Paradigm Shift and Pseudo-Science

Complied from Internet (expect typo/error)- Ajit Alwe

1.Intent of this document22.Paradigm Shift background22.1.Agents of Change32.2.Summing Up Paradigm42.3.Paradigm Definition42.4.The Steps of the Kuhn Paradigm shift Cycle52.5.Why Paradigm Change is usually slow52.6.An example of long Paradigm Change63.Drawing the line between Science and Pseudo-Science73.1.Falsifiability73.2.Drawing the line between Science and Pseudo-Science83.3.Examples of Non-falsifiable Statements83.4.Examples of Falsifiable Statements93.5.How to Tell if something is Falsifiable93.6.Assumptions in formulating theories93.7.Speculations103.8.Science and the Search for Error113.9.The Scientific Fact Problem123.10.Scientific Models A.K.A. Scientific Theories13

1. Intent of this document

When new solution appears in any field for an already agreed problem definition, then it is easy to acquire new solution by merely learning the new tools and technique the new solution offers. However when the new solution is based on reframing the Problem definition, then one cannot understand the new solution merely by learning the tool and technique. This phenomenon is called as Paradigm Shift. Agile falls under 2nd category as Agile reframes (a) the software development Problem (b) provides solution to the reframed problem. This phenomenon is called as Paradigm Shift. So to understand Agile, it essential to understand what Paradigm Shift is. This document explain Paradigm Shift.2. Paradigm Shift background

In 1962, Thomas Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolution, and fathered, defined and popularized the concept of "paradigm shift" (p.10). Kuhn argues that scientific advancement is not evolutionary, but rather is a "series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions", and in those revolutions "one conceptual world view is replaced by another".

Think of a Paradigm Shift as a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change.2.1. Agents of Change Agents of change helped create a paradigm-shift moving scientific theory from the Plolemaic system (the earth at the center of the universe) to the Copernican system (the sun at the center of the universe), and moving from Newtonian physics to Relativity and Quantum Physics. Both movements eventually changed the world view. These transformations were gradual as old beliefs were replaced by the new paradigms creating "a new gestalt" (p. 112).Similarly, agents of change are driving a new paradigm shift today. The signs are all around us. For example, the introduction of the personal computer and the internet have impacted both personal and business environments, and is a catalyst for a Paradigm Shift. We are shifting from a mechanistic, manufacturing, industrial society to an organic, service based, information centered society, and increases in technology will continue to impact globally. Change is inevitable. It's the only true constant.2.2. Summing Up Paradigm In short, a paradigm is a comprehensive model of understanding that provides a field's members with viewpoints and rules on how to look at the field's problems and how to solve them. "Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute." (page 23)

In conclusion, for millions of years we have been evolving and will continue to do so. Change is difficult. Human Beings resist change; however, the process has been set in motion long ago and we will continue to co-create our own experience. Kuhn states that "awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory" (p. 67). It all begins in the mind of the person. What we perceive, whether normal or metanormal, conscious or unconscious, are subject to the limitations and distortions produced by our inherited and socially conditional nature. 2.3. Paradigm DefinitionThomas Kuhn defined paradigms as "universally recognized scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and solutions for a community of researchers," (page X of the 1996 edition). A paradigm describes:1. What is to be observed and scrutinized.2. The kind of questions that are supposed to be asked and probed for answers in relation to this subject.3. How these questions are to be structured.4. How the results of scientific investigations should be interpreted.

2.4. The Steps of the Kuhn Paradigm shift Cycle

The Steps of the Kuhn Cycle

0. Prescience - The field has no workable paradigm to successfully guide its work.1. Normal Science - The normal step, where the field has a scientifically based model of understanding (a paradigm) that works.2. Model Drift - The model of understanding starts to drift, due to accumulation of anomalies, phenomenon the model cannot explain.3. Model Crisis - The Model Drift becomes so excessive the model is broken. It can no longer serve as a reliable guide to problem solving. Attempts to patch the model up to make it work fail. The field is in anguish.4. Model Revolution - This begins when serious candidates for a new model emerge. It's a revolution because the new model is so radically different from the old one.5. Paradigm Change - A single new paradigm emerges and the field changes from the old to the new paradigm. When this step ends the new paradigm becomes the new Normal Science and the Kuhn Cycle is complete.2.5. Why Paradigm Change is usually slow

People and systems resist change. They change only when forced to or when the change offers a strong advantage. If a person or system is biased toward its present paradigm, then a new paradigm is seen as inferior, even though it may be better. This bias can run so deep that two paradigms are incommensurate. They are incomparable because each side uses their own paradigm's rules to judge the other paradigm. People talk past each other. Each side can "prove" their paradigm is better.Writing in his chapter on The Resolution of Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn states that: (pages 147 to 148)If there were but one set of scientific problems, one world within which to work on them, and one set of standards for their solution, paradigm competition might be settled more or less routinely by some process like counting the number of problems solved by each.But in fact these conditions are never met. The proponents of competing paradigms are always at least slightly at cross-purposes. Neither side will grant all the non-empirical assumptions that the other needs in order to make its case. Like Proust and Berthollet arguing about the composition of chemical compounds, they are bound partly to talk through each other.Though each may hope to convert the other to his way of seeing his science and its problems, neither may hope to prove his case. The competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be solved by proofs.We have already seen several reasons why the proponents of competing paradigms must fail to make complete contact with each other's viewpoints. Collectively these reasons have been described as the incommensurability of the pre and post revolutionary Normal Science traditions....Actually the incommensurate paradigms problem applies mostly to the Model Revolution step. But if incommensurability is acute the delay it causes spills out into the Paradigm Change step, slowing it down considerably.The larger the difference between two paradigms, the slower the Model Revolution and Paradigm Change steps usually are.2.6. An example of long Paradigm ChangeIn Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World, John Sterman documented how long it took Paradigm Change to come to the British merchant marine:1. Prior to the 1600s, scurvy (vitamin C deficiency) was the greatest killer of seafarersmore than battle deaths, storms, accidents, and all others combined.2. 1601: Lancaster conducts a controlled experiment during an East India Company voyage. The crew on one ship received 3 tsp. of lemon juice daily; the crew on the other ships did not. Results: At the Cape of Good Hope 110 out of 278 sailors had died, most from scurvy. The crew receiving the lemon juice treatment remained largely healthy.3. 1747: Dr. James Lind conducts a controlled experiment in which scurvy patients were treated with a variety of elixirs. Those receiving citrus were cured in a few days. None of the other treatments worked.4. 1795: The British Royal Navy begins using citrus on a regular basis. Scurvy wiped out. [Just in the navy]5. 1865: The British Board of Trade mandates citrus use. Scurvy wiped out in the merchant marine.3. Drawing the line between Science and Pseudo-Science

3.1. Falsifiability

Statements that belong in science must be about reproducible observations. However, as Karl Popper pointed out, there is a much stricter requirement.A scientific statement is one that could possibly be proven wrong.Such a statement is said to be falsifiable. Notice that a falsifiable statement is not automatically wrong. However a falsifiable statement always remains tentative and open to the possibility that it is wrong. When a falsifiable statement turns out to be a mistake, we have a way to detect that mistake and correct it.3.2. Drawing the line between Science and Pseudo-Science

Karl Popper identifies between difference science and pseudo-science, while a pseudo-science is set up to look for evidence that supports its claims, a science is set up to challenge its claims and look for evidence that might prove it false. There is a corresponding difference in the form of the claims made by sciences and pseudo-sciences: Scientific claims are falsifiable -- that is, they are claims where you could set out what observable outcomes would be impossible if the claim were true -- while pseudo-scientific claims fit with any imaginable set of observable outcomes. What this means is that you could do a test that shows a scientific claim to be false, but no conceivable test could show a pseudo-scientific claim to be false. Sciences are testable, pseudo-sciences are not.In other words, pseudo-science seeks confirmations and science seeks falsifications.Notice that a falsifiable statement is not automatically wrong. However a falsifiable statement always remains tentative and open to the possibility that it is wrong. When a falsifiable statement turns out to be a mistake, we have a way to detect that mistake and correct it.3.3. Examples of Non-falsifiable Statements1. An alien spaceship crashed in Roswell New Mexico.2. A giant white gorilla lives in the Himalayan mountains.3. Loch Ness contains a giant reptile.In each case, if the statement happens to be wrong, all you will ever find is an absence of evidence --- No spaceship parts. No gorilla tracks in the Himalayas. Nothing but small fish in the Loch.That would not convince true believers in those statements. They would say --- "The government hid all of the spaceship parts." "The gorillas avoided you and the snow covered their tracks." "Nessie was hiding in the mud at the bottom of the Loch."None of these statements is falsifiable, so none of them belong in science.3.4. Examples of Falsifiable Statements No alien spaceships have ever landed in Roswell New Mexico.Find just one spaceship and the statement is disproven. An exhaustive elimination of possibilities is not needed. Just one spaceship will do it. This critter (just pulled from Loch Ness) is a fish.Just one observation --- "Uh, it has fur all over it." --- is enough to disprove this statement, so it is falsifiable.3.5. How to Tell if something is FalsifiableIn most cases a falsifiable statement just needs one observation to disprove it. A Statement that is not falsifiable usually needs some sort of exhaustive search of all possibilities to disprove it.3.6. Assumptions in formulating theories

An assumption (oraxiom) is a statement that is accepted without evidence. For example, assumptions can be used as premises in a logical argument.Isaac Asimovdescribed assumptions as follows:...it is incorrect to speak of an assumption as either true or false, since there is no way of proving it to be either (If there were, it would no longer be an assumption). It is better to consider assumptions as either useful or useless, depending on whether deductions made from them corresponded to reality...Since we must start somewhere, we must have assumptions, but at least let us have as few assumptions as possible.[41]Certain assumptions are necessary for all empirical claims (e.g. the assumption thatrealityexists). However, theories do not generally make assumptions in the conventional sense (statements accepted without evidence). While assumptions are often incorporated during the formation of new theories, these are either supported by evidence (such as from previously existing theories) or the evidence is produced in the course of validating the theory. This may be as simple as observing that the theory makes accurate predictions, which is evidence that any assumptions made at the outset are correct or approximately correct under the conditions tested.Conventional assumptions, without evidence, may be used if the theory is only intended to apply when the assumption is valid (or approximately valid). For example, thespecial theory of relativityassumes aninertial frame of reference. The theory makes accurate predictions when the assumption is valid, and does not make accurate predictions when the assumption is not valid. Such assumptions are often the point with which older theories are succeeded by new ones (thegeneral theory of relativityworks in non-inertial reference frames as well).3.7. SpeculationsThe statement that Loch Ness contains a giant reptile could certainly be proven by snagging a giant reptile and hauling it up onto the boat dock. This type of statement, provable if it happens to be right, but not falsifiable if it is wrong, does not really have a name. We will call it a speculation although that word can also mean other things.

One of the objections to Popper's philosophy of science is that real scientists are often driven by speculations and sometimes they turn out to be right. A biologist, for example, might be driven by the idea that the ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct.That statement is a speculation because it is not falsifiable. If the speculation should turn out to be wrong and there are really no more ivory bills (which is still possible), the unlucky biologist could waste his or her life in a useless enterprise that proves nothing. The answer to the objection is that scientists are people and sometimes they do things that are unwise. While speculations may motivate scientists, they do not really belong in science.3.8. Science and the Search for ErrorOnce you understand that science's main focus is on trying to find mistakes, a lot of things begin to make sense.1. Astronomers stayed with the Ptolemaic Model of planetary motion long after the model became cumbersome and suspect. Until the Ptolemaic Model came into definite contradiction with observations, it was the only game anyone would consider playing. Aristarchus and Copernicus were mostly ignored.2. The newspaper reports that the latest space experiments confirm Einstein's model of gravity. You would think that scientists would be happy to be proven right. Instead, they view the result as boring. An exciting result would be one that conflicts with Einstein's model since that would lead to new science.3. An amateur scientist complains that nobody will even listen to his brand new alternative model of gravity. He figures that they all have closed minds and wish to perpetuate their own ideas. In fact, the scientists are entirely focussed on testing the predictions of the established model (Einstein's) to see if it conflicts with observation. The predictions of this particular new theory are irrelevant to that task, so it is ignored.4. A professional scientist comes up with a brand new alternative model of gravity and presents it as a "test theory" that suggests new observations to test the currently accepted theory. Not only does everyone listen, but he gets a large grant to develop the theory further.5. In the Creationism/Intelligent Design versus Evolution arguments most non-scientists figure that it is fair for all sides of an issue to be presented. Most biologists, however are hostile to such an idea. They are entirely focused on testing the predictions of the established model, evolution, to see if it conflicts with observation. An alternative model that does not make any predictions is irrelevant to that task.Everyone shoots at the same target, the currently established statement, until it finally crumbles into disagreement with observation. This kind of process is very different from a debate because there is usually only one side to every question, namely the currently accepted side, the model that has so far stood up to repeated testing.3.9. The Scientific Fact ProblemOne strong objection to Karl Popper's falsificationist philosophy is that it seems to imply that there is no such thing as a scientific fact. Instead, we just have "currently accepted scientific ideas" and those are required to be tentative so that they could change tomorrow. Surely there are some scientific statements that are really not tentative and could not possibly change tomorrow.For example, the "fact" that the planet Mars has existed at least up until now. The planet might be destroyed by some astronomical disaster, but we surely do not expect to one day hear that the existence of the planet was all a big mistake. However, it must be pointed out that it has already been proposed that the existence of the planet Pluto was a mistake. (The mistake was calling it a planet.)One way around the difficulty is to say that science produces "revisable facts." Those revisable facts are just the statements that have stood up to repeated testing and are currently accepted. When an astronomer says "The expansion of the universe starting from an initial singularity 13.7 billion years ago is a scientific fact." or a biologist says "Evolution is a scientific fact." they are using this meaning of the term "scientific fact."How does a search for error ever produce truth? The scientific method is very much like a well-known description of how a sculptor produces a statue from a block of marble: He or she chips away everything that is not the statue. The question then is why does one end up with a statue and not just a pile of marble chips?What pure falsificationism leaves out is the assumption that we live in a universe with fixed rules that we can discover. We can never be sure that we have the right answer to a scientific question, but we always have faith that there is a right answer.3.10. Scientific Models A.K.A. Scientific TheoriesI have avoided using the term "Scientific Theory" because it is enormously misleading. A "theory" is usually thought of as a guess that is not connected to reality at all.What scientists actually do is produce models that represent real systems. The models consist of things, either real or abstract, that can be manipulated and analyzed to reveal relationships that apply to the real system.Whatever kind of model is used, the crucial feature is that it make predictions that correspond to reproducible observations. Whenever this correspondence fails, the model is either revised or discarded.

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