Paradigm Lost in the Interpretation of The Book of Changes

Paradigm Lost in the Interpretation of The Book of Changes Keyang Dou I. Paradigm theory and the Paradigm of Yi Etymologically, philosophical use of the word “paradigm” is not new, but has been in use since classical Greece; for instance, Plato used paradeigma to name the model or the pattern in his philosophy as paradeigma (Timaeus 28A). However, it was Thomas Kuhn who first delineated the modern concept of the paradigm in a series of publications since the 1950s, among which The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (hereafter SSR) is the best known and most often quoted. Since then, the impact of the word paradigm, and the extensive debates about it which have prevailed in the field, went far beyond Kuhn’s own expectations. Today, the Kuhnian paradigm is not only a common concept in the study of the philosophy of science, but has also been more broadly deployed across academia. In China, people are already accustomed to defining a certain academic method or a system of thought as a certain paradigm, and the thorough evolution in methodology would always be called a “revolutionary paradigm”. However, despite extensive discussion, paradigm theory is yet far from a mature concept. One major reason is that Kuhn failed to give a clear and concrete definition to the concept, and this failure led to hot debate about the meaning and function of the paradigm. Within this debate, one essay, “The Nature of a Paradigm” (Masterman 1970), identified 21 possible meanings of “paradigm”. By attempting to interpret Kuhn’s intentions, people have offered various definitions and analyses of the concept of the paradigm. In response, Kuhn presented a series of articles and monologues to further clarify the theory, but in vain. The interpretation of the paradigm seemed to fall into a dilemma: sometimes “paradigm” acquired explanatory definitions as widely separated as “promise” or “community”, and was in later articles replaced by [End Page 254] the new term “disciplinary matrix” (Buchwald & George 1997). However, Kuhn’s perplexity at the nachleben of his concept did not, in any case, impede the broad acceptance of the paradigm as a deployable concept. It seems paradoxical, but it is just this paradox that reveals the key feature of the concept of the paradigm: its methodological priority to all rules. Firstly, it is the uncertainty in the definition of the paradigm which suggests that it is not a definitive rule, and it is this uncertainty that allowed for such an enormous impact on the history of science. In his SSR, Kuhn described the existence of the concept of the paradigm: “The determination of shared paradigms is not, however, the determination of shared rules…indeed, the existence of a paradigm need not even imply that any full set of rules exists” (43, 44). In Kuhn’s view, “the existence of the paradigm sets the problem to be solved; often the paradigm theory is implicated directly in the design of apparatus able to solve the problem” (27). In this sense, the paradigm can solve problems in the absence of an explicated set of rules, and apparently the latter are derived from certain paradigms, which indicates the fact that the paradigm is more like an orientation—which can transcend all specific rules—and also reversely orient all rules within its own horizon. This is what renders “paradigm” a most promising and attractive term, and what has motivated its rapid adoption across various research horizons. Nevertheless, many scholars still make the mistake of equating the paradigm to a rule, even if unconsciously. Attempts to confine the paradigm within a solid concept can only progress into deviations from the particular elasticity of the Kuhnian concept of the paradigm. Secondly, according to Kuhn, the existence of the paradigm is only expressed within an epistemological system: “The existence of this strong network of commitments—conceptual, theoretical, instrumental, and methodological—is a principal source of the metaphor that relates normal science to puzzle-solving” (Kuhn 42). Apparently, the so-called “existence of this strong network” stressed the integrity of the paradigm. This integrity is not simply one quality among others, but a theoretical system hidden amongst objective practices: “Only as experiment and tentative theory are together articulated...

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