Paradigm Shift

I studied English literature as an undergraduate. This isn't an apology.

My English department split classes up based on time periods. Medieval literature. Eighteenth century. Victorian. Renaissance. Colonial. Each time period had a different way of thinking, what Thomas Kuhn calls a paradigm. I think "paradigm" and "mental model" work adequately well as synonyms.

Each time period had its own assumptions, beliefs, values, thoughts, and ideas that define its way of thinking, its mental models, its paradigm. Knowing a period's dominant paradigm helps to understand a period's literature.

It's easy to see paradigms from the past. Modern ones are more difficult to see because they are, "in the air" and "in the water." They're ambient. I believe one of the reasons the film "What the Bleep" succeeded was that it made clear some modern paradigms and how they're shifting.

I think the most important thing to know about paradigms and mental models is this: how to quietly acknowledge the dominant paradigm, and then how not to be bound by it.