A vague term with a number of different meanings. One interpretation resides with the introduction of the term into the history of science by Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996) in 1962, where it means something like a world view: a set of assumptions and values, almost metaphysical in nature, shared and agreed upon by a scientific community (e.g., one working within the context of Newtonian mechanics) that delineates the legitimate problems and methods of that community’s field of research or ‘normal science’. It forms a general conceptual framework within which theories in a particular area of research are constructed and evolve. The vagueness of even Kuhn’s use of the term is indicated by the fact that Margaret Masterman (1910=1986) in a paper published in 1970* could find no less than 21 meanings of ‘paradigm’. Psychology, with a few exceptions (e.g., Freudian psychoanalysis, Skinner’s brand of behaviorism), has tended to lack paradigms in contrast with the physical sciences. In linguistics, ‘paradigm’ means something entirely different: the class of all items that can be substituted into the same position (or slot) in a grammatical sentence (e.g., give, gave, giving, given are said to stand in a paradigmatic relationship to one another). The relationships of a paradigm, or world view, to principles, theory, laws (if any), model (if any), and methods (including procedures and techniques) might be cast into a hierarchy, with downward determination from paradigm to method etc. as follows:
Paradigm (mechanistic)
⬇
Principles (e.g., newborn: a bundle of reflexes)
Theory (e.g. reflexology)
Laws (e.g., law of effect)
Model (what is observed: reflexes)
Method (how to observe)
Procedures –> Techniques
* In: Lakatos, I., & Musgrave, A. The nature of paradigm. In Lakatos, I., & Musgrave, A. Criticism and the growth of knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970, pp. 59-90.
See Downward causation (or macrocausation), Hierarchy, Law, Linguistics, Method, Model, Newtonian (or classical) mechanics, Operant (or instrumental) conditioning, Paradigm shift, Principle, Procedure, Psychoanalysis, Reflex, Reflexology, Technique, Theory