Hubble-X, a glowing gas cloud in one of the most active star forming regions in galaxy NGC 6822.   The galaxy lies 1.6 million light years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius.
NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)  C. R. O'Dell                             Vanderbilt University   http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/2001/01/index.html

The term "paradigm shift" as it is used here gained popular currency with the publication (1962) of the book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. It refers to the interlocking set of presuppositions and assumptions which operates in the background, as our conceptual "screen."

A "paradigm" is that set of fixed  ideas so culturally internalized that it becomes an invisible lens through which we see the world.

This system of assumptions largely determines how we think, learn, what we consider to be possible, what can be questioned, what is "believable."

A paradigm is that "package" or system of conceptions which we regard as self-evident or as so well-established, or so completely in accord with conventional common sense, that it is not naturally susceptible to questioning. Or if questioned, would seem to collapse the moorings of all certainty.  And, this is indeed a claim of  postmodernism.

 A paradigm is the set of assumptions which exerts a  defining influence over our thinking, framing the limits of our receptivity, while remaining itself "out of sight," largely impervious to critical re-evaluation.

From a usually pre-reflective level, these assumptions mesh together into a fixed description of our universe and ourselves. Like the operating system at work behind computer programs and applications –and with which they must be compatible– the constructs of our underlying paradigm don’t customarily get direct attention. We take them for granted.

In the same sense in which it has been said that fish will be the last to discover the sea, we swim in the milieu of our cultural, temporal paradigm.

We accept the paradigm without thinking of it as such, but as   obvious, normative, simply "the way things are."

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