Why paradigms are important

The paradigm itself cannot be tested; however, it provides the basis on which we build our verifiable knowledge. A paradigm provides the largest framework within which research takes place. A paradigm shift is the term first used by Thomas Kuhn in his famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to describe the process and result of a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science.

Kuhn discusses two views phases of research in science: normal and revolutionary. During the normal phase, science advances by advancing in the directions predicted by existing theories.

The postulates of a paradigm are assumed to be self-evident truths during times of normal science. It will also shape the explanations the researcher provides for why harassment occurs. However, as you review the literature in your topic area, you will learn more about the theories that scientists have created to explain how your topic works in the real world.

In addition to peer-reviewed journal articles, books are another valuable source to learn theories related to your topic. Books often contain works of theoretical and philosophical importance that are beyond the scope of an academic journal. Theories, paradigms, levels of analysis, and the order in which one proceeds in the research process influence the questions we ask about the social world, how we ask them, and even what we may to find. A micro-level study of gangs will look much different than a macro-level study of gangs.

Therefore, it is crucial to understand the different levels of analysis and be aware of which level you are employing. In particular, the chosen theory will not only shape the way a question is asked but also which topic will be investigated in the first place. Further, commitment to one theory over another may limit the kinds of questions you pose and could result in missing other possible explanations.

Social science is not fundamentally biased due to the limitations of paradigms and theories, but at the same time, it can never be completely value-free. Social constructionists and postmodernists might point out that bias is always a part of research to at least some degree.

Our job as researchers is to recognize and address our biases as part of the research process, if an imperfect part. We frame and conduct our work by using our own theories, levels of analysis, temporal processes, and paradigms.

Critical paradigm — a paradigm in social science research focused on power, inequality, and social change. Paradigm — a way of viewing the world and a framework from which to understand the human experience.

Postmodernism — a paradigm focused on the historical and contextual embeddedness of scientific knowledge; characterized by skepticism towards certainty and grand explanations in social science. Social constructionism — a paradigm based on the idea that social context and interaction frame our realities. Skip to content Learning Objectives Define a paradigm and describe its significance Identify and describe the four predominant paradigms found in the social sciences Define theory Describe the role that theory plays in social work research.

Key Takeaways Paradigms shape our everyday view of the world. Researchers use theory to help frame their research questions and to help them make sense of the answers to those questions. Applying the four key theories of social work is a good start, but you will likely have to look for more specific theories about your topic. The structure of scientific revolutions. The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Classical sociological theory 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Unruly practices: Power, discourse, and gender in contemporary social theory. Postmodern theory: Critical interrogations. New York, NY: Guilford. Research methods for social work 9th ed. Human behavior and the social environment: Shifting paradigms in essential knowledge for social work practice 5th ed.

Boston, MA: Pearson. Routine activities and sexual harassment in the workplace. Work and Occupations, 26 , 21— Risking relationships: Understanding the litigation choices of sexually harassed women. The Law and Society Review, 33 , — Sexual harassment of working women: A case of sex discrimination. Previous: 6. Next: 6.

Now let's go and see how we process more complex shapes, where there are many models, or categories of models, instead of only a few, to compare incoming sensory impressions. Listen to J. Bach's 3 part invention 8 as you look at the vase. This is a type of musical piece known as a fugue. It has three voices with time delay melody lines which dance around one another. As you listen, try to pick out the individual melody lines. Then try switching your perspective to listen to the piece as a whole as the melodies blend in counterpoint.

Is she a young lady or an old hag? So maybe it's both, but then how do we decide which one to see? Or maybe it's nothing but a bunch of patterns of light and dark on the paper?

Spots Quick, what is this one? Some people might see a face. Do you see a face, or is there something else? Look here to see. Watch the video program or read the online text to learn about the Canadian Flag. Here is a history of the flag from which you will see the long-standing nature of the controversy over the design. Here's a real maple leaf.

Does the Canadian flag really look like this? After watching the video,what do you think, was it a coincidence, does it reflect the tone of the negotiations subconsciously or otherwise, or is the image of the two men entirely in the mind of the beholder?

Transition In this series of pictures, at what point does the transition take place? Do you think it would be the same for all observers? The way we have done this on the video program, where you saw the transition first, it is impossible now to go back and look at a part of it and ask, "What does it look like", because your mind already knows what is going on. It's like if I would say, "don't think of chocolate" and you do anyway.

I have done this in the classroom many times and I can verify that in the majority of cases, the point of recognition in the transition depends on where it starts. It makes a difference as to how much you can alter it before you see the other picture. At what point does the transition take place? Watch the movie 60 KB Rorschach ink blots The Rorschach ink blot test has been used by mental health professionals as a way to gain insight into someone's mind. By categorizing the types of images perceived by the patient, the doctor begins to understand how the patient categories and classifies information.

There has been controversy lately about the validity of the test however. What do you see in this picture? A ballerina, a bug, an ink blot? Or something else? Some people see a man playing a horn, others see the face of a woman. People do. Still, nearly twenty-five years after his death, there are Elvis sightings reported around the world. It is relatively common for people to see images of familiar things, especially religious images:.

The image was discovered by a year-old Salvation Army woman sheltering from the rain. Believers say the eyes, nose and mouth of Jesus and the crown of thorns can clearly be made out on a wall of the Church of England's All Saints at Great Driffield, East Yorkshire.

Hoggard was drying out in the church after a Christian march when she heard a dove cooing in the rafters, looked up and noticed the image on the wall. It was such a moving experience for me, I was reduced to tears," Hoggard said. The reason we see these images has little to do with religion per se, although religious images are part of our culural heritage. The reasons go beyond culture to our genetic heritage.

The first thing a newborn infant sees is mother's face, and it is important to be able to recognize faces. So our brains are hard wired to fill in the blanks of an image to see faces. Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus often an image or sound being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse.

Pareidolia is a type of apophenia. One of the best examples of the way in which we create patterns is the famous case of the face on Mars. In the s, Mars spacecraft sent back many pictures of the surface of the red planet.

A cult has been built around this shadowy outline, whose followers suggest that it proves the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life, and a conspiracy by the Government to withhold this information from the rest of us. It was part of the theme of the movie, "The Red Planet".

Unaltered One level of enhancement. One could claim that intelligent aliens specifically designed this thing whatever it is, to be computer enhanced in that way. Here are some of the intermediate images in the enhancement process.

Note that the face only becomes apparent after several stages of enhancement. So, where is the face. Is it on the surface of Mars , is it in the algorithm which enhances the image, or is it in the mind of the beholder? Or is it an interaction of all three, the thing itself, the processing algorithm, and the perception of the beholder? Here are two more levels of enhancement the third step is on the bottom, the fourth and final is on top.

Step 3 of enhancement. Step 4 of enhancement. Are computers part of the conspiracy? You can see from these pictures that the face only remotely begins to look like a face at the third level of enhancement.

Analysis of this Martian "face" shows that it is not a face at all, but an illusion that depends on the angle of viewing and the angle of the sun. The animation shows the crater with different lighting angles. Notice how the shapes and shadows change with the angle of light. The video program shows a virtual flyby of the cinder cone. You can view it here. It is still possible to believe that the intelligent aliens constructed the cinder cone so that it would appear to us to be a face upon computer enhancement using the appropriate algorithms which we would have to invent when we were ready.

It's possible. But which is more likely, and more consistent with our physical knowledge of the Martian environment:. Take your choice, but the parsimonious and paradigmatically consistent, and therefore the scientific way is to conclude, subject to further verification or denial, that it is a cinder cone like those on earth. The pattern may or may not be there. It may be in our minds. All we can say for sure is that what we see is influenced by a complex web of conscious and subconscious paradigms which sort, classify, prioritize, and file information.

We know the human brain possesses the capability to provide missing information in order to make sense out of patterns and will do so, even to the extent of adding enough detail to create something which is not really there.

In fact, if we now go back to the enhanced image of the face, it is clear that in addition to the face, there is also a picture of Mickey Mouse. What conclusions do we draw from this?

The intelligent aliens were Disney fans? No, I don't think so. Our conclusion is that we need to remember how easy it is to jump to conclusions based upon incomplete information.

Unjustified and unwarranted assumptions get us into a lot of trouble. Scientific observations and theories try to supply as much of the missing information as possible. We design experiments which can give us more information about those areas in which the pattern is weak. We learn much this way, but even then it is all too easy to think we know more than we really do. Take a look at van Gogh's "Wheatfields", which is on display at the Honolulu Academy of Arts along with other impressionistic and pointillist art.

Go to the library and look at books on art, especially van Gogh. Here are some examples of impressionistic and pointillist art. In this respect, science and art overlap. Great artists take advantage of our tendency to create our own images from incomplete information, relying on the mind of the beholder to provide the missing experience so that each of us gets a slightly different impression. Maybe that's why they call it impressionist!

For those of you with 3D eyes, here is a stereopair of the "face". Describe what it looks like in 3D. Sketch a cross section of it from your 3D view. More recent Mars missions have taken much clearer pictures of this feature. The photo on the left is the original "face". The middle photo is the more recent one. The photo on the right is the same as the center, but a negative image. By now we should find it easy to postulate why we rely so heavily on paradigms in all aspects of our lives.

Because there is too much information to process each bit uniquely, and because the human brain functions on a metaphorical as well as a logical level, it stores representations of classes and categories with which to compare and classify incoming information.

Learning requires us to have the ability to generalize, a concept like hot, from one situation to another. It also requires that we can specify under what conditions a particular concept is valid, for example, you are supposed to talk in the classroom only at certain times, and those time will be different for different classes. Paradigm processing is advantageous for another reasons.

For one, being able to send certain processing to the subconscious level leaves the conscious brain free to concentrate on other things. To drive a car you do not have to consciously control your feet and hands. That is taken care of by your motor coordination is that a pun? Unfortunately, it seems the released brain power is not often well used in everyday life.

In fact, over reliance on paradigms on paradigms leads to stifled thinking. The failure to question paradigms, for whatever reason, usually leads to stagnation and it may become easier to rely on authority, slogans, or prejudices.

Could this be why we are suspicious of strangers and why we resist change? Because the senses are so easily fooled we use paradigms to avoid having to rely entirely on immediate sensory input. Did you ever stick your foot into hot water that you expected to be cold? What happened. Try this. Watch a small point of light while standing in the middle not leaning of a darkened room. What does the light do? We already know about the illusions, the subjective nature of time, and our ability to see things in abstract patterns.

Perceptions are mediated by paradigms through expectations, experience, context. Language is a powerful cultural factor which affect the types of classifications we make. It also affects the paradigms we construct. For example, a meteorologist will describe a tornado very differently from a farmer, even if they stood side by side in a field and watched it together. This is because they have different focuses in the observations. How might the description given by the meteorologist differ from the farmer's?

Write a dialogue between these two who have just seen a tornado from a safe distance. Expectations and perceptions are related through learning. Information is received by perception, expectations are focused through learning, and learning reinforces expectations and increases sensitivity, which alters our perceptions as we learn. It's a nice loop, if you think about it, and it's one of the primary factors behind our success as a species. Not bad for carbon brains.

Expectations are focused through learning, learning reinforces expectations We acquire information through our senses We recognize order, repetition, predictability, patterns We organize information by comparing it with experience Experience is the total of previously learned information Learning affects our perspective by altering our paradigms, which influences what we perceive and ultimately alters our perception.

We see the world very differently as adults than as children Instruments extend and supplement senses Since our senses are so easily fooled, we design and build instruments which extend our senses. Instruments are reliable, precise, and are more sensitive, so they detect aspects of "reality" which are beyond our senses.

We are very dependent of observations made with instruments. We assume that the instruments are measuring things which we cannot see, like infrared light, or cosmic rays.