What Exactly Is A Paradigm Shift?

The word stems from the old Greek "paradeigma" which translates as "example", a certain model or way or pattern of thinking. In science, we understand as a paradigm the fundamental truth of the findings in this or that science, as far as human research has been able to document it. Then, sometimes but rarely, completely new findings may throw over everything what students were taught up to now - for example when the clone-sheep Dolly was born and it lived. That was a moment of typical paradigm-shift.

Paradigms also exist in politics, naturally; f.e. that the socialist parties around the world stand for the poor workers, or the USA is a democratic country welcoming immigrants and treating them all alike. However, there came 9.11. and a drastic paradigm shift: people who looked a bit like Arabs and women in veils were spat and shouted at on the street.

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