all paradigm shifts are instantaneous some happen gradually over time. We have learnt that paradigms are an unavoidable part of the human condition, and that they, and culture in particular as the paradigm par excellence, play a large part in the way we interpret the world. END

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Summary
What is a paradigm shift? A paradigm shift is a way of looking at something differently. We are stepping outside the box. When we make a paradigm shift we can see, think, feel and behave differently. Example: Ptolemy thought the earth was the center of the universe. Copernicus believed the sun was the center of the universe (a paradigm shift occurred).

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