What is Paradigm Change 2.0?

While Paradigm Change has come to mean a deep change in a cultural mindset (see Paradigm 1.0), this was not the original intention of the term. The concept was developed to explain how revolutions happened in the sciences. What made a change a “revolution” was the emergence of an “incommensurable” rupture — a change-in-kind in practices. 

This approach is critical of the idea that history is progressive. History, especially regarding the sciences, was not one of a linear development towards “the truth." History, in general, and in the hard sciences in particular, neither follow a singular line of development (contrary to the likes of Yoval Noah Harari, and this brand of reactionary explanation) nor is history mere improvement — the march of progress — but always involves the emergence of a qualitatively different world. Here the concept of Paradigm Change shares similarities with the important method of Genealogical histories as developed by Michel Foucault.

The paradigmatic example of this form of rupture is the historical process of change that happened in the move from an earth-centered science to a sun-centered science in Western Asia (Eurasia). From this, paradigm change is defined to have four phases:

1. A state of uncoordinated activities and research.
2. Which stabilizes into a “normal science” that develops around a set of shared examples or a standard model to emulate (a paradigm).some text
   1. Normal science as it stabilized focused on “puzzle solving” — or what we might not call “problem-solving” — the development and general improvement of things. It is worth noting that problems emerge only after the development of an operational framework (the paradigm).
3. Within the operation of Normal Science, serious anomalies will emerge. These are things that the general operating logic cannot fully engage from the standard model. This produces a crisis or multiple crises.
4. This leads to the emergence of a new paradigm (a new shared example/model to emulate, etc.) Such a paradigm emerges only if it can meet to criteria:some text
   1. It is sufficiently novel and unprecedented to attract a community of “enduring adherents” 
   2. It is open-ended with many new problems to solve. 

Anomalies, which first go unnoticed, lead to innovation. This is an important insight for the practice of innovation. While in this model of change, anomalies are just spontaneously emerging in the everyday practice of scientists, from the perspective of innovation – we can deliberately fabricate anomalies. This is the process of developing and co-opting unintended affordances (what are called exaptations). If one blocks key aspects of “Normal Science” or the “normal” underlying ecosystem of any stable process one can produce an experimental situation where exaptations emerge that can be stabilized and treated as novel exemplary forms (paradigms).

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This is a powerful practical hands-on technique for developing qualitative changes. And the hands-on experimental nature of this highlights one of the problems with the more theoretical view of change found in the historical use of the concept. While theoretical speculation plays a very important role in the sciences, so do the independent traditions of experimental and instrumental research. With the focus on theory, what is missed is what actually happens in the daily practices of Normal Science and how change does not only emerge via conceptual anomalies but also via the invention of novel tools (and the emergence of new affordance landscapes), and experimental exaptations. 

‍In normal practice, novelty is continuously emerging at the fringes of practices. Unintended possibilities are always present and haunt all practices. We do not need to wait for theoretical law-like crises to emerge. Anomalies — exaptations are ontologically ever present — and while they cannot be seen, we can join them in experimental practices of blocking purpose and co-developing novel affordances. This is a non-theoretical practice — it involves embodied and enactive doing. 

‍One can see how Thomas Kuhn’s focus on the theoretical aspects of scientific practices and change led to the modern development of an understanding of paradigms and paradigm change as being about mental transformations and mindsets.

‍Ultimately the logic of Paradigm Change is too theoretical and does a poor job of taking the distributed and emergent logic of processes into account. But the term, if taken in its more modest form is very useful:

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Another way To Explain Paradigm:

A “paradigm” is an “exemplary example." In the context of creativity and innovation it is a exemplary example of an exaptation that when abstracted might suggest novel world opening possibilities. 

For innovation, we need novel paradigms — novel shared sufficiently unprecedented examples of exaptations that suggest a possible path to creatively make experimentally. It is an important tool for the emergence of novel worlds.

‍What ultimately is being challenged by these logics of Paradigms and Paradigm Change is the mistaken belief in historical continuity. Especially the false concept that how something begins determines how it continues and where it ends up (e.g. that there is always a direct line from what something is today to how it began in the past). But if human history and evolutionary history teach us anything, it is that it is all ruptures and discontinuities. We need to actively challenge this false logic of continuity and origins for the sake of understanding creativity:

Origins/Beginnings of Paradigm

An origin is a postulation of how something came into being. And in such an origin the essence and purpose of the thing first emerges and from this moment forward it develops. An origin “is an attempt to capture the exact essence of things, their purest possibilities, and their carefully protected identities; because this search assumes the existence of immobile forms that precede the external world of accident and succession” (Foucault).

Origins, as careful genealogical histories show us, do not determine the meaning, purpose, or possible use of things. Rather history is full of ruptures where things are co-opted, repurposed, and transformed towards qualitatively new purposes and uses. 

Purpose is never tied to origin or “essence." The meaning of things is only in their use – what they can do – and this is open.

As Michel Foucault says “The genealogist needs history to dispel the chimeras of the origin.”

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For more see also: Paradigm 1.0