Paradigm Paralysis

The Swiss, for most of the 20th century, were pioneers in the trade of watch making. They dominated the industry, no other country produced watches that were more in demand. However, due to a simple yet remarkable innovation, this changed. The innovation of Quartz as a means of keeping track of time would become the most common method used to construct watches in the modern era. The inventor was a Canadian born engineer named Warren Morrison. When he presented his ideas to the Swiss watch making industry, it was completely rejected. His idea did not receive any recognition until he presented it to a Japanese group representing a company called Casio. Ever since, the dominance of the Swiss watch making industry was lost, simply due to their inability to think beyond their current model of what a watch should be. This is a classic example of the effects of a phenomenon known as paradigm paralysis.

In a scientific context, a paradigm is an accepted perspective that sets limits to an individual’s perceptions of a particular branch of knowledge. However in a more general context, a paradigm can also be a shared set of assumptions that dictate how we perceive our world. Paradigms are very helpful because they

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Therefore, Ingram’s analysis is another instance in which simplicity is the source of paralysis.

Commoner continues his description of Watson and Crick’s model by attempting to identify the source of its “explanatory power” in the eyes of the scientific community. He identifies that people are more inclined towards their old paradigms, due to its innate simplicity when compared to the alternative. In his concluding thoughts he states that:

“We don’t have the language and skills to understand the atom as math; we need a model that squares with intuition.

In his essay, Commoner spends a considerable amount of time describing Watson and Crick’s discovery, as well as explaining how it has developed such wide acceptance in both the scientific and the general community. Change, however, is not something easily fulfilled, thus the easier alternative is to reject the validity of the new concept. Simple, elegant, and easily summarized. To avoid this conflict one must implement a change in his or her belief-system concerning that issue. This illustrates that Ingram is in agreement with Commoner. This suggests that people are not basing their judgement on objective data, rather they are relying more on the ruling of an authority.

The ideas presented in Barry Commoner’s essay “Unraveling the DNA Myth” as well as Jay Ingram’s essay “The Atom’s Image Problem”, follow a similar pattern. This suggests that paradigms often become paralysed because of people’s natural tendency to approve concepts that are delivered from an authoritative source.

If something cannot be taken into account within the paradigm, then this creates a threat to the legitimacy of the idea. Clouds of probability don’t; balls moving in orbits do.

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