Paradigm Shift

" one conceptual world view is replaced by another "

In 1962, Thomas Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolution, and fathered, defined and popularised the concept of "paradigm shift".  Kuhn argues that scientific advancement is not evolutionary, but rather is a "series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions", and in those revolutions "one conceptual world view is replaced by another".

Paradigm Shift is a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change, who are called paradigm pioneers.

Conversely the entrenched interests whose certainty is threatened when something comes along which not just moves the goal posts but changes the whole game to another level prove to be the greatest (short term) barrier to a paradigm shift in their inability or refusal to see beyond the current models of thinking.  This paradigm paralysis is the primary cause of regulatory capture.

The circumstances of this matter demonstrate just how such fear, anger and denial at the threat posed to the dominant paradigm by revolutions such as ESD can capture even whole regulatory regimes, as they flounder to protect a past which has passed, against a future which must come.

Nobody I have spoken or written to about this issue appears to be able to grasp that despite it being the well oiled habit of a lifetime that the property owner always pays Local Government, ESD has changed that forever, and now it is the “polluter” and “user” who must pay.

Change is difficult.  You can teach children, but you can’t teach people what they do not wish to know.  As Kuhn states, "awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory", and awareness can not be compelled.  That which is real in its perception is real in its consequences.