Quantum leap

[robinturner]

Whenever I hear someone talking about "a quantum leap", I get the urge to say "You mean something so small you need expensive laboratory equipment to detect it?"

Comments

[solri.livejournal.com]

Eek, don't get me going on paradigms!

In my ENG 101 classes, I give students a list of common words in academic writing (http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/averil-coxhead/awl/frequent.html), with a strong recommendation (backed up by a few quizzes) that they make sure they know them. One of these is, of course, "paradigm", and on a few occasions, I've had the following exchange in class:

ME: Can anyone tell me what a paradigm is?
STUDENT: Paradigma. [The Turkish for "paradigm"]
ME: Peki. "Paradigma" ne demek?" [OK. What does "paradigma" mean?]
STUDENT: Ne biliğim. [I haven't a clue.]
ME: Don't worry. No one really knows what a paradigm is.

[alsoname.livejournal.com]

Um, so how do people keep fucking up 'paradigm'? I use that word more than is seemly, and now I'm all paranoid I'm doing it wrong.

[solri.livejournal.com]

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "paradigm" as "A pattern, exemplar, example," though it also allows metaphorical use, quoting a paper in Language: "As for the periods in between the quantum leaps, Kuhn contends that each period of normal science in the development of a scientific discipline corresponds to one and only one methodological framework or paradigm. In a nut-shell, paradigms are ‘universally recognized scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners’."

What has, I assume, happened is that, thanks largely to Kuhn, the meaning of "examplar" has given way to something like "theoretical framework" and hence to "Weltanschauung."

[asteriskhere.livejournal.com]

This is the way I always tended to interpret the word paradigm:

"A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline." (definition #3 at dictionary.com)

[solri.livejournal.com]

That looks like a pretty good definition of the modern sense of the word.

[ironed_orchid]

Some one, I think it might have been Mary Warnick, wrote a paper claiming that Kuhn used "paradigm" no less that 28 different ways in The Structure of Scientific Revolution.

So what hope have the rest of us got?