there is no box

As the great scientific thinker Thomas Kuhn taught us, there are 3 stages of scientific development:

1. prescience: at this stage there is no central paradigm, or at least a paradigm that is conscious or articulated or agreed upon.
2. normal science: at this stage there is a well-developed central paradigm, and the energy this creates in the scientific research community is dynamic and productive.
3. revolutionary science: at this stage it is realized that the central paradigm no longer holds, that discoveries made do not agree with the central paradigm, which creates a crisis from which must emerge a new and more appropriate paradigm.

The problem with the stage we normally find ourselves in… the normal stage… is that the criteria we use to research, the lens through which we do research, is the very paradigm that we research within. The methods, the criteria, and the justifications are all funded by the same central and dominant paradigm. We are unable because we are unwilling to look outside the box. We are unconsciously but willingly blind to the new. Any discoveries that are made that don’t agree with the dominant central paradigm are ignored or rejected because they simply don’t agree.

This is the problem with, like anything else, theology. The very lens we use to understand the truth are prescribed to perceive the truth we already believe. What is required is a radical revolutionary thinking outside the box. The lens itself, somehow, must be removed. Of course at first it will be rejected because it doesn’t fit the paradigm. But eventually, as the evidence mounts, the new paradigm will have to crash in upon us.

Want to talk? I want to listen. Email me and we can arrange it: haywardart at gmail dot com (read more…)