How not to be trapped by your paradigm. Find Professor Bacharach’s full article on Inc.com.
Tag: thomas kuhn
Paradigm shifts aren’t easy. As Thomas Kuhn pointed out, it may take a crisis to bring on a change. Academic ideas can be stuck in inertia in the same way organizations can be. The movement beyond inertia implies leadership, the capacity to take risks, and the ability to look at something differently.
Sometimes this may mean looking at something that’s been staring you in the face and suddenly saying to yourself, “I never realized what it meant before.” Sometimes it means looking at an old idea that you disregarded and seeing its current utility.
The John Cassidy, in his New Yorker piece, After the Blowup, maintains that Keynesian economics is an example of this phenomenon. Keynesian economics was there all along and now there’s a possibility that it’s coming back to life.
The reemergence of the Keynesian economics might even by overshadowed by the legitimization of the behaviorists who seem to be feeling that their moment has come. Pure Chicago economists, with their expected utilities and optimizing markets, are meeting the reality of the recent financial blow-out. Now, economists are learning what good leaders have known for a long time. Uncertainty is inevitable, very few things are held constant, and close models are dreams. Economists are now seeing things through a lens of social psychology and arguing that personality and culture inevitably play a role in market theory.
Cassidy’s article is a critical read for any leaders who still hope that cost/benefit analysis, expected utility, and markets are the only solutions to everyday problems. Further, if you let yourself go beyond this article Cassidy will help you understand that there is a possibility of a new paradigm of economics–but a paradigm that’s not restricted to market economies. It’s an exciting paradigm that can offer guidance to anyone who has to make choices. I strongly recommend that you read this piece in the New Yorker.
Picture Credit:
Recently, I read a new comic book entitled, Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou, that shines light on the world of philosophy, mathematics, and….organizational leadership. Logicomix is first and foremost a story about the search for the foundations of mathematics. While the book takes a studied look at many mathematicians and logicians it focuses on the life of Bertrand Russell. The drama of the story stems from the seemingly inevitable madness of 20th century logicians. Russell himself stood on the edge of madness as he worked tirelessly to ground mathematics in logic.
Logicomix excels in observing the stress and the madness mathematicians face when they play with macro-concepts, astronomical contradictions, and diverging theories. Their world is one where new ideas need to be methodically established and presented in the harshest critical light. Strung throughout the discussion of mathematics Logicmix also defines and presents the philosophical problems of the 20th century. Indeed, European philosophical thought, leaning towards idealism in the middle of two World Wars, drove Russell, his pupil Wittgenstein, and many others towards the fervent search for the foundations of mathematics.
In the final analysis, philosophy and organizational leadership are rooted in the world of rhetoric, the world of debate, and the world of dialogue. The rhetoric of philosophy—or better still, the rhetoric among philosophers, is a remarkable source that can enhance one’s leadership capacity for pushing new ideas forward.
One of the challenges that leaders face is how to push ahead on new ideas. Thomas Kuhn reminds us how often paradigms trap our thinking and create blinders. The sheer struggle to take off the blinders and move ahead may be an exhausting lifetime journey. The world of philosophy is a world in which dialogue and progression seems to be a running stream, but even in this world, which we would think to be the epitome of expansive discussion—there is a struggle for new ideas. Logicomix not only states this clearly, but it illustrates this point deftly.
This video is part 1 of 3. I recommend you watch them all to observe the comic’s unique origins!
This past week I was invited to speak at the National Women’s Leadership Summit sponsored by the Louisiana Center for Women and Government.
The conference focused on the issue of energy. Earlier in the week I attended a conference sponsored by the ILR school called, Jobs. Justice. Climate.
After both events it was immediately obvious that it was a challenge to speak across interests, but it was a greater challenge to speak across paradigms.
In The Structure of the Scientific Revolution by Thomas Kuhn he notes that paradigms operate as constraining psychological mechanisms that entangle thoughts and at times can strain creativity….
