The Organizing Idea or Paradigm

by Rodger Douglas

This blog entry is by a guest writer.  It addresses, in a creative and novel way that also makes for easy reading, the basic argument that Thomas Kuhn is making in his landmark work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, about how scientific knowledge occurs and how his view differs from those that had been put forward in the Enlightenment and even today, with its linear view of scientific progress, or its more sceptical one, as set out by Immanuel Kant over two centuries ago, and more recently by Karl Popper. Some fore-knowledge of the epistemological context will undoubtedly enhance the experience, but is not altogether a necessity. Enjoy. -The Editor

Imagine you are a writer for Eyewitness Travel Guides and you arrive on an undiscovered island. Over a period of a few months you explore the island and then write a review. After reading about your recently discovered island, writers from Fodor’s, Rough Guides and Lonely Planet go to the island and write their own reviews. Their guidebooks sell much better than yours so you decide to ask a well-know philosopher to write a foreword to your book. Hopefully, this will boost sales.

You approach Descartes, Kant and Comte and they tell you that travel guide writing is a process of development and that each consecutive writer builds on the knowledge of the previous writer. Since your book was the first one written it is thus the least accurate, least comprehensive and probably contains a lot of myth and superstition. Later travel writers have built on your initial work and incorporated new facts about the island into their books. These three great philosophers of the European Enlightenment turn down your request for a foreword. They decide to endorse Lonely Planet since it was the last book written and thus most accurate.

A little disappointed but undeterred you approach the Karl Popper. This 20th century philosopher however, agrees with his predecessors from the Enlightenment and tells you that progress in guidebook writing is a smooth and accumulative process where new knowledge is built up from old knowledge.

You feel a little hurt when Popper turns down your request for a foreword and says he too will be endorsingLonely Planet. He does nevertheless leave you with some valuable advice about writing guidebooks. While browsing through your book Popper noticed that you only included information about the island’s best hotels, restaurants and sites. You have rated some of the establishments on your island with 5 stars but there is no objective way to determine whether they deserve five stars or not. Your concept of a good hotel or restaurant is conjectural and based on who you are culturally and historically. The best you can do is discard all the really awful hotels, restaurants and sites and what you are left with might deserve five stars, but you will never be certain that they do. False claims can be discarded, leaving us with theories that, while not necessarily true, are at least not demonstrably false. “Science advances through disproof.” You thank him for his advice and leave without your valued foreword.

The following day you approach Thomas Kuhn and he tells you that once an island is discovered and a travel guide is written long periods of “normal writing” follow. During this period some highly conservative research and editing is done so that writers can refine and consolidate a specific body of knowledge or paradigm about the island. But eventually things change; tourists invade your once pristine island, an airport is built, hotels are constructed and the indigenous people begin to loose their culture. Your edition ofEyewitness is out of date and your paradigm can no longer function. It has to be replaced by a mutually exclusive paradigm.

Paradigms do not build on each other; the new paradigm annihilates the older one and renders useless all of the knowledge gained through research conducted according to the earlier assumptions. Kuhn tells you your book is part of an old paradigm and suggests you go back to the island and begin your research anew. If you can write a paradigm breaker he will consider writing a foreword. You feel a little agitated when he mentions that he will support Lonely Planet. #@% Lonely Planet!

You board a ship to the island. One evening, while on deck watching a beautiful sunset, you notice four teenagers texting each other and listening to music on their smart phones. You think to yourself about what Kuhn told you and realize that the development of knowledge is much like the development of computers. In 1801, Joseph-Marie Jacquard developed a loom in which the pattern being woven was controlled by punched cards. In 1936 Konrad Zuse developed and built the first freely programmable computer called the Z1. In 1946 Eckert and Mauchly built the ENIAC 1 Computer using 1500 vacuum tubes. In 1955 transistors replaced vacuum tubes in computers. In 1958 the integrated circuit (chip) was developed and in 1971 the floppy disk was first used. Computer technology has progressed, but not in a cumulative manner. Each operating system annihilates the older one and renders it useless. Chips made transistors useless, transistors made vacuum tubes useless and vacuum tubes made punch cards useless. The teenagers on deck are playing Angry Birds on their smart phones, none of which are equipped with punch cards or vacuum tubes.

The sun has set and you can faintly hear the sounds of the latest songs coming from the teenagers’ headphones. You realize that music progresses much like science: New styles of music borrow from older styles but they differ fundamentally from each other: Folk, Blues and gospel, Jazz, County, Rock, Metal, Punk, Pop, Hip Hop, Rap and so on.

You realize that with The Structure of Scientific Revolution, Kuhn too was a revolutionary. Just as Einstein was not building on Newton, but proposing a completely incommensurate explanation for the same phenomena; and just as Hahnemann was not building on allopathy but completely superseding it; so too, Thomas Kuhn was not the logical extension of the classical philosophers, his paradigm does not seek to supplement their work, but to overturn it with a new explanation that makes their views obsolete.

You disembark from the ship and say goodbye to the teenagers you met on board. You find that the island’s white beaches and tropical backdrop have become popular with the tourists. Hotels have sprung up all over the place. The coastline is well mapped out but the interior is a mystery; it’s a large, flat, featureless semi-desert. Occasionally a few experienced native travelers head out into the interior to collect medical herbs, but it’s a dangerous trip and some of them don’t return. You have a map showing the outlines of the coast in detail but the interior is a blank. Against the advice of the locals you set out on a mission to create a new paradigm. After less than a day’s travel you discover that you are hopelessly lost. No problem! You set up tent, make a campfire and sit down to think. You know that something that Descartes, Kant, Comte, Popper or Kuhn have told you will be the clue to finding your way out of the desert.

You sit down to relax and think. The sky is cloudless and a beautiful deep blue colour. You are surrounded by dry shrub land and in the distance all around you are some large dunes. An hour later a man wonders into your camp. He is well dressed and has a confident look about him. He introduces himself as Sir Dr. Prof. Jones. This man knows his stuff. You sense that you won’t be lost for long. You explain your situation and he immediately has a solution. He pulls out a complicated looking gizmo, scans the horizon and then takes your map and draws in some features. He gives them some fancy Latin and Greek names and tells you which direction to go. Fascinated, you ask him which principles he used to determine the way out. He tells you none so you ask him how long he has been in the desert. He says that he has been here since the time of Galen, maybe even longer, but due to his latest gizmo he is on the verge of finding his way out. He then writes out an expensive bill for his services and leaves.

As night falls you notice a group of travelers on camels. You rush after them sure that they know the way out. You are relieved when they pull out a large map of the island. You are delighted to see that the interior of the island is mapped out in detail. You are a little surprised when you see a copy of Descartes’s Principia Philosophiae, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Comte’s A General View of Positivism stacked into the camel’s side pack. You are a little perturbed when you see the latest copy of Lonely Planet but you know that these men with their many years of accumulated experience will point you in the right direction. You should be out of the desert by sunrise. They tell you that they too are lost. The map was indeed a great work put together by many mapmakers over several decades. It was a reliable guide for many years but then a great earthquake occurred and the island’s interior was irreversibly changed. They head on their way and you return to your camp.

While gazing at the flames of your campfire you think of Popper. How can his wisdom help you navigate your way around this desert? If you cannot determine your location you will end up walking in circles bit if you can find three sets of coordinates you can determine your exact position. Your mind drifts and you start thinking about the Fundamental Constants. These constants are essential for scientists to measure reality. They are the landmarks that scientists use to determine where they are on the map. For example, the speed of light in a vacuum, commonly denoted c, is exactly 299,792,458 meters per second. According to special relativity, c is the maximum speed at which all energy, matter, and information in the universe can travel. Such particles and waves travel at c regardless of the motion of the source or the inertial frame of reference of the observer. In the theory of relativity, c interrelates space and time.

There are many constants listed in handbooks of physics and chemistry, such as melting points and boiling points of thousands of chemicals, going on for hundreds of pages. However, some constants are more fundamental than others: Velocity of light c, Elementary charge e, Mass of electron m_e, Mass of proton m_p, Avogadro constant N_A, Planck’s constant h, Universal gravitational constant G and Boltzmann’s constant K.

The fundamental constants prove Popper wrong, don’t they? We can use experiments to discard false claims but we can never know the truth for sure. Don’t these these constants that are fundamental and unchanging refute this claim? Are they the irrefutable landmarks on the map of science? In Science Set FreeRupert Sheldrake states that the eight fundamental constants are not as constant as scientists would let you think.

In 1676 Olaf Römer first measured the speed of light at 200,000 km/s and in 1929 Birge concluded that c was 299,796 km/s. After 1928 the velocity of light appeared to drop by about 20 km/s and in the late 1940s it went up again by 20 km/s. In 1972 the speed of light was DEFINED at 299.792.458 km/s, NOT measured. No effort to measure the speed has been made since then. Moreover, the meter and second are both defined based on the speed of light, so no change in the speed of light can be measured anymore!

The value of the universal gravitational constant (G) has also been shown to change. For example, in one set of measurements in the Hilton mine in Queensland the value of G was found to be 6.734, as opposed to the currently accepted value of 6.672. The biggest change in Planck’s constant (h) occurred between 1929 and 1941, when it went up by more than 1 percent.

These variations are not simply a matter of experimental error since different investigators using different methods have all measured the same variations.

The implications of fluctuating fundamental constants are enormous. It means that there are fluctuations at the very heart of physical reality. And if different fundamental constants vary at different rates, these changes create differing qualities of time, not unlike those envisaged by astrology, but with a more radical basis. Maybe Popper was right after all. You realize that reality is not as solid as you once believed but shifts like the sand dunes in the desert around you. You drift off to sleep somehow knowing that you are lost but that you are safe in all of this fluctuation.

You wake up to a beautiful sunrise and now at least you know where east is. As your breakfast of bacon and eggs and coffee is cooking on the fire your thoughts turn to Thomas Kuhn. After reading The Structure of Scientific Revolutions you get the idea that paradigm shift in science is a very gentlemanly thing. It’s like a game of cricket where one group of polite and chivalrous scientists representing one paradigm competes with another group of civil and gallant scientists representing a different paradigm. They follow the strict rules of the game of cricket until one team wins, and after the game get together for tea and scones to politely discuss the next match. My impression is that paradigm shift is more like mob warfare. Once you step out of the prevailing paradigm the mob comes at you with everything they have. It’s like the latest Robert De Niro movie, The Family where ex-mafia boss Fred Manzoni (Robert De Niro) and his family are relocated to a sleepy town in France under the witness protection program after snitching on the mob. The mafia then does everything to find him and stop him.

The school I teach at is located in allopathic heartland and the majority of my students are medical researchers. When I ask them what they’d like to want to achieve, many answer that they want to win the Nobel Prize for finding a cure for cancer. I wonder about the improbability of this ever happening. Since its inception in 1901 not a single person has ever been awarded a prize for the allopathic cure of any disease. This is not because there is no one deserving of the prize. Dr. Wilhelm Reich, Dr. Royal Raymond Rife, Dr. Ryke Geerd Hammer, Dr. Tullio Simoncini and Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, to name a few, have done amazing work.

In the unlikely event that one of my students were to step outside the allopathic paradigm and actually find a cure then I would tell them, “Don’t expect the Nobel Prize. Don’t even think you will get fair debate and rational discussion from people who disagree with your results. Expect far worse than a dismissive Wikipedia article. Your work to be attacked and ridiculed, your books to be burned and your name and work to be smeared! You might be imprisoned or even killed.

What The Structure of Scientific Revolutions tells me personally is that there is no absolute objective reality. People, as a collective, create the reality around them. Scientific, philosophical and artistic geniuses are not simply inventing new technologies or creating new art, they are creating a new consciousness and awareness of the world. Most artists have the skill to paint a picture as good as a Picasso or a Pollock but it’s not art in the true sense of the word if a similar painting has been painted before. Anyone can prove a remedy but it’s not the same as when Hahnemann proved China. He was not only creating a new science but a new consciousness.

You decide to pack up and head east. As you are leaving camp you see a woman gathering herbs so you approach her and ask her what she’s doing. She tells you that potent medical herbs grow in the interior and she has come to collect them. You ask her if she’s lost, she looks at you a little surprised and says that of course she isn’t. You ask her what she does and she tells you that she is a Heilkunstler. Never having heard the term you ask her what it means and she explains. Realizing that this woman actually knows her way around the desert you ask her to lead you out but she tells you that you have to find your own way out of the desert. That’s the lore. She gives you some encouragement and then leaves. After walking a hundred meters she turns around and calls out to you that the answer you seek is not in the sand but in the sky. She turns around and within a few minutes has disappeared behind a dune. What an interesting woman. At least she didn’t have a copy of Lonely Planet.

You look up at the sky and notice it is a magnificent blue. You remember from high school that the wavelength of blue light is about 475 nm. Because the blue wavelengths are shorter in the visible spectrum, they are scattered more efficiently by the molecules in the atmosphere. This causes the sky to appear blue. You think of Isaac Newton and how he set out to try to quantify color. He found that different colors had different angles of refraction. This allowed him to manipulate colour precisely to technical ends, but tells us nothing about the quality of colour. Dry abstractions are useless in the desert. They have no meaning here.

As you gaze at the sky Newton fades from your mind. You notice that directly above you the sky is a brilliant blue, but that it becomes lighter closer towards the horizon. The sun overhead is yellow, and you remember that this morning, when it was on the horizon, it was redder. You remember the sunset from the evening before; the sky was a magnificent red but on the opposite horizon the sky was magenta and pink.

According to Goethe the light of the sun is for the most part colourless. This light, when seen through a semi-transparent medium, appears to us yellow. If the density of the medium is increased the light will assume a redder hue. If on the other hand darkness is seen through a semi-transparent medium a blue colour appears: this becomes lighter as the density of the medium is increased, but on the contrary appears darker and deeper the more transparent the medium becomes. Goethe discerned that black, violet and blue belonged together as did white, yellow, orange and red. Goethe explained that the sky is blue because nature produces blue when dark (universe) is lightened by light (sun). Similarly, Goethe saw that yellow and red are the result of the darkening of light. The darker the light becomes, the redder it becomes. So, when the sun is overhead, it is yellow (some darkening of the light); when it sets, the thicker atmosphere darkens the light even more and it produces red. In effect, Goethe had discovered a dynamical or functional relationship between dark and light, which produced color.

Goethe understood that the blue colour of the sky is produced by the boundary of the light of the sun (colorless light) against the dark of the universe, and the degree of darkness or lightness determined by the thickness of the atmosphere.

You find that instead of passively observing the sky from a mechanistic mode of consciousness you are now actively seeing, or participation in the experiment. You have shifted away from Geist-Sinn or intellectual mind into your Gemüt or intuitive mind and begin to see the endless variation of nature. Instead of abstraction, you contemplate the desert around you through the imagination. Suddenly, the blue of the sky and the yellow of the sun are not merely analytical but holistic.

You see sand blowing from the tops of the dunes and you notice the wind direction for the first time. You notice some antelope grazing uneasily in the distance. Downwind from them you don’t see, but you sense a predator stalking them. The antelope are uneasy. Suddenly, you become aware of tracks all around you. At first, you see the hint of a track – the earth shifted a little here, a broken twig there. As you move further away from the analytical and deeper into holistic everything begins to connect. Although you hadn’t been aware of the antelope and the hidden predator you realize that they are acutely aware of you and that they are purposely downwind from you. You remember what the Heilkunstler told you about pathic and tonic disease, about medicine, regime and therapeutic education, and you begin to see how they all fit together. You notice your own spoor for the first time; you came from the west and need to head back in that direction to get to the coast. You laugh to yourself because you realize the coast is just over the next sand dune. You notice Sir Dr. Prof. Jones’s spoor too. He has been walking in the same circle for years and you predict that he should be coming over horizon any moment now. You consider waiting for him and leading him out of the desert but you know he won’t listen to you.

An hour later you are back on the beach. After a refreshing swim you sit down on a beach chair to write the next edition of your guidebook. The Heilkunstler you met in the desert spots and strolls over to congratulate you on finding your way out of the desert. You chat for a while and as the conversation drifts to Thomas Kuhn you ask her what relevance his work has on treating patients. She explains how Hahnemann’s paradigm replaced the allopathic one. You find Kuhn’s ideas interesting in general but you want to know how they apply to the daily treatment of her patients. She tells you that it’s not enough to use the intellectual mind and base your ideas of treatment on abstractions. You need to observe the patient carefully with your intellect and with your imagination.