For who deceives me once, God forgive him; if twice, God forgive him; but if thrice, God forgive him, but not me, because I could not beware. — 1611 Tarlton’s Jests [English “modernized” to make it readable]
Yesterday I pointed out that several events had led to the loss of the concept of truth in our society, among them were philosophical ideas, the realization that some viewpoints had been shut out of the national conversation, an inadequate popular understanding of post-modernists philosophical ideas, and the adoption of methods of argumentation that are inappropriate. Quite a list, is it not? So, let me try to briefly describe some of them.
In science, Thomas Samuel Kuhn was the one who brought the phrase “paradigm shifts” into being. He claimed that, “science undergoes periodic ‘paradigm shifts’ instead of progressing in a linear and continuous way; that these paradigm shifts open up new approaches to understanding that scientists would never have considered valid before; and that scientists can never divorce their subjective perspective from their work. Competing paradigms are frequently incommensurable; that is, they are competing accounts of reality which cannot be coherently reconciled. Thus, our comprehension of science can never rely on full ‘objectivity’; we must account for subjective perspectives as well.”
In short, paradigm shifts were known in history, but what Kuhn did so well was to explain the process of change within science and how that challenges how we look at reality. For instance, when Copernicus and Galileo published their revision of the solar system and the stars, it was revolutionary. To this day, many courses talk about the Copernican revolution in cosmology and that the previous viewpoint was incompatible with the change. Sadly, the church got involved in a way that was not appropriate. Once Copernicus was established, even the way in which we interpreted several passages of Scripture, and how we viewed how God communicated with us through human languages, changed strongly. A similar shift happened after Darwin and then after Einstein and then after . . . . But, you get the idea.
We do not see reality in the same way as our forefathers would have seen reality. We may look up at the stars and see the same stars as our forefathers, but we do not see them the same way. We read Scriptures and see poetic language where our forefathers saw descriptions, because we know that what is being described is not reality and therefore it must be poetic language. Alternatively, we simply say that they had a pre-scientific viewpoint and that God communicated with them in the language and concepts which they could understand. So, when we read that the sun sets, we know that the sun is not moving. It is the Earth that moves. But, our forefathers would have understood that, when they read that Scripture, the sun was indeed moving. They would have understood as literal what we understand as simply an observer’s description of what he sees.
Because Copernicus’ ideas can be demonstrated in various ways, the Church was forced to change its interpretation of certain Scriptures. Both the Portuguese and the Spanish were able to circumnavigate the globe because they had switched from a flat stable-earth model to a round moving-earth model. Even so, many of the sailors were still quite fearful that they would die when they reached the edge of the Earth and fell over. With ideas that are not as easily demonstrable, the change may take longer or may not take place. Instead a debate springs up and a clash between models ensues. So, after Darwin, the majority of the Church switched to a more evolutionary model, but there is a continuing clash between segments of the Church (an internal clash) and between segments of the Church and what is seen by those segments as a scientific establishment that has closed itself off to God (there is a half-truth there).
But, Kuhn’s idea of “paradigm shift” or “worldview” gave rise to another movement in philosophy which has impacted us gravely and has helped lead us to where we are today.
===MORE TO COME===
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