| 词组 | paradigm |
| 释义 | paradigm Paradigm is a learned word that has been in use since the 15th century. Its original meaning was "example, pattern." At the end of the 16th century grammarians appropriated the word and applied it to a pattern of inflected forms in a language, which were usually displayed in tabular form. Flesch 1964, Reader's Digest 1983, Janis 1984, and Barzun 1985 all note that paradigm has become a popular jargon word. These commentators were not the only ones who noticed the word: • Every season there's a new word in vogue. There was a time when everything had to be viable or relevant. This year, the word is paradigm. The Left is "looking for a new paradigm," one hears. "The liberals have lost their paradigm." —Amanda Spake, Mother Jones, February/March 1980 The old sense has continued to flourish. Here we find it as "a typical example": • The descriptions of Frankfurt as a paradigm of modern city life —Joseph P. Bauke, Saturday Rev., 27 Nov. 1971 Here as "an outstanding or perfect example": • Louis XIV, the paradigm of absolute monarchs — John Wilkinson, Center Mag., March 1968 And as "a pattern of behavior": • His logic is the familiar paradigm: If radicals take two steps forward, society will eventually take one —Robert Sklar, The Progressive, February 1967 • ... by the standards of the 1960s, the paradigm of revolution; the cadre was thoroughly committed, socially heterogeneous, and tragically ineffectual — Bernard F. Dick, Saturday Rev., 18 Mar. 1972 It can even appear in place of paragon: • It is the finest cigar in all the world The photographic use we, at enormous self-sacrifice, have made of this paradigm of stogies is not to torment you with visions of the unobtainable —Esquire, September 1973 Such uses as these are, relatively speaking, paradigms of clarity when compared to the most active area of current popular jargonistic use—that of science. The father of the new use seems to be Thomas S. Kuhn, who, in the second edition of his influential The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1973) admitted that in his first edition (1962) he had used paradigm at least 22 different ways. With such a diverse foundation, it is not surprising that the ways in which the scientific and theoretical writers throw the word around may sometimes puzzle us innocent bystanders. Here are a few examples. They share the broad central notion of "a theoretical framework": • Western scientific medicine is undergoing a fundamental shift in basic beliefs and assumptions • This paradigm shift from reductionism to holism is altering the practice of medicine in America today —Interface, Fall 1979 • The psychophysical paradigm was a self-paced method of constant stimuli —Dennis M. Levi & Stanley Klein, Nature, 15 July 1982 • For example, the beginnings of some paradigms might be Aristotle's analysis of motion or Maxwell's mathematization of the electromagnetic field — Mary A. Meyer, Physics Today, June 1983 • ... they have used a research paradigm, that of intervention in a normal infant care context —M. J. Konner, Science, 19 Jan. 1973 • The adaptationist view bids fair to become the dominant paradigm within evolutionary biology and ecology —Stephen Rose, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 8 May 1983 But we should not point at scientists alone. The literary critics have been known to throw the word about too: • Genet, then, as the very paradigm of existentialist schizophrenia, embodied not only the mystic heart of Sartreian philosophy but the entire preoccupation with the dialectics of negation and illusion —John Killinger, Jour, of Modern Literature, 1 st issue, 1970 |
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