PARADIGM (Social

Charles François (2004). PARADIGM (Social, International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2(2): 2466.

Collection	International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics
Year	2004
Vol. (num.)	2(2)
ID	◀ 2466 ▶
Object type	General information, Human sciences, Epistemology, ontology or semantics

A constellation of concepts, values, perceptions and practices shared by a community, which forms a particular vision of reality that is the basis of the way the community organizes itself (F. CAPRA, 1977, p. 6)

Capra observes: “…twenty five years after KUHN's analysis, we recognize the paradigm shift in physics as an integral part of a much larger cultural transformation.

The intellectual crisis of the quantum physicists in the 1920's is mirrored today by a similar, but much broader cultural crisis“ (p. 5).

According to Capra it is the mechanicist paradigm which is receeding. This is obviously true. But this mechanicism had deeper and older roots in Western societies and is probably based on the paternalist and authoritarian God-driven worldview which still rules partially in Mediterranean societies.

Cultural anthropology and colonial dominance in the rest of the world slowly eroded this traditional cultural type through transcultural feedbacks. Moreover, while cybernetics is still in a sense mechanicist, organismic biology and its offspring, BERTALANFFY's original systems theory, as well as Gestalt psychology and more recently autopoiesis derived from VON FOERSTER 2^nd order cybernetics are also prime movers of the paradigmatic shift.

In any case, no society can maintain its coherence and general activity without some basic social paradigm. In most of the cases this paradigm is basically expressed by some fundamental religious belief. During the 19^th and 20^th centuries some political or social ideologies tended to replace religious faith as social regulators. These substitutes have generally been short-sighted and short-lived.

See also