Paradigm Shift and Pseudo-Science

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

1. INTENT OF THIS DOCUMENT

2. PARADIGM SHIFT BACKGROUND

2.1. AGENTS OF CHANGE

2.2. SUMMING UP PARADIGM

2.3. PARADIGM DEFINITION

2.4. THE STEPS OF THE KUHN PARADIGM SHIFT CYCLE

2.5. WHY PARADIGM CHANGE IS USUALLY SLOW

2.6. AN EXAMPLE OF LONG PARADIGM CHANGE

3. DRAWING THE LINE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE

3.1. FALSIFIABILITY

3.2. DRAWING THE LINE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE

3.3. EXAMPLES OF NON-FALSIFIABLE STATEMENTS

3.4. EXAMPLES OF FALSIFIABLE STATEMENTS

3.5.

HOW TO TELL IF SOMETHING IS FALSIFIABLE

3.6. ASSUMPTIONS IN FORMULATING THEORIES

3.7.

SPECULATIONS

3.8. SCIENCE AND THE SEARCH FOR ERROR

3.9.
3.10.

THE SCIENTIFIC FACT PROBLEM

SCIENTIFIC MODELS A.K.A. SCIENTIFIC THEORIES

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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".
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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 paradigmshift 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
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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 Definition
Thomas 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.
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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.
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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
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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 Change
In 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.

Drawing the line between Science and

Pseudo-Science

3.2.

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 Statements
1. 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.
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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 Falsifiable
In 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 (or axiom) is a statement that is accepted

without evidence. For example, assumptions can be used as
premises in a logical argument. Isaac Asimov described
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 that reality exists). 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
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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, the special theory
of relativity assumes an inertial 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 (the general theory
of relativity works in non-inertial reference frames as well).
3.7.
Speculations
The 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 Error
Once you understand that science's main focus is on trying to
find mistakes, a lot of things begin to make sense.
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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
alternativemodelofgravityand 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.
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3.9.
The Scientific Fact Problem
One 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
Theories
I have avoided using the term "Scientific Theory" because it is
enormously misleading. A "theory" is usually thought of as a
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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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