Welcome to Learned, a short, weekly look at some of the odder things you might find yourself wondering about. I’m Joel, professional educator and amateur word nerd. This week: What's a paradigm and why is it shifting on me?
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I'm currently in the beginning stages of a large research project. For the project to go well, I have to spell out, in exact terms, which paradigm I adhere to: scientific realist or relativist? And, while trying to assemble my arguments and justifications, all I could think about was a line in one of Spider Robinson's Crosstime Saloon books where the protagonist mentions that he taped two ten-cent coins to either side of his gearshift just so he could say he was shifting a paradigm...
One of my reference books gives us this definition of paradigm:
Frameworks that function as maps or guides for scientific communities, determining important problems or issues for its members to address and defining acceptable theories or explanations, methods and techniques to solve defined problems.
-- Robin Usher, 1996
As far as linguistics (my field) is concerned, there are two dominant paradigms, scientific realism and relativism. They differ in how they consider the role of the observer in research, with scientific realism holding the idea that the world is objective and independent of the observer, while relativism holds that the world is a construct created by being observed and that the observer is part of that which is being observed. To put it all a bit more simply, does the world still exist if we are not watching it? If you answer yes, congratulations, you're a scientific realist. You're also wrong.
Mark Rothko, Untitled ( Black Red And Black), 1968 — © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko/ ARS NY — Rothko was an amazing artist whose work helped define postmodern art.
Relativism suggests that it is impossible to consider the subject of the research without also considering the researcher. Think of it like a nature documentary: the filmmakers set up their cameras and then leave the scene. They use remote triggers and automatic sensors to capture the sights around them as devoid of interference as possible. We've seen the results of these efforts in productions like the BBC's Earth series. They are incredible, revealing a side of nature most of us will never see in person, and providing both viewers and researchers with a new understanding of our planet.
This approach to filmmaking is a very scientific realist approach. At least on the surface. But, even if the filmmakers manage to truly eradicate their presence and capture nature as it is, what happens when they get to the edit bay? How can they make impartial, objective cuts to assemble their film? By altering their presentation (from a presumably endless parade of raw footage) they have interacted with their data and made themselves part of the story.
To give another example, a long time ago, I studied journalism. And like every twenty-year-old journalist, I was enamored with Hunter Thompson and gonzo journalism. Thompson did not believe a reporter could, or should, separate himself from the story. The reason his works read so well, even decades after the events in them, is that he made himself a part of the story.
Roy Lichtenstein, Modular painting with four panels, #2, 1969 — Lichtenstein is another artist whose work helped to define postmodernism in art; his use of color and form can be seen as a counter-point to other artists, like Jackson Pollock, who used energy and chaos to create feeling.
Both of these examples are radically simplified and not entirely in line with the rigid, academic application of scientific paradigms to research projects, but they're not completely off the mark, either. And what it comes down to, for me, is that it is impossible to remove the observer from the observed.
So, what about the shift?
In linguistics, the shift was between a paradigm centered in the idea that there was an objective truth to be found: all languages could be examined through the application of the scientific method, universal truths could be found, and the Tower of Babel could be reduced to rubble. This approach was formulated during the Enlightenment of the 17th century.
As time passed and researchers grew disenfranchised with the idea that the role of the researcher could be fully divorced from the subject of the research, a new set of ideas began to form. Eventually, these new ideas would be loosely cabled together into a set called post-modernism:
...an intellectual stance or a mode of discourse that rejects the possibility of reliable knowledge, denies the existence of a universal, stable reality, and frames aesthetics and beauty as arbitrary and subjective.
-- Wikipedia
And thus, a new paradigm was born.
Just a small note here at the end, my plan was to start the Glossary supplement last week, but early feedback suggested that it might be better if I did it every two weeks, making it a little longer and comprising notes and oddities from two issues at a time. So, starting this coming Friday, the Glossary, Issue 1: The ASMR Paradigm, to subscribers only.
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Stay strong, stay curious. Learn something.
Joel