[from Mary Powers 2000 12.11]
David Wolsk (12/10 post). Great post.
Ray Bennett (12/10 post).
"Paradigm shift" is not nonsense, but it is a terribly overused concept. It
has been around since 1962, when Thomas Kuhn published the first ed. of
"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", and got really popular in the
seventies, when any new idea was called a paradigm. I would reserve the
word for very fundamental or high-level concepts that come completely out
of left field and that most people can't or won't understand, because doing
so is too radical a departure from what they already believe. My favorite
example of a new paradigm, of course, is the idea that behavior is the
means by which an organism controls perceptions, rather than the
consequence of external stimuli or the result of internal calculations.
Kuhn said there had to be a crisis in a field in order for people to start
feeling uncomfortable and look around for alternatives (and I have read
many times that psychology is in such a crisis, and that biology
desperately needs new organizing principles, etc.) - unfortunately, such
looking around is strongly influenced by negatives: "not invented here",
the risk to personal reputation, etc. In other words, "a new paradigm is
fine, so long as it's mine". But most of the time most scientists are not
even contemplating their work, or the theory behind it, at the level to
which I think the word applies. That is, the level where PCT would replace
current theory. So what I'm saying is that in many cases scientists would
have to be operating at a higher level than they usually do in order to
appreciate the scope and potential of PCT, but that this going up a level
is simply part of the up-and-down-levels traffic we experience all the
time, and has nothing to do with the paradigm shift that accepting PCT
would involve.
I think that accepting a new paradigm means conflict for most people, and
it's an interesting thought that going up a level might help resolve this
conflict, like any other. The problem would be to get the naysayers into an
MOL situation AND find that PCT (or whatever new paradigm) versus whatever
they currently believe is what they wanted to talk about. Not very likely.
* * *
I would like to add here for those who I haven't been in touch with that I
finished my second 4 days of chemo three days ago and am still feeling ok.
I am trying to leave it at that and not anticipate or hope or dread
anything. I'm trying to avoid reference levels that might become a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Hard to do, since there are a lot of very
negative reference levels around like cancer pamphlets with all the side
effects spelled out, and nurses watching for signs of trouble, and so
forth. As of this moment they are not about me.
Mary P.