Ev Cult case study: Kuhn's paradigm changes
Ev Cult case study:
Kuhn's paradigm changes
by Velikovsky of Newcastle
Memes (units of culture), are ideas, processes, or products.
(For details, see this chapter in The Encyclopedia of Creativity, Velikovsky 2020)
Since ideas are concepts - and concepts are represented as words in language, (note: words, and languages are also: memes, units of culture!) we can track the popularity of concepts over time, using tools from the Digital Humanities in Evolutionary Culturology, such as Google NGram Viewer.
(And - Try this fun experiment at home! Do some: Citizen Science!)
Okay so - in Thomas Kuhn's landmark 1962 book, The Structure ofScientific Revolutions (sidebar: a book is also a meme, unit of culture, and is structured as a HOLON/parton) he discusses scientific paradigm changes.
Some examples of paradigm shifts Kuhn examines, and/or mentions, include:
The Phlogiston Theory to Oxygen Theory paradigm shift The Ptolemaic Cosmology to Copernican Cosmology paradigm shiftNewton's theory of Gravity to Einstein's theory of gravity paradigm shiftGeological catastrophism to Geological Uniformitarianism (Gradualism) paradigm shiftSo, using Google NGram, let's do some Evolutionary Culturology, and compare how the use of the words "phlogiston" and "oxygen" changed over time.
Ready?
Go to Google NGram Viewer...
Type in `phlogiston, oxygen' and change the start year to: 1750.
Press search.
You should get, this:
And so now let's zoom in on the chart - on this part, outlined in cathode-green:
As, when we zoom in, it becomes clearer what's happened...
In the above, we can see:In the 1760s, both words are competing on an equal footing...In 1776, `oxygen' takes a dive - (and by the way, Lavoisier published his theory in: 1777!)By 1783, `phlogiston' is peaking, as `oxygen' is tanking... BUT...By 1792, the Field (Chemistry) has undergone a revolution... We have a winner! (`oxygen') (If you look at the first chart (up above), phlogiston clearly went `extinct / archive' / flatlines)
Ta-da!!! We just did some Evolutionary Culturology!
YAY!
Concepts (e.g. scientific theories or scientific models) `compete' for supremacy.
The `war of ideas'.
They compete for selection by human minds.
(Limitations of the above data include that e-memes (external memes, products in the exterior world), or words in books is only a proxy for i-memes, or ideas in human minds (i.e., the Field/Audience/Scientific & `Popular Culture' Domains)... But still, Google's corpus of books is, so far, the biggest and best dataset we have, to accurately track these instances of e-memes.)
Now let's try another, as suggested by Kuhn's Structure... in the domain of Geology, let's try catastrophism vs. uniformitarianism... (Try it at home, in Google NGram)
In the above chart, uniformitarianism dominates, over catastrophism .
Sir Charles Lyell published Principles of Geology in 1830, which laid out the evidence of the gradual change of the Earth's crust (aka: uniformitarianism). It hugely influenced Darwin's thinking, eventually resulting in On the Origin of Species (1858). Catastrophism was the idea that (Biblical) floods and such catastrophes shaped the Earth.
Of course, a lot of religious folks still cling to catastrophism (the literal word of the Bible), and deny science. What can you do? (If we could only look at scientific literature, and not all the books in the Google corpus, then the above search would tell a different story: the story of rational humanist scientific thought)!
Finally, let's look at an NGram search on "the structure of scientific revolutions" (a phrase, a meme, a unit of culture) which became popular after 1962 when Kuhn published his book...
Finally, what if we compare Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962) vs. Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1959), vs. Lakatos (The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, 1978) ? 
(Of course, the Lakatos phrase/book title is a term that can be used commonly without reference to Lakatos, so we can see we're likely conflating some results a little; but still - the chart tells an interesting story of competing paradigms for how to view the progress of science. Unless you take the big picture and realize they're all basically saying the same thing! You could add Feyerabend's Against Method, 1975, but I tried that - and for various reasons, it doesn't work very well. But - you too should try it. If you like.)So; you get the idea.
And, if you tried it at home, thanks for doing some Citizen Science!
For more, see:
StoryAlity #165 - The HOLON/parton structure of the Meme, the unit of culture (book chapters)
StoryAlity #169 - Ev Cult Presentations
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(Velikovsky of Newcastle)
Information Scientist & Evolutionary Culturologist
…The above is (mostly) an adapted or extrapolated excerpt, from my doctoral thesis: “Communication, Creativity and Consilience in Cinema”. It is presented here for the benefit of fellow screenwriting, filmmaking, and also Creativity researchers.
For more, see https://aftrs.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky
JT Velikovsky is also a produced feature film screenwriter and million-selling transmedia writer-director-producer. He has been a professional story analyst for major film studios, film funding organizations, and for the national writer’s guild. For more see: http://on-writering.blogspot.com/
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Note: My PhD blog StoryAlity wasn't letting me post how I liked, so I posted this here (on one of my other weblogs: On Writering) instead.
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FURTHER READING
If you want some more good reading on Cultural Evolution, see also:
(Some older material, but still great!)
A Mechanism for Social Selection and Successful Altruism (Science, Herbert Simon 1990)
The Natural Selection of Populations and Communities (D S Wilson 1980)
Genes, Mind and Culture (Lumsden & E O Wilson 1981)
Culture and the Evolutionary Process (Boyd & Richerson 1985)
And for many more recent works in Cultural Evolution, see:
Cultural Evolutionary Theory: How culture evolves and why it matters (Nicole Creanza, Oren Kolodny, and Marcus W. Feldman) PNAS July 25, 2017, 114 (30) 7782-7789
&
This View of Life online magazine!
Thanks for reading.
