On Paradigm

Inside the cab, work-bound from Bo’s Café Katipunan, the driver was blabbering about the widening of Tandang Sora Avenue and it’s incapacity to hold dense volume of traffic in and out of Katipunan especially during the rush hours. I was aware he was saying a lot of things but I did not pay attention to him. My neurons were busy processing, reconnecting, relating, associating or whatever mode of abstract digestion of my jagged thoughts on political science, mathematics (category theory) and physics.

It’s all because of James Case’s Competition. I read the section of his book tackling the concept of “paradigm,” as to how it developed and how it is being utilized right now in all aspects of scientific fields. At first I was not really thinking about the connection of social sciences to the use of “paradigms” in physics or math. My mind was instead busy digging the unknown corners of my memory space.



For several times, as far as I could remember, I already pointed to some of friends that in every system there is always an anomaly that will give rise to another system. I did not know that I was referring to Kuhnian philosophy of scientific revolution. An anomaly in an existing paradigm will give birth to another paradigm. Thanks to James Case for reminding me of Thomas Kuhn’s work, the Structure of Scientific Revolution. I read his work several years ago. It’s just fair for me not to remember anything because I did not internalize it when I was reading it. Maybe I just read it out of curiosity, devoid of valid ground of reading.

Because of the structure and nature of “paradigm,” I couldn’t avoid associating it to any field of social sciences. While the cab driver continued whining about the traffic system of our country, knols of social sciences and mathematics were colliding and exploding inside my mind. And my brain is telling me the following:

1. Maybe we can utilize the concept of paradigm in social sciences to give it a mathematical structure, like for example building the structure/s of different economic paradigms, or of political (governance) paradigms.

2. We are not sure which will come first, the mathematical structure or the paradigm?

3. Maybe the creation of a more fundamental paradigm of different paradigms of social sciences will provide as an easy path to connect different paradigms within the social science structure.

4. Will Category theory help us to give a more mathematical description of social sciences? I think it will. It exists to provide us a more sensible and consistent description of things in terms of model and structure.

5. There are other things we can include also, like evolutionary physics might present to us some ideas on how a paradigm shift happens and why it happens. Or maybe it can shed light to why there is history. It is weird but I cannot avoid linking the unfolding of history to the concept of sum-all over history of quantum mechanics.

6. Kuhnian’s structure of scientific revolution is universal. Is it?

7. I’m nuts. I am thinking a lot of things but I don’t have a rigid training on the foundations of physics, mathematics and social sciences.

8. Am I interpreting Thomas Kuhn's work correctly?

9. I am really nuts. I'm crazy.

Anyway, I will include in my laundry list Thomas Kuhn’s work.