Talk:Mechanistic paradigm

The Mechanistic->Cognitive paradigm shift is the only one any of us are very likely to live through. Accordingly, both paradigm and paradigm shift redirect here.

Kuhn used the term exemplar to mean something more exact. It might not have been him who used mind-set, Donella Meadows preferred that term. Foucault used the term episteme. All mean about the same as paradigm. But neither term is really much used by the public, and Foucault abandoned episteme for discourse, which is used very much. So, paradigm really only is used in this context, and by bogus business philosophy...

I disagree with those redirects. There are other paradigm shifts that can be written about and if it is used by business philosophy then that should be mentioned. There have been other shifts, notably in psychology, that are not mech-cog. Angela

If this were the Full English Wikipedia, you'd be right, because to a Full English user, the term paradigm shift is still an idiom in use. However, in Simple English, where we are dealing with people who do not already know the word "paradigm", we should not teach them to use it. Why? Because there is no such thing. Kuhn himself ditched the word for exemplar, and the people who use it now are basically abusing it. The term mind-set is much more neutral and not tied to any particular theory. There is no serious philosopher of science that would call anything a "paradigm shift" in scholarly literature today. Academically, it's a legacy term. That said, there is an argument for giving paradigm shift its own article, and redirecting paradigm to that instead:

If you want a separate, short, disambiguating article, that just says that "paradigm shift is an idiom for a major change in assumptions, usually called a mind-set", that would be fine. But trying to pretend that paradigm shifts are real, and actually exist, is a mistake. It would be right also to say that "mechanistic paradigm" is just an idiomatic name for what is really a mind-set.

Today the least controversial terminology is probably that of Donella Meadows. Both Kuhn's and Foucault's are pretty much abandoned even by those who agree with their analysis. She had a very clear definition for a mind-set but used "paradigm" as alternative term. It may be that this use of "paradigm" is now part of American English... or biz jargon:

In business usage, "paradigm shift" means basically "something I want to do that will get some serious resistance but which we have to do anyway because I think it's necessary and I say so." It has no significance other than that, and is certainly an idiom, if not jargon, in that context. If you agree with that much, then, you can write a good paradigm shift entry to make this the primary usage, the older obsolete proto-academic Kuhn usage a secondary meaning, and the very very few cases where it might legitimately mean mind-set in Meadows' sense (or discourse in Foucault's sense or exemplar in Kuhn's sense) as tertiary. That would be a correct thing for Simple English Users to absorb.

It would do those poor users a real disservice to leave them open to the impression that any time business literature used the phrase "paradigm shift" (which is where they will overwhelmingly encounter it), that the businessmen were talking about legitimate major shifts in academic mind-sets - opening up great new financial opportunity.  ;-) They should approach the phrase paradigm shift and the word paradigm critically - and should be encouraged to question even if there is such a thing as a mechanistic paradigm, which is a phrase that has been used to criticize both the idea of a paradigm, and the mechanistic thinking that pretends paradigms are like overlays on the mind...

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This article and articles like this

What are "articles like this"?

are very wrong for the Simple English Wikipedia.

That's your opinion. It's far from clear just how complex the subjects we can explain are. The only way to find out is to write some more complex articles to introduce complex issues, say at late high school level, pre-university or introductory college level, and then see if we can simplify the language enough to make them useful. This is one of the articles in the Simple English Reading in Cosmology, which is one of a dozen or so complex subjects that have to be written about in order to test the limits.

If you have something specific to say, say it. If you can simplify the language, try to do so. If there are specific words not in the 2000 words that you can explain, do it.

The strong case for this article to be IN this wikipedia in particular, is that, the mechanistic paradigm itself is a thing that is quite alien to a great many people who don't grow up living inside it. The weird assumptions made by people from developed nations may well seem like a strange religion to them. And, maybe they are. Modern scientists don't accept these ideas any more, and it is more the Western professions and pop culture that have made them ubiquitous.

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The first example of mechanistic thinking is about wave-particle duality, and is wrong. Wave theory does not explain everything light does, nor does particle theory. The whole point is that you need both to get it to work. -- Tango

That's true, but, in high school, many people get "waved by" the wave theory and spend a lot of time on the particles. When I was trained in high school physics, NO ONE said what you just said, which is "you need both to get it to work and you can't ignore waves". So that is the mechanistic bias - both are not always presented as essential views that one requires judgement to choose between to achieve their different purposes. A mechanistic or "control paradigm" view is that there is one 'Best way' to see things - that being the way to control them. If you don't think the article says that clearly enough, and it probably doesn't, feel free to copyedit it. It's in ecology, economics, biology, and to some degree chemistry where this bias is more obvious. In physics it can be subtle since you can't investigate some of the phenomena AT ALL without certain mechanistic assumptions (about the apparatus etc.).

Wow. I just realized that I graduated high school with a very clear idea of how the hydrogen bomb works, and no idea at all of how a musical instrument works. And this must have been common since a physics masters degree friend of mine told me how thrilled he was to take a course in "the physics of musical instruments" in his post-graduate days. THIS should have been in high school, and the hydrogen bombs should have been left off until oh say ... never.

Any objection to deliberately putting musical instruments ahead of H-bombs as examples, and learning objectives, in the Simple English Wikipedia? Considering who's reading it, we might be better off in the long run if we do...

I have no objection to putting it first, i would be fascinated to learn more about acustics and harmonies, and all, but

Good, ok, great, we agree, wonderful... but wish you hadn't "but":

Sorry, i was in a very "but" kind of mood.

you shouldn't not include something because it isn't a good thing. Knowledge is always good, that's a constant. It is always better to know something, than not to know it.

I don't agree. That's a very strong bias you have there that "knowledge is always good". It is a common one among Western academics, and Western culture generally. It is especially common among those who contribute to online encyclopedias. Most people in the world would probably say that some degree of well chosen ignorance, at least of the many ways to find loopholes in laws or exploit human stupidity ruthlessly, or make terrifying weapons, is good.

If you are resigned to accept human stupidity and evilness, then you have a point. But in an ideal world, knowledge is always good. This isn't an ideal world, so the truth is probably somewhere inbetween.

It is how people use knowledge that is either good or bad, but we shouldn't try to control that by controlling knowledge.

Again that's a bias. In fact, knowledge *IS* very much controlled, certainly about political events. And increasingly about science too, such as restrictions on research and sharing of dangerous organisms that used to be quite easy to get by mail order.

I didn't say it wasn't, I said it shouldn't.

The first major work on fission and fusion was to develop weapons, because the money comes from the government, and the government needed weapons, but now they are being developed for power stations, which will improve life for everyone.

No, this is objectively and provably wrong. I'm afraid you need to learn more about Chernobyl, and the way waste products of nuclear fission are used to make bombs in countries like India and Pakistan. Nuclear power will not "improve life for everyone". It will create expensive power for a few, create either waste problems or nuclear bomb problems for many. It is uneconomical when its long term harms are taken into account. EVEN WHEN IT WORKS WELL it requires vast bureaucracies and security guards and secure transport of materials and really dirty mining of uranium (look into North Saskatchewan where most of it comes from) and whole huge expensive cults of specialists and PR guys in suits and programmers who have to write three versions of the same program in different languages for safety, and is just generally a BAD IDEA. If I were to express my own bias, I'd say "Most Big Science Is Very Bad." But I won't go that far in the article, just note that here. If clean small scale fission or fusion power was possible, either we'd have it by now, or, government suppresses it, either way, you aren't ever going to get it under this world order. You're going to get excuses for vast security infrastructure instead - now they even mount anti-aircraft systems to shoot down airliners if hijackers want to crash them into the power plants... the complexity of all this is really just a form of INSANITY - it cannot under ANY circumstances be PROFITABLE IN PURE ENERGY TERMS to do all this work and training and security and engineering and all the specialist training and paying of people that it must require... It's a huge energy subsidy that makes nuclear power look good, if it even does.

You clearly know more about the subject than me, so i'll take your work for it.

I'd urge you to read at least "trophic level" and energy economics, since the energy basis of economics is very poorly communicated in most economic analysis, and it's absolutely vital to energy choices. Buckminster Fuller wrote a paper on this, "Cosmic Costing", which is also quite interesting.

The same with space travel, it started off as a way to either kill people, or control them by impressing them, now there are experiments going on in the ISS that will hopefully someday save lives.

Admittedly, if idiots make Earth unlivable, then we may well require at least the life support technology to build domes to live in.

There are benifits without that kind of disaster. Medicines etc. are easier to make in zero-gee, for example. (at least i think so, i'd have to do some research to be sure, but there is definitely some medical thing)

The question is, can you get better medical benefits by spending all that money on something else, like say deep-sea exploration, understanding deep water corals or volcanic vents, etc.? The project off Washington, Oregon and British Columbia is supposed to do this, and it costs way less than space stations. The ISS is basically a subsidy from the US to keep ex-USSR scientists from moving to Iran to build missiles. And that's *ALL* it is... more waste to prevent knowledge from spreading... sigh... and quite necessary, proving again it is wrong to just spread knowledge and then "make sure it is used wisely." Eventually one loses control, and, then, every loonie warlord will be able to do biological wars:

Knowledge should never be repressed, we must just make sure it is used wisely. -- Tango (apologies for the rant, i'm in a strange mood this evening [it's the 2nd one in 10 minutes, on different sites])

Well, you are obviously fighting people who seem to know more about human stupidity, and human willingness to bend all knowledge to evil. You should consider this carefully. Maybe you are now in a minority? If so, then, you should be aware at least of your bias.

Everyone that has an opinion on a matter has a bias on that matter. That is pretty much the definition. To say the hitler was a bad man is a bias. It's a bias that has logic and popular opinion on its side, but it's still a bias. To say that when i drop something it will always fall is a bias, it has physics on its side, but it's still a bias. The point is, you must make sure your bias is logical and rational, and fits with the availible evidence. And of course, you must also be open minded if more evidence comes along. -- Tango

Quite true, we have all got at least three or four biases. Our personal experience, our personal loyalty to whoever we got our start and "learned the ropes" from, and our locality which determines what we care about on everything from weather to viruses, plus on top of that whatever mind-set we bring to any problems... it's precisely to balance these biases that we need more Simple English User Stories to keep figuring out "how are users different from us?"