Paradigm

Thomas Kuhn coined the term paradigm. He outlined it in terms of the scientific process. Kuhn felt that, "one sense of paradigm, is global, embracing all the shared commitments of a scientific group; the other isolates a particularly important sort of commitment and is thus a subset of the first."(Hoyningen-Huene, 1993, p. 134) The concept of paradigm has two general levels. The first is the encompassing whole; the summation of the parts. It consists of the theories, laws, rules, models, concepts, and definitions that go into a generally accepted fundamental theory of science. Such a paradigm is "global" in character. The other level of paradigm is that it can also be just one of these laws, theories, models, etc. that combine to formulate a "global" paradigm. These have the property of being "local". For instance, Galileo's theory that the earth rotated around the sun became a paradigm in itself, namely a generally accepted law in astronomy. Yet on the other hand, his theory combined with other "local" paradigms in areas such as religion and politics to transform culture.

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