Texts
- The Problem of Learning
- Problemistics Courseware
- Corso su Problemistica
- Resources Management
- Manuale/Intellettuale
- Campagna/Città
Problemistics - Problémistique - Problemistica
The Art & Craft of Problem Dealing
Schemata
Paradigm
Co-ordinate system
Frame of reference
Matrix
Disciplinary Matrix
Schema
Scheme of ideas
Image
Worldview
Perspective
Personal constructFunction of paradigms
Paradigms and problem solving
Paradigm observer
[1970, Second edition] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
“... some implicit body of intertwined theoretical and methodological belief that permits selection, evaluation, and criticism.” (pp. 16-17)
“In its established usage, a paradigm is an accepted model or pattern.”
“In a science, on the other hand, a paradigm is rarely an object for replication. Instead, like an accepted judicial decision in the common law, it is an object for further articulation and specification under new or more stringent conditions.” (p. 23)
“The term ‘paradigm’ ... stands for the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community.” (p. 175)
[1938] Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, The Evolution of Physics
“In all mechanical experiments ... we have to determine positions of material points at some definite time ... But the position must always be described with respect to something ... We must have what we call some frame of reference, a mechanical scaffold, to be able to determine the position of bodies.”
“This frame, to which we refer all our observations, constructed of rigid unchangeable bodies, is called the co-ordinate system.”
(Chapter III, p. 163)
[1986] Union of International Associations, Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential
Frame of Reference : “A usually systematic set of principles, rules, or presuppositions, or a system of laws, mores, or values; or an interlocking group of facts or ideas, serving to orient or give particular meaning (as to a fact, statement or point of view) or serving as a matrix for behaviour or for the formation of attitudes.” (KC0437)
[1964] Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation
“I shall use the word ‘matrix’ to denote any ability, habit, or skill, any pattern of ordered behaviour governed by a ‘code’ of fixed rules.” (e.g. matrices of thought, matrices of behaviour) (p. 38)
“The matrix is the pattern before you, representing the ensemble of permissible moves.” “The code is the fixed, invariable factor in a skill or habit.”
“When you sit in front of the chessboard, your code is the rule of the game determining which moves are permitted, your matrix is the total of possible choices before you.” (p. 40)
[1970, Second edition] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The members of a community of specialists share a disciplinary matrix.
“‘Disciplinary’ because it refers to the common possession of the practitioners of a particular discipline; ‘matrix’ because it is composed of ordered elements of various sorts.”
The components of a disciplinary matrix are :
- Symbolic generalizations. (e.g. conceptual definitions)
- Beliefs in particular models (e.g. analogies and metaphors)
- Shared values (e.g. consistency, simplicity, etc.)
- Exemplars (ways of seeing and solving problems)
(from the "Postscript", pp. 182-187)
[1932] Frederic C. Bartlett, Remembering
“‘Schema’ refers to an active organization of past reactions, or of past experiences, which must always be supposed to be operating in any well-adapted organic response.”
“All incoming impulses of a certain kind, or mode, go together to build up an active, organized setting: visual, auditory, various types of cutaneous impulses and the like, at a relatively low level; all the experiences connected by a common interest: in sport, in literature, history, art, science, philosophy and so on, on a higher level.” (p. 201)
[1929] Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality
“... the true method of philosophical construction is to frame a scheme of ideas, the best that one can, and unflinchingly to explore the interpretation of experience in terms of that scheme ... all constructive thought, on the various topics of scientific interest, is dominated by some such scheme, unacknowledged, but not less influential in guiding the imagination.
The importance of philosophy lies in its sustained effort to make such schemes explicit, and thereby capable of criticism and improvement.”
(Preface, p. XIV)
[1956] Kenneth E. Boulding, The Image
“The image is built up as a result of all past experience of the possessor of the image.” (p. 6)
“Behavior depends on the image.” (p. 6)
"Every time a message reaches him [the human being] his image is likely to be changed in some degree by it, and as his image is changed his behavior patterns will change likewise." (p. 7)
“We must think of the image of the individual as including a value ordering of potential acts and their consequences.” (p. 51)
[1907] William James, Pragmatism
“In the preface to that admirable collection of essays of his called “Heretics”, Mr. Chesterton writes these words:
“There are some people - and I am one of them - who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe.
We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, but still more to know his philosophy. We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy’s numbers, but still more important to know the enemy’s philosophy. We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else affects them.”
(Lecture I)
[1956] Robert Redfield, The Little Community
“It is the attention to the ... conceptions of the cognitive along with the normative and the affective that distinguishes the worldview from other conceptions for describing the whole reality. Worldview is the philosopher’s approach to the whole.” (p. 88)
“Every account of a worldview is ... a temporary construction, a precipitation of a crystal from thoughts that from day to day are carried in the flowing solution of life’s doing.”
“We might mean by ‘worldview’ or Weltanschauung the total inside view of a cultural community as it is learned about and assembled by the student on the outside of that community.” (p. 91)
[1906] Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia
“... once the unanimity [of thought] is broken, the fixed categories which used to give experience its reliable and coherent character undergo an inevitable disintegration. There arise divergent and conflicting modes of thought which order the same facts of experience into different systems of thought, and cause them to be perceived through different logical categories. The result is the peculiar perspective which our concepts impose upon us, and which causes the same object to appear differently, according to the set of concepts with which we view it.” (pp. 91-92)
“[By perspective] we mean the subject’s whole mode of conceiving things as determined by his historical and social setting.” (p. 239)
[1955] George A. Kelly, The Psychology of Personal Constructs
“Man looks at his world through transparent patterns or templets which he creates and then attempts to fit over the realities of which the world is composed. The fit is not always very good. Yet without such patterns the world appears to be such an undifferentiated homogeneity that man is unable to make any sense out of it. Even a poor fit is more helpfulto him than nothing at all.
Let us give the name constructs to these patterns ... They are ways of construing the world. They are what enables man, and lower animals too, to chart a course of behavior, explicitly formulated or implicitly acted out, verbally expressed or utterly inarticulate, consistent with other courses of behavior or inconsistent with them, intellectually reasoned or vegetatively sensed.”
(Vol. one : A Theory of Personality, pp. 8-9)
[1968] Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure
“... paradigms for qualitative analysis in sociology have at least five closely related functions."
(1) "They provide a compact arrangement of the central concepts and their
interrelations that are utilized for description and analysis."
(2) "Paradigm lessen the likelihood of inadvertently introducing hidden assumptions and concepts, for each new assumption and each new concept must be either logically derived from previous components of the paradigm or explicitly introduced into it."
(3) "Paradigms advance the cumulation of theoretical interpretation. In effect, the paradigm is the foundation upon which the house of interpretations is built."
(4)"Paradigms, by their very arrangement, suggest the systematic cross-tabulation of significant concepts and can thus sensitize the analyst to empirical and theoretical problems which he might otherwise overlook."
(5)"Paradigms make for the codification of qualitative analysis in a way that
approximates the logical if not the empirical rigor of quantitative analysis.”
(Part I, Chapter 2, pp. 70-71)
[1970, Second edition] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
“Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute.” (p. 23)
“Probably the single most prevalent claim advanced by the proponents of a new paradigm is that they can solve the problems that have led the old one to a crisis.” (p. 153)
“First, the new candidate [i.e. the new paradigm] must seem to resolve some outstanding and generally recognized problems that can be met in no other way. Second, the new paradigm must promise to preserve a relatively large part of the concrete problem-solving ability that has accrued to science through his predecessors.” (p. 169)
[1972] Norwood Russell Hanson, Patterns of Discovery
“The paradigm observer is not the man who sees and reports what normal observers see and report, but the man who sees in familiar objects what no one else has seen before.” (Chapter 1, p. 30)