The Skunk River Review - DMACC

the scientific community, but also from Copernicus himself, through his prior learning. He had
been educated on the Ptolemaic system (Rosen). The Swiss’ biggest detractors were their own
watchmaking manufacturers, who were so entranced by their currently held successful paradigm
that they saw no reason to do anything different (Barker 16). This resistance to change to, or even
consider the new paradigm is what Joel Barker terms the “Paradigm Effect.” Barker cites Thomas
Kuhn’s explanation of the “Paradigm Effect,” where Kuhn notes that scientists can be looking at
the same thing from the same vantage point and yet come to two completely different conclusions.
Joel Barker takes Thomas Kuhn’s findings a step further, concluding, “that paradigms act as
physiological filters ⎯ that we quite literally see the world through our paradigms” (86). Barker
further details that information that conforms to our current paradigms has an easy pathway to
understanding, but that information that runs counter to our currently held paradigms will be
difficult or perhaps impossible to see at all (86).
Another important aspect of the two paradigm examples shared is that when a paradigm
shifts, everyone starts from scratch. Barker describes it as his, “going-back-to-zero rule” (140).
This rule means that no matter how successful someone has been with the old paradigm, when the
rules change with the new paradigm, everyone starts over (140). The Swiss watchmakers paid a
heavy price for their investment in the old paradigm, and equally so, the scientific community
that came after Copernicus’s time eventually had to adopt a new understanding of their own
theories.
The final key point of the two paradigms revolves around those who took the new
paradigm and ran with it (Copernicus and Seiko) ⎯ despite the challenges and ridicule it
presented. Barker refers to these people, who early on drive the understanding and resources
needed to shift a paradigm, as “paradigm pioneers” (41). While Barker describes “paradigm
pioneers” in a somewhat pragmatic way, ironically, Kuhn, the philosopher of science, puts the onus
of being a paradigm pioneer in a very intangible sense. Thomas Kuhn states:
“A decision between alternate ways of practicing science is called for, and in the
circumstances that decision must be based less on past achievement than on future promise.
The man who embraces a new paradigm at an early stage often must do so in defiance of
the evidence provided by problem-solving. He must, that is, have faith that the new
paradigm will succeed with the many large problems that confront it, knowing only that
the older paradigm has failed with a few. A decision of that kind can only be made on
faith.” (157)
vi