Definition of Paradigm

What is Paradigm Change 1.0?

Large scale systemic change is now almost ubiquitously understood as being a form of “paradigm change." The concept and the term “paradigm” comes from Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). A book about how qualitative changes – “revolutions” – ruptures – happened in the history of the western sciences. 

While “Paradigm” was pretty much a new word in 1962 when Kuhn first used it— now it is ubiquitous and has come to mean something different than he intended. Now paradigm means something more like: “the mindset out of which the system arises” or the shared ideas, and unstated beliefs that underpin the actual operating of any system. 

And developing from this the term “Paradigm Change” is now the near-ubiquitous term for a deep change of mindsets. Donella Meadows captures this idea of a paradigm and paradigm change quite well when she writes:

‍“You could say paradigms are harder to change than anything else about a system… But there is nothing physical or expensive or even slow in the process of paradigm change. In a single individual it can happen in a millisecond. All it takes is a click of the mind, a falling of the scales from the eyes, a new way of seeing…”

This way of understanding the term is highly problematic and pulls us back into an essentialist logic of giving ideas and the concepts in people's minds the primary agency in innovation and change-making.

Additionally, as the enactive approach to cognition shows – thinking does not develop in this manner, nor is anything ever reducible to something like a “mindset." Ideas, views, perspectives, and concepts all emerge from the dense weave of embodied practices, the use of tools, habits, collaborations, and environments. Paradigms do not change because of a “click of the mind” – they change because embodied practices, tools, habits, concepts, and environments change…

‍This concept that changing the mind is how everything changes has a long problematic and unconsciously accepted history in the West. It involves a double mistake: (1) making thinking purely internal, personal, and immaterial, and (2) separating thinking from the ecosystem of tools, embodiments, practices, and environments that gave rise to it. 

‍Kuhn was interested in a different approach to change and this leads us to what we are calling Paradigm Change 2.0:

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See: World, Paradigm Change 2.0