Worldviews, Paradigms, Beliefs, Ideologies, Ideas and Social Change

“Our life is shaped by our mind. We become what we think.” (Buddha)

“Every nation and every man instantly surround themselves with a material apparatus which exactly corresponds to their moral state, or their state of thought. We surround ourselves always, according to our freedom and ability, with true images of ourselves in things, whether it be ships or books or cannons or churches. The standing army, the arsenal, the camp and the gibbet do not appertain to man. They only serve as an index to show where man is now; what a bad, ungoverned temper he has; what an ugly neighbor he is; how his affections halt; how low his hope lies . . .” (Emerson)

“Man knows himself only to the extent that he knows the world; he becomes aware of himself only within the world, and aware of the world only within himself. Every object, well contemplated, opens up a new organ within us.” (Goethe)

“The mind has exactly the same power as the hands, not merely to grasp the world, but to change it.” (Colin Wilson)

“Our capacity to see and change the world co-evolves with our capacity to see and change ourselves.” (Robert Quinn)

“No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution . . . Revolution is but thought carried into action.” (Emma Goldman)

“Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.” (Arnold Joseph Toynbee)

 

WORLDVIEWS AND THEIR COMPONENTS

(This article is taken from Marvin E. Olsen, Dora G. Lodwick, and Riley E. Dunlap, Viewing the World Ecologically, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992, Chapter 2, “Theoretical Framework,” pp. 13-32.)

Thus far, we have referred to worldviews as “mental lenses,” or cognitive and perceptual maps that we continually use to find our way through the social landscape surrounding us. Let us explore this concept in greater detail.

 

Concept of Worldviews

Worldviews are extremely encompassing in content and pervasive in adherence. The dominant worldview in the culture of a society normally pertains to the totality of human existence and most aspects of social life. Virtually everything that we experience is shaped by the perceptions provided by our view of the world. Since the dominant worldview is generally held by most members of that society, it normally establishes the culturally accepted definitions of social reality.

In addition to the dominant worldview prevailing in a society–such as the Industrial Worldview in contemporary Western nations–there may also be one or more alternative worldviews–such as an emerging Post-Industrial Worldview. An alternative worldview is obviously not held by a majority of the members of the society, although its adherents normally think that it should be. For those who hold that alternative worldview, nevertheless, it encompasses the totality of human existence.

As discussed earlier, our worldview is learned through socialization and social interaction, and is constantly being reinforced by the culture of our society throughout our lifetime. We unconsciously and uncritically take our worldview for granted as “the way things are.” It therefore pervades and influences most of our thinking and actions; it is not often questioned or doubted; and it is rarely altered in any significant way. Over time, however,worldviews do very slowly change.

Most people like to think that their view of the world is relatively unified, and they often go to great lengths to interpret whatever happens in ways that are consistent with their worldview. For example, if they believe that political leaders generally attempt to serve the public interest, when they observe a leader acting dishonestly they are likely to excuse his actions as “doing the best he could under the circumstances” rather than alter their belief by accepting the fact that political leaders sometimes act in their own personal self-interest.

When discrepancies between observed events and people’s worldview become too blatant to be ignored or excused, however, individuals frequently incorporate inconsistent beliefs and values into their worldview without becoming unduly concerned about the resulting contradictions. If a political leader’s lying becomes too flagrant to be ignored or excused, for instance, people may stop trying to reinterpret those events and instead view them as functionally necessary. Their worldview might then incorporate the belief that public deception is necessary for “national security.” Consequently, people’s worldviews often contain numerous incongruencies. In spite of this strong resistance to change, under some circumstances individuals do occasionally convert from one worldview to another. As implied by the term “convert,” this normally involves a total transformation of the way in which a person views the world. Similarly, the dominant worldview prevailing in the culture of a society may through time become altered in major ways, so that eventually it represents an entirely new view of reality. When that occurs, it can have vast repercussions on most aspects of social life and completely change the culture and social structure of that society.

 

Components of Worldviews

As mentioned previously, world views are composed of beliefs or belief systems and the social value associated with them. A comprehensive worldview will normally incorporate a wide variety of both these components. To understand worldviews, therefore, we must examine the beliefs/belief systems and the social values that they contain.

A belief is a specific idea about some aspect of life that its holders are convinced is true, regardless of any disconfirming evidence. For example, some people today still believe that the world is flat, despite photographs of a round earth taken from space. A recent survey of college students in the United States found that over one-third of them believe that ghosts exist, and two-fifths of them believe that it is possible to communicate with the dead (Eve 1988). More significant for social life are beliefs about categories of people, such as the ideas that blacks are mentally inferior to whites or that all poor people are personally responsible for their condition because of their unwillingness to hold a steady job. A belief that is central to the Industrial Worldview sketched in Chapter 1 is that sooner or later technological developments will always provide solutions to critical economic or social problems. A belief that is central to the alternative Post-Industrial Worldview is that all forms of life, including human beings, are integral parts of the world ecosystem and are bound by the natural laws of that system.

A belief system is asset of interrelated beliefs dealing with a broad social condition or type of activity. It is therefore more extensive and complex than any of the specific beliefs included within it. The specific beliefs composing a belief system tend to form a more-or-less integrated whole, although that system may display numerous internal inconsistencies. A belief system that was very popular during the early part of this century, known as Social Darwinism, held that social life is a continual struggle for survival and dominance, marked by never-ending competition. The most competent and hard-working individuals tend to be successful in this competition, while people who are losers in life are generally incompetent and/or inferior. Consequently, socioeconomic inequalityis both natural and justified, and all efforts to reduce inequality through public programs are unwarranted and bound to fail (Hofstadter1955).

Another belief system that is much older, and has created considerable public controversy, is Creationism. Based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, it holds that human beings were created in their present form within the past 10,000 years, so that all theories about the biological evolution of homo sapiens over several million years are false. Human beings are a unique form of life, are specially favored by the Creator, and have a divine mandate to rule over all other life forms. This belief system is clearly antithetical to a Post-Industrial Worldview, which holds that human beings are inexorably part of nature.

Specific beliefs are the building blocks of a worldview, and belief systems provide its central framework. A total worldview is much broader and more encompassing than any particular belief or belief system, however. Whereas a belief such as the existence of ghosts or a belief system such as Creationism is limited to some portion or aspect of life, a worldview covers much or all of human existence. A worldview therefore contains countless beliefs and belief systems, some of which may be tightly interrelated while others may be unrelated or even contradictory to one another. The worldview of Islam, for instance, includes not only a belief system about the origin of human life, but also beliefs and belief systems about interpersonal relationships, family life, economic activities, the political state, human rights, and the overall meaning and purpose of life.

In general, we tend to be much more aware of our beliefs and belief systems than we are of our worldview. We normally choose–at some level of intentionality, if not always rationality–to adopt ourbeliefs and belief systems, and we sometimes choose to modify or reject them. In contrast, our worldview is such a fundamental and encompassing framework perceiving and interpreting social life that it is simply taken for granted most of the time.

Closely associated with most of our beliefs and belief systems are social values concerning what is good and bad, or desirable and undesirable, in social life. Whereas a belief or belief system isa statement of what we think is (such as the belief that fossil fuel reserves are finite) a social value is an expression of how we think things should be (such as the prescription that we should use renewable energy sources as much as possible). Belief and values are usually closely linked. For instance, if we believe that the benefits a person receives in life are a result of individual efforts and accomplishments, we are quite likely to value competition for jobs and income. Conversely, if we believe that poverty is largely a consequence of discrimination and exploitation, we will undoubtedly value social policies aimed at eliminating those practices.

 

SOCIAL PARADIGMS

Much current writing equates paradigms with worldviews, eventhough they are not equivalent concepts. Moreover, it is important to distinguish between scientific and social paradigms. Since the concept of paradigms was first applied to scientific work, let us examine it in that context before dealing with its applicability to social life.

 

Scientific Paradigms

The concept of scientific paradigms was popularized by Thomas Kuhn (1970) to explain the manner in which science operates and develops through time. A scientific paradigm is an intellectual perspective that, under normal conditions, guides the work of those scientists who constitute a “scientific community” within a particular discipline. In the words of Robert Friedrichs (1970:55), a scientific paradigm is “the intellectual image a discipline has of its subject matter.”

This intellectual perspective defines what constitutes “normal science” within a scientific community at a given time and underlies most of the theorizing and research done by its practitioners. It includes explicit and implicit assumptions about the nature of the phenomena being studied, prevailing beliefs and theories about the structure and functioning of those phenomena, formal and informal rules concerning the manner in which they are to be studied, and standards for evaluating the adequacy and validity of all scientific endeavors within that scientific community. As expressed by GeorgeRitzer (1975:7):

A paradigm is a fundamental image of the subject matter within a science. It serves to define what should be studied, what questions should be asked, how they should be asked, and what rules should be followed in interpreting the answers obtained. The paradigm is the broadest unit of consensus within a science and serves to differentiate one scientific community (or subcommunity) from another.

Without a scientific paradigm to guide, integrate, and interpret their work, scientists create only random information. With a scientific paradigm, they can formulate theories that organize knowledge and give it meaning. In Kuhn’s (1970:16-17) words: “No natural history can be interpreted in the absence of at least some implicit body of intertwined theoretical and methodological belief that permits selection, evaluation, and criticism.”

Although Kuhn and many subsequent historians of science have limited their discussions of paradigms to science, the concept of paradigms is also applicable to most other realms of knowledge. In fact, Kuhn derived the idea of paradigms from the fields of history and literature and applied it to science, demonstrating the extent to which scientific thinking is influenced by nonscientific beliefs and values.

 

Social Paradigms

If the concept of paradigm is indeed applicable to all realms of intellectual endeavor, it seems reasonable to presume that it can also be applied to the ways in which people think about various aspects of social life. Since the 1970s, several sociologists have been doing this. Stephen Cotgrove (1982) has contrasted the “Dominant Paradigm” with an “Alternative Ecological Paradigm” in his discussion of shifting worldviews. Riley Dunlap and Kent Van Liere (1978, 1983) have argued that a “new environmental paradigm” (NEP) underlies contemporary environmentalism, and contrasted it with the “dominant social paradigm” (DSP). And Lester Milbrath (1984) has discussed “contrasting belief paradigms in modern society.”

In this study we use the concept of social paradigm to refer to the perceptual and cognitive orientation that a “communicative community” uses to interpret and explain particular aspects of social life that are important to it. A social paradigm is therefore more restricted than a worldview in two important ways. First, a social paradigm is held only by a limited set of people and is not necessarily accepted by most members of a society. We call this set of people a “communicative community”–analogous to the “scientific community” that holds a scientific paradigm–to indicate that there is enough ongoing, patterned communication among them to create a social paradigm. Second, a social paradigm pertains only to certain aspects of life rather than the totality of social existence. Normally, those aspects are topics that are of particular concern to that communicative community andhence are objects of their communication.

In short, social paradigms are more limited in scope and acceptance than are prevailing worldviews, so that the culture of a society is likely to contain many more social paradigms than worldviews at any given time. Social paradigms are similar in composition to worldviews, however, in that their principal components are also beliefs/belief systems and the values associated with them. As expressed by Stephen Cotgrove (1982:26): “paradigms provide the framework of meaning within which ‘facts’ and experiences acquire significance and can be interpreted. But they a normative as well as a cognitive dimension, indicating not only what is but what ought to be.” A social paradigm might therefore be described as a”mini-worldview” held by a communicative community.

Throughout this research we use the concepts of a Technological Social Paradigm and an Ecological Social Paradigm to refer to beliefs and values pertaining to the particular realms of social life we are primarily investigating, while reserving the ideas of Industrial Worldview and Post-Industrial Worldview for the broader ways of viewing the totality of social reality in which those socialparadigms are assumed to be embedded.

 

IDEOLOGIES

The concept of ideologies is often used interchangeably witheither worldviews or paradigms in both everyday and social scientific discussions, and many writers make no effort to distinguish between these closely related ideas. The principal reason for this conceptual confusion is that ideologies are always derived from worldviews or social paradigms. An ideology is an argument derived from a worldview or social paradigm that a group of people purposefully use to justify their actions (Kinloch 1981). In other words, either a worldview or a social paradigm–but especially the latter–can beturned into an ideology by a set of people and intentionally used bythem to justify their activities. The common tendency to turn social paradigms into ideologies is described by Stephen Cotgrove (1982:88)in the following manner:

Paradigms are not only beliefs about what the world is like and guides to action; they also serve the function of legitimating or justifying courses of action. That is to say, they function as ideologies. Those who do not share the paradigm will question the justification for the action it supports. Hence, conflict over what constitutes the paradigm by which action should be guided and judged to be reasonable is itself a part of the political process. The struggle to universalize a paradigm is part of the struggle for power.

 

Nature of Ideologies

The reason for adopting and promoting an ideology is to explain, justify, and legitimate one’s actions and/or goals. If people’s actions and goals can be linked with an existing worldview or social paradigm by proclaiming those ideas as their ideology, whatever they do is more likely to be accepted by others in the society. An appealing ideology is particularly crucial when initiating a social movement to promote social change, since it serves to attract supporters and justify the movement. Ideologies are also widely used by established elites to explain and legitimate their exercise of power and control and their privileged status (Kinloch 1981).

Like the worldviews and social paradigms on which they are based, ideologies consist of beliefs/belief systems and values. When these ideas are proclaimed as an ideology, however, it is important that they be expressed in clear and simple terms that everyone can understand–and preferably in words that carry strong positive emotional appeals. An ideology is also similar to a social paradigmin being held by a limited set of people, although its proponents are likely to be fewer in number and more closely unified than a communicative community. As already implied, however, when a worldview or social paradigm is transformed into an ideology, it displays two unique characteristics.

First, an ideology is intentionally formulated and propounded by its adherents for a specific purpose. Whereas the Industrial Worldview appears to have emerged more-or-less spontaneously as societies became highly industrialized, and the Technological Social Paradigm developed gradually as technology became increasingly central to these societies, the ideology of market capitalism derived from that worldview and social paradigm has intentionally been propounded by Western economic theorists and business leaders to explain and justify a particular kind of industrial economic system.

Second, an ideology is used by its proponents for their own political purposes, which rarely occurs with worldviews or social paradigms. A dominant worldview is normally an integral part of the total culture of a society and is simply accepted as the way things are. While a social paradigm is restricted to a communicative community, those people tend to view it as an expression of normal conditions for them. In contrast, when a worldview or paradigm is converted into an ideology by a set of people–dominant elites, leaders of a social movement, a powerful social class, an ethnic population, or some other group–they purposely use it as a means of supporting and furthering their power, privileges, actions and goals. In short, an ideology is always a symbolic political weapon.

Karl Mannheim, the foremost student of ideology, identified two different types of ideologies. Particular ideologies are created by specific sets of people to justify their predominant interests and concerns, while total ideologies express the prevailing mode of thinking in a society or era (Mannheim 1936:56). Thus a particular ideology is normally derived from a specific social paradigm, while a total ideology is generally an expression of a broad worldview that pervades an entire society and shapes the thinking of all its members. In this study, we use the concept of “ideology” in its narrower meaning, similar to Mannheim’s “particular ideologies.”

 

Functions of Ideologies

Why do people create ideologies from worldviews and social paradigms and proclaim them to be “the obvious truth?” A partial answer to this question lies in the functions that ideologies perform for people. Three important functions of ideologies for individuals are providing meanings, simplifying existence, and creating certainty. These functions also pertain to worldviews and social paradigms, although less explicitly than with ideologies.

An adequate ideology will give understandable meanings to all kinds of social events, activities, and trends that otherwise appear unintelligible. It places them within a frame of reference that constitutes a defined context which assigns meanings to them. For example, if we wonder why so much conflict is occurring in Middle Eastern nations today, our ideology can explain all of those incidents as part of the continuing struggle for “third-world liberation” from “capitalistic imperialism.”

An adequate ideology will also transform the diverse complexity ofs ocial life into a simple and easily grasped theme. It does this by offering an abstract but quite simplistic slogan or phrase that can be applied to all kinds of difficult and complex situations. If we believe that communism is an “evil empire,” then whatever the U.S.S.R. does is seen as part of its attempts to spread totalitarianism throughout the world. On the other hand, if we believe that communism is seeking to reduce socioeconomic inequality, then some of the actions of the U.S.S.R. seem more reasonable.

In addition, an adequate ideology gives its adherents the absolute certainty that they–and only they–know the truth. Ideologies tend to be extremely intolerant of all other competing ways of thinking. For the believers in a particular ideology it is never just one of several possible ways of viewing the world; it is the only possible truth. Anyone who does not share their way of thinking is obviously uninformed or misguided or out of touch with reality. In the current debate over abortion, for instance, “right-to-life” proponents are totally convinced that abortion violates the moral imperative that all human life is sacred and must always be protected, so that “pro-choice” adherents are clearly morally misguided.

These functions performed by ideologies–and also commonly by worldviews and social paradigms–have been called by Peter Berger andThomas Luckmann “the social construction of reality,” which they describe in the following manner (1966:67):

What is taken for granted as knowledge in the society comes to be coextensive with the knowledge, or at any rate provides the framework within which anything not yet known will come to be known in the future. This is the knowledge that is learned in the course of socialization and that mediates the internalization within individual consciousness of the objectivated structures of the social world. Knowledge, in this sense, is at the heart of the fundamental dialectic of society. It “programs” the channels in which externalization produces an objective world. It objectifies this world through language and the cognitive apparatus based on language. That is, it orders it into objects to be apprehended as reality.

 

PARADIGM CHANGE THEORIES

To explain the process through which an established scientific paradigm is rejected in favor of emerging paradigm, Thomas Kuhn(1970) proposed the theory of paradigm shift. While Kuhn applied this theory only to scientific paradigms, it is also quite relevant to social paradigms. In this section, we first outline Kuhn’s theory of scientific paradigm shift, and then discuss its application to social life.

 

Kuhn’s Theory

This explanation of shifts in scientific paradigms begins with the observation that all paradigms are mental creations, shaped and influenced by the knowledge existing at the time they arise. As scientific ideas and findings change through time, anomalies inevitably begin to appear that do not fit into the currently accepted paradigm. New theoretical thinking and empirical observations begin to violate expectations and beliefs contained in the prevailing paradigm, so that it becomes increasingly inconsistent logically and incongruent with observed facts.

The initial reaction to those anomalies within a scientific paradigm is likely to be reaffirmation of the paradigm and denial that there are any problems with it. The difficulties being experienced are attributed not to inadequacies in the paradigm, but rather to nonrigorous theorizing or invalid research findings. Scientists will tend to argue intensely over fine details of their theories and interpretations of their research findings, attempting to fit all their ideas and data into the accepted paradigm in some manner. They are not willing at that point to reject the established paradigm, since it defines their basic intellectual understanding of their field.

At most, members of that scientific community may be willing to make minor modifications in their scientific paradigm in an effort to make it more logically consistent or empirically congruent, but those modifications do not alter or deny the ultimate truth of the paradigm. “In science,” wrote Kuhn (1970:64), “novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectations.”

Anomalies within an existing scientific paradigm may be ignored or minimized or explained away for a considerable period of time, especially if they do not threaten core beliefs and principles of that paradigm. Sooner or later, however, the inadequacies of the paradigm will become so glaring that they can no longer be denied. An intellectual/scientific crisis then erupts with which the existing scientific paradigm can not cope. It becomes obvious to growing numbers of scientists that the old paradigm must be discarded and replaced with a new one that is more relevant to current knowledge.

No matter how serious that intellectual/scientific crisis becomes, however, the existing paradigm will not be discarded until a new one is available to replace it. Scientists must have some paradigm with which to interpret their work. In science, as in all of life, observed Kuhn (1970:77),

the act of judgement that leads scientists to reject apreviously accepted theory is always based upon more than ac omparison of that theory with the world. The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another, and the judgement leading to that decision involves the comparison of paradigms with nature and with each other.

In some situations, the new paradigm may have already been proposed by a few innovative thinkers who increasingly attract adherents to their way of thinking. In other situations, no alternative paradigm may be readily available, which leads to a frantic search for ideas and beliefs that can form the basis of a new scientific paradigm which can explain the observed anomalies.

The new paradigm that eventually emerges will not only be fundamentally different from the old one, but incompatible with it because the two paradigms portray the world in quite distinct ways. Therefore, rational debate between advocates of the two competing paradigms will often be impossible. Each side in this debate will frame its arguments in terms of its own paradigm, and fail to realize that its opponents are viewing the situation from an entirely different perspective. Consequently, both sides will simply talk past one another with little or no meeting of minds (e.g., Dunlap 1983). As Kuhn (1970:94) explained:

Like the choice between competing political institutions, that between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between incompatible modes of community life. Because it has that character, the choice is not and can not be determined merely by the evaluative procedures characteristic of normal science, for those depend in part upon a particular paradigm, and that paradigm is at issue. When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defense.

Since the choice between the old and new paradigms cannot be made on rational grounds, a new paradigm is usually accepted primarily because people have faith in its ability to make sense of observed conditions–not because it offers immediate solutions to observed anomalies. “A decision between alternative ways of practicing science is called for, and in the circumstances that decision must be based less on past achievements than on future promises. . . . A decision of that kind can only be made on faith” (Kuhn 1970:158).

The process of paradigm shift within a scientific community is likely to require a considerable amount of time during which there is continual conflict between adherents of the old paradigm and converts to the new one. Kuhn (1970: 158- 159) describes the process in thefollowing manner:

Rather than a single group conversion, what occurs is an increasing shift in the distribution of professional allegiances. At the start, a new candidate for paradigm may have few supporters .. . . Nevertheless, if they are competent, they will improve it, explore its possibilities, and show what it would be like to belong to the community guided by it. And as that goes on, if the paradigm is one destined to win its fight, the number and strength of the persuasive arguments in its favor will increase. More scientists will then be converted, and the exploration of the new paradigm will go on. Gradually the number of experiments, instruments, articles, and books based upon the paradigm will multiply. Still more men, convinced of the new view’s fruitfulness, will adopt the new mode of practicing normal science, until at last only a few elderly holdouts remain.

When a shift from an old to a new paradigm within a scientific community is complete, a scientific revolution will have occurred. In the first several decades of the twentieth century, as Einstein’s paradigm of a physical universe based on relativity replaced the old Newtonian paradigm based on absolutes, the entire discipline of physics was totally transformed. “The transition from a paradigm in crisis to a new one is a reconstruction of the field from new fundamentals, a reconstruction that changes some of the field’s more elementary theoretical generalizations . . . .” (Kuhn 1970:84-85). In short, a scientific paradigm shift is always a total intellectual revolution. ”When paradigms change, the world itself changes with them” (Kuhn 1970:111).

 

Social Paradigm Change

In this study–as in many other recent writings discussed in Chapter 4–we take the theory of paradigm change out of its original scientific setting and use it to explain how social paradigms change within societies. Most of Kuhn’s theory of scientific paradigm change is fully relevant to social life, with two critical exceptions.

First, Kuhn describes the process of creating a new paradigm and arguing its merits as a relatively deliberate endeavor. Although adherents of the old and new paradigms may be talking past one another and hence not engaging in any kind of meaningful debate, each side intentionally presents its arguments as rationally as possible. The process of establishing a new social paradigm within a communicative community is rarely as intentional or rational as in scientific communities, however. Competing social paradigms are not usually as purposefully formulated or rationally expressed as are scientific paradigms. Nor are social paradigms publicly discussed or debated in the same manner as occurs among scientists. Consequently, we argue that new social paradigms normally emerge unintentionally, are incompletely and vaguely expressed, and only gradually gain adherents as increasing numbers of people become aware of the anomalies within the old social paradigm.

The tendency for adherents of competing scientific paradigms to”talk past” one another and hence fail to communicate in any meaningful way is even more pronounced with social paradigms becauseof their lack of clear formulation and rational expression. This tendency is described by Stephen Cotgrove (1982:82) as a seriousproblem in modern societies:

The existence of alternative social paradigms may result in problems of communication and understanding of such magnitude that they threaten the legitimacy of the political system. It is because protagonists to the debate approach issues from different cultural contexts, which generate different and conflicting implicit meanings, that there is mutual exasperation and charges and counter charges of irrationality and unreason. What is sensible from one point of view is nonsense from another. It is the implicit self-evident, taken-for-granted character of paradigms which clogs the channels of communication. And, where belief in the reasonableness of the political system, and its openness to reasoned argument and debate, break down, the normal channels of petition, protest, and pressure group tactics come to be seen as inadequate.

Second, Kuhn uses the idea of anomalies within paradigms in two different ways which are not explicitly distinguished. In some situations, anomalies may be caused by internal logical contradictions within the structure of the paradigm, with the result that some components of it are inconsistent with other components. For instance, some of the values shared among adherents to a paradigm may no longer fit with beliefs that are central to it. If people continue to adhere to the traditional belief that a married woman’s proper place is in the home, but also value the right of women to choose their own life course, those values will likely come into conflict with the traditional beliefs as more and more married women pursue job careers.

In other situations, anomalies may be caused by external discrepancies between the beliefs and values of the paradigm and existing social conditions, with the result that some components are incongruent with reality. For instance, real-life conditions might directly contradict some established paradigm beliefs. If the members of a religious sect are firmly convinced that the world will end on aspecified day, the next morning they will likely experience a severe discrepancy between their religious convictions and reality. Kuhn may not have thought it necessary to distinguish between these two kinds of anomalies because of the continual interplay between theory construction and empirical research within the sciences. But such linkages between ideas and observations are much less systematic in social life.

 

Internal and External Causes

The existence of two different kinds of anomalies in social paradigms suggests that there may be two distinct causes of changes in these beliefs and values. One of the principal research objectives of this study, consequently, is to distinguish between internal and external causes–logical inconsistencies and experiential incongruencies–of paradigm changes. We seek to determine the relative importance of these two causes in the transition from a Technological to an Ecological Social Paradigm, and thus attempt to clarify a critical aspect of Kuhn’s paradigm change theory when applied to social paradigms. In that analysis, we always use the terms “contradictions” and “inconsistencies” to refer to internal causes of anomalies, while the terms “discrepancies” and “incongruencies” are always used to refer to external causes of anomalies in social paradigms.

An example of the kind of internal contradictions that may presently be occurring within the old Technological Social Paradigm is continued acceptance of the belief that technological innovation will eventually solve all of our current resource and energy problems, coupled with values stressing the importance of protecting the natural environment against further unnecessary exploitation and desecration. Whether or not those values are inconsistent with the underlying belief depends, of course, on the forms of future technological developments. In regard to energy, for example, if those technological developments focused primarily on renewable energy sources such as photovoltaic cells, they might be fully consistent with environmental preservation. Without such detailed specification, however, uncritical faith in technology to solve the energy problem is at least potentially in conflict with environmental protection values. Increasing awareness of this possible logical inconsistency within the Technological Social Paradigm could cause many people to begin questioning that paradigm and consider adopting a new paradigm that directly supports their environmental values.

An example of the kind of external discrepancies that may be occurring within the Technological Social Paradigm would be traditional faith in the benefits of technology, coupled with growing awareness of the numerous risks posed by modern technological development. Most people have been taught throughout their lives that modern technology is quite safe and trustworthy. In recent years, however, numerous events have occurred that have cast serious doubts on that trust. These have ranged from “normal accidents” (Perrow1984) such as airplane crashes and oil spills to entirely unexpected technological failures such as the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion in the Soviet Union and the release of lethal fumes from a chemical plant at Bhopal in India. As more and more of these technological accidents occur, many people may begin to fear that they are being exposed to serious technological risks over which they have no control. This fear might cause them to reject their faith in modern technology and adopt a new Ecological Social Paradigm.

 

PARADIGM CHANGE MODELS

Another major research objective of this study is to determine whether Kuhn’s paradigm shift theory provides the most appropriate model for describing the process through which social paradigms change, or whether an alternative model would provide a better description of this process.

 

Two-Stage Paradigm Ship Model

The model of change underlying Kuhn’s (1970) paradigm shift theory represents a two-stage disconnected process. When a paradigm shift occurs, according to this model, the new paradigm is largely or entirely unrelated to, and different from, the old paradigm. There is little or no continuity between them, since the new paradigm totally rejects and replaces the old one. The beliefs and values constituting the new paradigm represent a radically different way of seeing the world.

That pattern of unconnected sequential paradigms may apply to scientific advancement, as claimed by Kuhn, but it does not appear to be as relevant to social change. When a society changes from an agrarian to an industrial economy, for instance, it undergoes a fundamental sociocultural transformation, but those two stages of societal change are never unrelated. Many social institutions and cultural ideas from the agrarian era are carried forward into the industrial era, at least for some period of time. Moreover, the manner in which that transformation occurs can significantly influence the economic and political systems that exist in the industrial stage, as Barrington Moore (1966) demonstrated in his study of the origins of dictatorship and democracy in modern societies.

When the paradigm shift model is applied to the change from a Technological to an Ecological Social Paradigm, it suggests that these two paradigms should be totally different and display no sociocultural continuities between them. Yet even a superficial examination of these two social paradigms quickly reveals numerous linkages and continuities. Consequently, the two-stage paradigm shift model does not appear to be appropriate to describe the change from one social paradigm to another.

 

Three-Stage Paradigm Dialectic Model

An alternative model of the manner in which paradigms change is offered by the dialectic process described by the nineteenth-century philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1942), which is a three-stage interactive process. This model, which Karl Marx (1970) used to explain changes from one type of society to another, provides for continual interplay and critical linkages among its three stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. In this section, we first sketch the dialectic model, and then discuss its relevance to changes among social paradigms.

The dialectic model begins with an initial thesis stage, or a set of sociocultural conditions that exist in a society at a given time period. Within any existing set of sociocultural conditions, there are always fundamental contradictions that create severe strains and tensions. These are not merely surface conflicts, but rather basic incompatibilities among various components of the existing system. A classic example in Marx’s analysis of capitalism is “commodityfetishism,” in which the functional uses of various commodities become largely obscured by people’s desires to own those goods asstatus symbols, so that the market values of many items far exceed their true use values. This fundamental contradiction between use and market values of goods and services undermines a capitalist economy and constitutes a potential basis for its transformation (Heilbroner1980:102-105).

The contradictions occurring within any society may be ignored or stifled for a considerable length of time, provided that the ruling class can exercise sufficient social control to prevent major social change, or if those segments of the society that are disadvantaged by the contradictions remain unaware of them. Because those contradictions are inherent in the basic structure of the society, however, they never simply fade away. They can only be resolved through fundamental change of the society. If and when such changes actually occur is determined by many interrelated factors, the most important of which is organized collective action by disadvantaged groups seeking to improve their living conditions. Nevertheless, all societies contain basic contradictions that are the seeds of their eventual transformation.

If that transformation does eventually occur within a society, the second stage of the dialectic process, or antithesis, is reached. As this term implies, the new sociocultural conditions are likely to be direct negations of the conditions existing in the initial thesis stage. Consequently, they will not contain the fundamental contradictions that plagued the thesis stage and led to its transformation. Nevertheless, the thesis and antithesis stages are always historically and structurally linked, since the latter stage grows directly out of the earlier stage and is essentially an attempt to resolve the contradictions of the earlier stage.

At the same time, the new sociocultural conditions of the antithesis stage will also contain their own fundamental contradictions, which are essentially mirror images of those in the thesis stage. Consequently, the antithesis stage, like the thesis stage, contains the seeds of its further transformation. Hence the process of sociocultural change continues.

The unique feature of the dialectic model lies in its third, or synthesis, stage. If and when this stage is reached in a society, itis not merely an outgrowth of the antithesis stage. It is, rather, a combination and blending of both the thesis and antithesis stages. It thus represents an integration or unification of the two preceding sets of sociocultural conditions. The initial contradictions tha texisted in the thesis stage and their opposite conditions that existed in the antithesis stage are all eliminated in the synthesis stage, which incorporates both earlier stages into a new form of society. A society that reaches the synthesis stage is thus radically distinct from anything that previously existed. Nevertheless, it is always inescapably linked with the past, since it rests on, and is derived from, both earlier stages. The process of dialectic social change therefore always displays considerable historical continuity.

In Marx’s vision, communism was to be the eventual synthesis stage of societal development. Since it would not contain any of the fundamental contradictions that are inherent in capitalism, he predicted that the dialectic process of change would cease with communism. That vision– which was elaborated in greater detail by V.I. Lenin–was an outcome of their critique of capitalism, however, and is not a necessary part of the dialectic model. While the synthesis stages resolves all of the previous contradictions existing in a society, it could very well contain its own, entirely new, contradictions. If so, it would then become another thesis stages, and the dialectic process would begin again in an endless succession of social changes.

When this dialectic model is applied to social paradigms, as proposed by Satterfield (1983), it suggests that changes among these paradigms will differ in two critical ways from Kuhn’s description of paradigm shifts. First, when analyzing change among social paradigms we must always conceptualize it as a three-stage process, and always include at least three social paradigms in our analysis. Second, successive social paradigms will always incorporate components from preceding paradigms and therefore display numerous historical linkages and continuities. Each successive paradigm will build on previous paradigms as well as alter them, rather than totally rejecting the preceding paradigm.

More specifically, the anomalies and contradictions that characterize a social paradigm at the thesis stage of the dialectic process will not only prepare a society for paradigm change, but will also shape the new sociocultural conditions that emerge in the antithesis stage. Consequently, there will be numerous structural and cultural linkages between these two successive social paradigms. The antithesis stage will also contain anomalies and contradictions that will likely be mirror images of those existing in the thesis stages, so that its problems will be different from– but nevertheless related to–those of the preceding stage. The social paradigm representing the antithesis stage will therefore be as prone to crises and eventual transformation as the earlier paradigm.

If and when the society moves on to integrate its thesis and antithesis social paradigms into a new synthesis paradigm, that set of beliefs and values will incorporate ideas from both preceding stages, but integrate them into an entirely new and completely different social paradigm. And although that new synthesis stage will then become the thesis for another future dialectic process, itsrelative unity should give it considerable stability for some period of time. Eventually, nevertheless, its own anomalies and contradictions will begin to manifest themselves and push for another dialectic process of paradigm change.

In this study, we will seek to determine whether the paradigm shift model or the paradigm dialectic model provides a more relevant description of the process of change from a Technological Social Paradigm to an Ecological Social Paradigm in modern societies.

 

Notes

Eckburg and Hill (1979) have identified three different levels of paradigms within Kuhn’s writings. At the broadest level are “metaparadigms,” or encompassing perspectives that a scientific community shares with all scientists and with most other members of its society. At a middle level of generality are the “discipline matrixes” held by particular scientific communities. This term is somewhat misleading, however, since paradigms at that level are rarely shared by an entire scientific discipline. Every discipline normally contains several different communities of scientists, each of which focuses on a specifically defined area of the field–such as nuclear physicists within the discipline of physics. Each of these communities of scientists working on a common set of problems has its own paradigm that defines the nature of “normal science” within that area. At the lowest level of generality are “exemplars,” which are the concrete scientific problems that are currently being addressed within a scientific community, together with their generally accepted solutions. These established problems and solutions are especially important in training graduate students to become members of that scientific community. Such training ensures that the currently accepted paradigm within that scientific community will be transmitted from one generation to the next.

In this book, we use the middle-level concept of scientific paradigm, referring to the intellectual perspective shared by the members of an established scientific community toward their realm ofwork–although we transform that concept into social paradigms shared by communicative communities. We focus on this level because it is the most relevant to paradigms in social life. The broader level of metaparadigms is essentially equivalent to total worldviews, which is one reason why many writers confuse paradigms with worldviews. The lower level of exemplars is quite useful in examining the structureof a scientific field, as done by Eckberg and Hill and a number of other writers they discuss. That level of analysis is not relevant to social paradigms, however, since they rarely contain formal exemplars. In addition, this latter level of analysis does not explain paradigm shifts, which always involve a complete redefinition of reality. When a paradigm shift occurs within a scientific community, all of its current exemplars are usually discarded and replaced by other problems and solutions that are congruent with the new scientific paradigm. The search for new exemplars is a result of the broader paradigm shift, not a cause of it.

 

This article serves as the introductory chapter to “Social Theory”, a course of sociology at Pfeiffer University by Dr. Larry R. Ridener

(Course Description: This course is designed to give the student an overview of the study of sociological theory. It will present views from classical perspectives (The Dead Sociologists Society) within sociology as well as some of the current perspectives within the discipline. The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to a variety of theoretical orientations, past and present, with an emphasis on the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. By analyzing a variety of theories, it is also hoped that the student will develop a theoretical view of her own and a critical (i.e., analytical) orientation toward theory in particular and social interaction in general.)

Keywords: worldviews, reality, paradigms, beliefs, belief system, ideology, paradigm shift, social change, revolution, evolution, capitalism, socialism, social theory, social and ecological problems, social construct, dialectics, social design, life-sustaining civilization design