A  paradigm shift  (or  revolutionary science) is, according to  Thomas Kuhn, in his influential book  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions  (1962), a change in the basic assumptions, orparadigms, within the ruling  theory  of  science. It is in contrast to his idea of  normal science. According to Kuhn, “A  paradigm  is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share” (The Essential Tension, 1977). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, “a student in thehumanities  has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself” (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).

Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist cannot, for example, reject the  germ theory of disease  to posit the possibility that  miasma  causes disease or reject modern physics and optics to posit that  ether  carries light. In contrast, a critic in the humanities can choose to adopt an array of stances (e.g., Marxist criticism, Freudian criticism,  Deconstruction, 19th-century-styleliterary criticism), which may be more or less fashionable during any given period but which are all regarded as legitimate. Since the 1960s, the term has also been used in numerous non-scientific contexts to describe a profound change in a fundamental model or perception of events, even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences. Compare as a structured form of  Zeitgeist.

Kuhnian paradigm shifts

Kuhn used the duck-rabbit  optical illusion  to demonstrate the way in which a paradigm shift could cause one to see the same information in an entirely different way.

An  epistemological  paradigm shift  was called a “scientific revolution” by epistemologist andhistorian of science  Thomas Kuhn in his book  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

A scientific revolution occurs, according to Kuhn, when scientists encounter anomalies that cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has thereto been made. The paradigm, in Kuhn’s view, is not simply the current theory, but the entireworldview  in which it exists, and all of the implications which come with it. This is based on features of landscape of knowledge that scientists can identify around them.

There are anomalies for all paradigms, Kuhn maintained, that are brushed away as acceptable levels of error, or simply ignored and not dealt with (a principal argument Kuhn uses to reject  Karl Popper‘s model of  falsifiability  as the key force involved in scientific change). Rather, according to Kuhn, anomalies have various levels of significance to the practitioners of science at the time. To put it in the context of early 20th century physics, some scientists found the problems with calculating  Mercury’s perihelion  more troubling than the  Michelson-Morley experiment  results, and some the other way around. Kuhn’s model of scientific change differs here, and in many places, from that of the  logical positivists  in that it puts an enhanced emphasis on the individual humans involved as scientists, rather than abstracting science into a purely logical or philosophical venture.

When enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current paradigm, the scientific discipline is thrown into a state of  crisis,  according to Kuhn. During this crisis, new ideas, perhaps ones previously discarded, are tried. Eventually a  new  paradigm is formed, which gains its own new followers, and an intellectual “battle” takes place between the followers of the new paradigm and the hold-outs of the old paradigm. Again, for early 20th century physics, the transition between the  Maxwellian  electromagnetic worldview  and the  Einsteinian  Relativisticworldview was neither instantaneous nor calm, and instead involved a protracted set of “attacks,” both with empirical data as well as rhetorical or philosophical arguments, by both sides, with the Einsteinian theory winning out in the long-run. Again, the weighing of evidence and importance of new data was fit through the human sieve: some scientists found the simplicity of Einstein’s equations to be most compelling, while some found them more complicated than the notion of Maxwell’s aether which they banished. Some found  Eddington’s  photographs of light bending around the sun to be compelling, some questioned their accuracy and meaning. Sometimes the convincing force is just time itself and the human toll it takes, Kuhn said, using a quote from  Max Planck: “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”^[1]

After a given discipline has changed from one paradigm to another, this is called, in Kuhn’s terminology, a  scientific revolution  or a  paradigm shift. It is often this final conclusion, the result of the long process, that is meant when the term  paradigm shift  is used colloquially: simply the (often radical) change of worldview, without reference to the specificities of Kuhn’s historical argument.

[edit]  Science and paradigm shift

A common misinterpretation of paradigms is the belief that the discovery of paradigm shifts and the dynamic nature of science (with its many opportunities for subjective judgments by scientists) are a case for  relativism:^[2]  the view that all kinds of belief systems are equal. Kuhn vehemently denies this interpretation and states that when a scientific paradigm is replaced by a new one, albeit through a complex social process, the new one is  always better, not just different.

These claims of relativism are, however, tied to another claim that Kuhn does at least somewhat endorse: that the language and theories of different paradigms cannot be translated into one another or rationally evaluated against one another  ¢â‚¬” that they are  incommensurable. This gave rise to much talk of different peoples and cultures having radically different worldviews or conceptual schemes  ¢â‚¬” so different that whether or not one was better, they could not be understood by one another. However, the  philosopher  Donald Davidson  published a highly regarded essay in 1974, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” (Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 47, (1973-1974), pp.  5 ¢â‚¬“20) arguing that the notion that any languages or theories could be incommensurable with one another was itself incoherent. If this is correct, Kuhn’s claims must be taken in a weaker sense than they often are. Furthermore, the hold of the Kuhnian analysis on  social science  has long been tenuous with the wide application of multi-paradigmatic approaches in order to understand complex human behaviour (see for example John Hassard,  Sociology and Organization Theory: Positivism, Paradigm and Postmodernity. Cambridge University Press, 1993,  ISBN 0521350344.)

Paradigm shifts tend to be most dramatic in sciences that appear to be stable and mature, as in physics at the end of the 19th century. At that time, physics seemed to be a discipline filling in the last few details of a largely worked-out system. In 1900,  Lord Kelvin  famously told an assemblage of physicists at the  British Association for the Advancement of Science, “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”^[3]  Five years later,  Albert Einstein  published his paper on  special relativity, which challenged the very simple set of rules laid down by  Newtonian mechanics, which had been used to describe force and motion for over two hundred years.

In  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn wrote, “Successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science.” (p.  12) Kuhn’s idea was itself revolutionary in its time, as it caused a major change in the way that academics talk about science. Thus, it could be argued that it caused or was itself part of a “paradigm shift” in the history and sociology of science. However, Kuhn would not recognise such a paradigm shift. In the social sciences, people can still use earlier ideas to discuss the history of science.

Philosophers and historians of science, including Kuhn himself, ultimately accepted a modified version of Kuhn’s model, which synthesizes his original view with the gradualist model that preceded it.

[edit]  Examples of paradigm shifts in the natural sciences

Some of the “classical cases” of Kuhnian paradigm shifts in science are:

[edit]  Examples of paradigm shifts in the social sciences

In Kuhn’s view, the existence of a single reigning paradigm is characteristic of the sciences, while philosophy and much of social science were characterized by a “tradition of claims, counterclaims, and debates over fundamentals.”^[4]  Others have applied Kuhn’s concept of paradigm shift to the social sciences.

• The movement, known as the  Cognitive revolution, away from  Behaviourist  approaches to  psychological  study and the acceptance of  cognition  as central to studying human behaviour.
• The  Keynesian Revolution  is typically viewed as a major shift in  macroeconomics.^[5]According to  John Kenneth Galbraith,  Say’s Law  dominated economic thought prior to Keynes for over a century, and the shift to Keynesianism was difficult. Economists who contradicted the law, which implied that underemployment and underinvestment (coupled with oversaving) were virtually impossible, risked losing their careers.^[6]  In his magnum opus, Keynes cited one of his predecessors, John Atkinson Hobson,^[7]  who was repeatedly denied positions at universities for his heretical theory.
• Later, the movement for  Monetarism  over  Keynesianism  marked a second divisive shift. Monetarists held that fiscal policy was not effective for stabilizing  inflation, that it was solely a monetary phenomenon, in contrast to the  Keynesian  view of the time was that both fiscal and monetary policy were important. Keynesians later adopted much of the Monetarists view of the  quantity theory of money  and shifting  Philips curve, theories they initially rejected.^[8]

[edit]  Marketing

In the later part of the 1990s, ‘paradigm shift’ emerged as a  buzzword, popularized as  marketing speak  and appearing more frequently in print and publication.^[9]  In his book  Mind The Gaffe, author  Larry Trask  advises readers to refrain from using it, and to use caution when reading anything that contains the phrase. It is referred to in several articles and books^[10][11]  as abused and overused to the point of becoming meaningless.

[edit]  Other uses

The term “paradigm shift” has found uses in other contexts, representing the notion of a major change in a certain thought-pattern  ¢â‚¬” a radical change in personal beliefs, complex systems or organizations, replacing the former way of thinking or organizing with a radically different way of thinking or organizing:

• M. L. Handa, a professor of sociology in education at O.I.S.E.  University of Toronto,Canada, developed the concept of a paradigm within the context of social sciences. He defines what he means by “paradigm” and introduces the idea of a “social paradigm”. In addition, he identifies the basic component of any social paradigm. Like Kuhn, he addresses the issue of changing paradigms, the process popularly known as “paradigm shift.” In this respect, he focuses on the social circumstances which precipitate such a shift. Relatedly, he addresses how that shift affects social institutions, including the institution of education.^{[citation needed]}
• The concept has been developed for technology and economics in the identification of new techno-economic paradigms as changes in technological systems that have a major influence on the behaviour of the entire economy (Carlota Perez; earlier work only on technological paradigms by  Giovanni Dosi). This concept is linked to  Joseph Schumpeter‘s idea of  creative destruction. Examples include the move to mass production and the introduction of microelectronics.^{[citation needed]}
• In the arena of  political science, the concept has been applied to the ethos of  war. Evolutionary biologist  Judith Hand, in a paper entitled “To Abolish War,” argued that a paradigm shift is possible from a global ethos that operates on the assumption that war is an inevitable aspect of human nature to a global ethos that rejects war under any circumstances.^[12]
• Two photographs of the Earth from space, “Earthrise” (1968) and “The Blue Marble” (1972), are thought to have helped to usher in the  environmentalist  movement which gained great prominence in the years immediately following distribution of those images.^[13][14]
• Hans K ƒ ¼ng  applies Thomas Kuhn’s theory of paradigm change to the entire history of Christian thought and theology. He identifies six historical “macromodels”: 1) the apocalyptic paradigm of primitive Christianity, 2) the Hellenistic paradigm of the patristic period, 3) the medieval Roman Catholic paradigm, 4) the Protestant (Reformation) paradigm, 5) the modern Enlightenment paradigm, and 6) the emerging ecumenical paradigm. He also discusses five analogies between natural science and theology in relation to paradigm shifts. K ƒ ¼ng addresses paradigm change in his books, Paradigm Change in Theology^[15]  and  Theology for the Third Millennium: An Ecumenical View.^[16]

[edit]  See also

[edit]  References

~~

want to take a glance at the whole of Christian history because one of the things I’d like to get at is this widespread notion that Christianity is or ever has been a single thing.To do this I’ll use a large text, but I want to lead into it by addressing first a very slim text.

One of the most important and influential philosophical texts of the twentieth century was a short book called  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions  written by an historian of science called Thomas Kuhn. Now Kuhn was a student at Harvard in the 1960s. He was a young physicist and was invited by the President of Harvard to teach a course on the history of science to humanities students who knew nothing about science. He said to himself, “You don’t refuse the President of Harvard!”

In his researches and preparing the course he surprised himself. He came across something that he had not hitherto realised was the case. He had a notion of science as a kind of linear activity – a bit like those machines in a coal mine which eat into the coal face – which bites its way through the facts of the universe. He thought of science as a cumulative process in which these facts were gradually laid out.

He discovered that it was in fact a more violent, interruptive activity. Hence the title of his essay. He discovered that science operates by what he called “paradigm revolutions” or “paradigm shifts”. He didn’t actually coin the word “paradigm” but he did give it a new kind of meaning. He said that the scientific community worked within what it called a paradigm, a constellation of views based on experiment, a world view or set of assumptions that it operated within. This was the going, working science of the time.

The paradigm was operated until it stopped working – that is, until new questions or new discoveries began to collide with the given view. Let me give you a fairly obvious example.

Aristotelian astronomy, upon which the worldview of the entire Bible is based, proposed a three-decker universe with the earth at the centre and all the spheres going round it. The whole idea was that the earth is the centre of the system both physically as well as theologically.

That was the going paradigm. And it still works. The Ptolemaic version of Aristotelian astronomy can still operate for a yachtsperson. You can cross the Atlantic using Ptolemaic astronomy, guiding your boat by the stars. So to that extent it can still be a working paradigm.

But it was overtaken by the great Copernican discovery which was revolutionary because it said, “Ah! The earth is not the thing which everything else goes round. In fact, we go round the sun.”

You’ll recall the great struggle which then took place. This was because the new paradigm appeared to contradict both the biblical account as well as the going scientific paradigm. Interestingly, it was only fairly recently that the Pope gave the sun permission to be the centre of the solar system.

What happens then is that you get a working set of systems which operates quite satisfactorily until along comes new knowledge, usually discovered by creatures of genius. They begin to ask questions about the old paradigm. Those who use the old paradigm resist the new – and it is entirely right that they should do so. One doesn’t want to keep changing a world view which works. It’s a confounded nuisance if you’re switching paradigms every few years. You need to get traction, a bit of tradition and leverage on the thing.

So you make it work as long as you possibly can. You use it to try to answer the new information which is coming in. There’s also in some people a natural kind of conservatism which doesn’t like any kind of change. They prefer the going paradigm to anything which is coming down the road. They do so for purely temperamental reasons – but it’s also true that the scientific method itself inherently tests new data until it overturns the old. And then you get a paradigm revolution and you move on.

Kuhn’s little book has influenced philosophers, culture critics and theologians since the early 1960s. I want to look now at a great text which has applied Kuhn’s conclusions about paradigms to Christianity.

The greatest living theologian is Hans Kung, a Roman Catholic. His is the “large text” to which I referred earlier. He doesn’t have the Pope’s driving licence because he wrote a book in the seventies attacking the doctrine of infallibility and he had his licence to teach withdrawn.

He still teaches theology at T ƒ ¼bingen University but he teaches it in a secular setting. Quite movingly, he’s an old man now and he would like to get his licence back. He’d like to die, as it were, it peace with the Roman Church. But he has been told that he will only get the licence back if he commits to the doctrine of infallibility.

So he will have to sacrifice his conscience to get back inside the Church (which shows you how corrupt churches are). I doubt if he will do that because his whole being has been one of challenge. He’s been a sort of Protestant theologian in the midst of Catholicism.

Kung set himself a few years ago an enormous task. He wanted to describe the religious situation of our day. He conceived three volumes – one on Christianity, one on Judaism and one on Islam.

He applies paradigm theory to religion. He says that contrary to what we all think, religion has been a story of shifting paradigms – an essentially dynamic, changing enterprise.

I want to race through his application of paradigm theory to Christianity. He says there have been five Christian paradigms. As we’ll see, these paradigms are all still in operation. In science, new paradigms succeed, complete and often oust those that came before. In Christianity, religious paradigms never seem to get discarded or superannuated. They simply get stacked up like trays in the trolleys of self-service restaurants.

I’m focusing on this aspect of the Church because I think we’re on the cusp of a big paradigm shift. We’re living in revolutionary times. All the signs are there. You’ve got people who resist change; you’ve got people who see what the future is and want to pull things towards it; and you’ve got a lot of people who are just very muddled and confused. I want to try to trace continuities of particular paradigms of the past with those of today and to note any enduring value the former may have.

The first paradigm

which Kung develops is what he calls first-century early Christian apocalyptic. That’s a mouthful, but it’s actually quite easy to understand.The point he’s making – and if you read Paul with only one eye open you can’t fail to get it – is that the early Christians were waiting for the end of the world and the return of Jesus. They didn’t expect to be around for very long – which is why one gets such unsatisfactory answers in the New Testament to 20^th  century questions one puts to it.

You don’t get a developed ethic. You get what C H Dodd called an “interim ethic”. You don’t need a developed ethic because you’re only going to be around for two or three months. So what’s the point of getting rid of slavery, for example, if the great return of Jesus will take care of it. There’s not much point in any kind of social theology because this world is on its way out.

What Christians should do in this in-between state is simply be prepared for the return of Jesus, be expectant, and make as many converts as possible so as to be on the right side of the Rapture when it comes.

The whole point to all this is that there’s no point. It’s very difficult to get into the consciousness of apocalyptic Christianity. The way I imagine the apocalyptic mindset is to imagine myself waiting for a taxi. I’ve got a plane to catch at the airport and my taxi’s late. I’m standing at the window and I can’t settle down to anything. I can’t drink coffee or read the newspaper. I’m like a cat on a hot tin roof. I’m waiting for the great eschatological taxi to arrive. I’m in a state of indecision because I need to get out of where I am.

That is the apocalyptic scene. Certain sects set out even now to live permanently in this state. Two thousand years is a long time to wait for a taxi. Yet some claim to have got the timing right this time. While travelling by air in the United States I have seen people reading a magazine called  Prophecy Today  which claims to have finally cracked something called the “Bible code”. They think of the entire Bible as a deliberately designed code delineating the right date of the Rapture. Pat Robertson, the great capitalist fundamentalist, has set the date for 2007.

There are many Christians who like this kind of thing, who go in for this notion of a Rapture. It’s highly developed in the United States as a strange sort of religious psychology. I think George Bush believes in this. Certainly Ronald Reagan did. Perhaps the Iraqi war was an attempt to bring in the last things.

More amusingly, I read somewhere that it’s going to be tough on the people who are not the elect because if you’re in a jet ‘plane and the pilot is one of the elect, at the Rapture he’s going to be caught up, and all the poor passengers are going to crash. And if you’re in the dentist’s chair getting root canal work, and the dentist is called, then you’re going to be stuck with the needles in your jaw. Great stuff!

Was Jesus a genuine apocalypticist? Albert Schweitzer, the great Alsatian theologian, wrote a marvellous book called  The Quest of the Historical Jesus  in which he concluded that Jesus died as a despairing apocalypticist. Jesus felt he was called by God to bring in the  eschaton  (Greek for the end of the world), to precipitate conditions that would cause the irruption of the other into the now.

Almost the last words in Schweitzer’s book assert that Jesus “… lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and he throws himself upon it. Then it does turn; and crushes him. Instead of bringing in the eschatological conditions, he has destroyed them”.

Schweitzer believed that Jesus is hanging upon the wheel still, which is why, having finished that book, he said that the thing was to stop talking about Jesus and start living like Jesus.

So he went off into the jungle and became a doctor. He thought that there is nothing more to be said. Jesus failed – except as the greatest man who ever lived and who left us this absolutely fundamental ethical challenge. His was an eloquent book and an eloquent life.

Jesus scholars today reckon that Jesus went through an apocalyptic phase as a disciple of John the Baptist. They think that he then gave it up and went into what is technically called “realised eschatology”. Jesus taught, they say, that  now  is the day of judgement and that God isconstantly  coming to us every day rather than at some future date at the end of the world. After Jesus died, those disciples who came with him from the Baptist movement reverted to an apocalyptic theology which then quite quickly crept back into Christianity.

You can’t prove or disprove any of this stuff. Similarly, there are people who believe that Jesus ran a completely inclusive ministry in which there was no distinction between men and women. The gender prejudices were, they think, brought back later. You can take your pick on that. I don’t think there’s any way of resolving it.

The enduring value in apocalyptic Christianity is that provided you demythologise it and unshackle it from this notion that there is going to be an irruption from the supernatural into the natural, it’s still the most powerful part of theology because it calls us to change the world. The new or apocalyptic world of Jesus is a world we are constantly struggling to bring to pass. A new community is not one that is going to irrupt and land on earth straight from heaven. It’s something you have to work for.

Death is our own personal eschatology – “Look thy last on all things lovely every day.” You can use apocalyptic theology I think in many ways far more exciting than anything that’s left in traditional Christian theology.

That’s the first paradigm. It lasted roughly up to the end of the first century of the Christian era. After that it became increasingly difficult to sustain because Jesus obviously had not come again. Nevertheless, Christians kept the theology and the language around. Hence we sing all those Advent hymns. We talk about “Come again to judge the living and the dead” and all that. We don’t believe it except in some other kind of way.

Let me illustrate from the world of science. If you’re being trained as a scientist today you don’t start learning about Ptolemaic astronomy and then move on to Copernican astronomy. You start with the current paradigm. If you want to know the history of science and the paradigms of the past then you read a book about the history of science.

But, as you know, Christianity never abandons anything, so we still teach the apocalyptic first paradigm as essential to good doctrine – though we do try to demythologise it. Apocalyptic theology may have the deepest existential possibilities for us in terms of the nature of change.  
______________________________________________
[1]  The Sixth Paradigm  was developed from notes taken of a largely
extempore address given  at Cheltenham, UK in May, 2003

 ©  Richard Holloway: This article may not be reproduced   in any
form whatsoever without written permission from the author

http://homepages.which.net/~radical.faith/holloway/sixth%20paradigm.htm

~~

Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (American Society of Missiology Series) (Paperback)  Transforming Mission is a scholarly, in-depth study of major missionary paradigms from the first century until the present. Bosch’s point of departure is that the Christian faith is “intrinsically missionary.” He distinguishes between the missio Dei – God’s own involvement in the world, and Missions – the church’s missionary activity. He believes that to carry out God’s mission the church can neither focus its activity exclusively on saving souls nor on this-worldly human progress -it must do both.
He first surveys the New Testament model of mission, claiming that the advent of Jesus of Nazareth marked a significant change in the concept of mission as understood in the Old Testament. Jesus’ ministry was characterized by inclusiveness and breaking down barriers between people. His goal was directed toward all Israel rather than only the remnant of the faithful. Bosch makes the point that one of the most well-known missionary texts, the Great Commission, cannot be divorced from the rest of Matthew’s gospel. He believes that Matthew envisions a mission to both Jews and Gentiles and that this mission is characterized by discipleship and a call to challenge social injustice. Luke’s understanding of mission highlights repentance and forgiveness of sins as well as economic justice and peace-making. Paul’s understanding of mission focuses on the church as an eschatalogical community which is works for the improvement of society while awaiting the ultimate renewal of all things with the parousia.
In the second part of his analysis Bosch draws upon the work of Hans Kung and Thomas Kuhn. Kung identified six periods within the entire scope of Christian history during which a particular paradigm was prevalent: 1) The apocalyptic paradigm of primitive Christianity, 2) The Hellenistic paradigm of the patristic period, 3) The medieval Roman Catholic paradigm, 4) The Protestant Reformation paradigm, 5) The modern Enlightenment paradigm, and 6) The emerging ecumenical paradigm. Bosch makes a theological application of Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific paradigm shifts, claiming that the six historical periods in the history of the church were each characterized by a particular theological paradigm. He points out that theological paradigms, unlike their scientific counterparts, do not make a complete break with old ideas. Sometimes elements from older paradigms are incorporated into new ones. Old and new paradigms can often exist simultateously among different groups of believers. Occasionally an old paradigm is rediscovered by a later generation.
At the conclusion of his survey of historical paradigms, Bosch emphasizes that mission is ultimately multidimensional. The contours of these many dimensions are shaped by six major “salvific events” chronicled in the New Testament: Christ’s incarnation, by which he fully experienced the challenges and struggles of being human; his crucifixion, which signifies the completeness of his service and self-sacrifice; the resurrection, which conveys a message of victory and hope for humanity; the ascension, which calls Christians to work for a new order here on the earth which issues from above; Pentecost, which inaugurated the era of the church as a distinct community where social renewal is made manifest; and the parousia, which sets the sights of the church on the imminent and full realization of God’s reign.
The depth and comprehensiveness of Bosch’s work make it an important resource for any serious student of Christian missions. His many years of service on the field as a missionary coupled with his extensive theological training have given him many valuable insights into his subject matter.

~~

Hans Kung  completes his trilogy of the Abrahamic Faiths with this book on Islam (books on Judaism 1991 and Christianity 1996 already written).

Kung has famously applied  Thomas Kuhn ¢â‚¬â„¢s notion of Paradigm Shifts  to the history and study of religion.   Emphasizing essential teachings over the paradigms, praxis, and dialogue in postmodernity (without as he says succumbing to postmodernism).   [Fun fact on Thomas Kuhn–He and I share a common city of birth:   Cincinnati].

You can read Kuhn ¢â‚¬â„¢s  Declaration for a Global Ethic here.

Like all of Kung ¢â‚¬â„¢s book, it is a monster work but easily readable, thorough but not excessively detailed to the point of reader exhaustion.   Should be required reading for anyone (from the West particularly) commenting on Islam.   Though Kung is quite clear that there is just as much ignorance in the other direction ¢â‚¬“his book has repeated calls for Islamic theologians studying Christianity.   This is particularly important as Kung points out, given that the Qu ¢â‚¬â„¢ran shows no real understanding of Christian classical theology.   Muhammad had interactions with Christians (there were and are still Arab Christians), but in general seems not to have had a strong grasp of the intricacies (which is understandable) of Christian theology.

In answer to Bernard Lewis ¢â‚¬â„¢ question:   What Went Wrong ¢â‚¬”How did the Islamic world go from being the center of Eurasian civilization and the largest, most important imperial power in history (arguably) to, along with sub-Saharan Africa, the least developed block on the planet today?

Kung writes:

Islam is not in itself to blame, nor is a particular paradigm, as long as it is appropriate to the times; what is to blame is the perpetuation of a paradigm beyond the period which is appropriate for it.    The Ulama-Sufi paradigm (late medieval) was as appropriate for medieval Islam as the Roman Catholic paradigm was for medieval Christianity.   But to have persisted in this paradigm beyond the Middle Ages, in completely changed circumstances, led to a time lag and thus to a spiritual lack of productivity.      p.393   (my parenthetical remarks and italics)

And Kung sees the excessively long-lived (past its usefulness) paradigm of the Late Medieval Islam as the triumph of traditionalism over rational theology and humanism.   The Turkic and Mongol invasions destroyed the power of the Caliph, splintering the imperial ummah into regional powers, thus leading to the rise of the clerical class (ulema) and Sufis.   Colonialism came along and undercut the already out-moded traditional paradigm, which made things intolerably worse.   But the loss of free, critical inquiry is a major blow.

But Kung is cautiously hopeful for the future.   He lists a great number of practitioners and theorists of an Islamic modernism (even postmodernity, Paradigm VI in his system) ¢â‚¬“in response to the ubiquitous Western (and often ignorant) charge about  ¢â‚¬Å“where are all the moderate Muslims? ¢â‚¬ 

~~

WHAT IS A PARADIGM SHIFT?

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.

For example, agriculture changed early primitive society. The primitive Indians existed for centuries roaming the earth constantly hunting and gathering for seasonal foods and water. However, by 2000 B.C., Middle America was a landscape of very small villages, each surrounded by patchy fields of corn and other vegetables.

Agents of change helped create a paradigm-shift moving scientific theory from the Ptolemaic 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).

Likewise, the  printing press, the making of books and the use of vernacular language inevitable changed the culture of a people and had a direct affect on the scientific revolution. Johann Gutenberg’s invention in the 1440’s of movable type was an agent of change. Books became readily available, smaller and easier to handle and cheap to purchase. Masses of people acquired direct access to the scriputures. Attitudes began to change as people were relieved from church domination.

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. Newspaper publishing has been reshaped into Web sites, blogging, and web feeds. The Internet has enabled or accelerated the creation of new forms of human interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking sites. 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.

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. However, we are not restricted by this for we can change. We are moving at an accelerated rate of speed and our state of consciousness is  transforming  and transcending. Many are awakening as our conscious awareness expands.

Reference: Kuhn, Thomas, S., “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, Second Edition, Enlarged, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1970(1962)

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Ten Paradigm Shifts Toward Community Transformation
by Eric Swanson