This is a guest post by Daniil Bachkirov, a joint master’s student in the School of Environmental Sciences and Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, where he studies at the juncture of the natural sciences and the humanities in order to use interdisciplinary philosophical, historical and political insights to solve the environmental crisis. He can be reached by email, and (from September) can be found at the Brockwood Park School in Hampshire.
Calls for a collective behavioural and attitudinal shift with regards to the environmental crisis abound these days, but does the language we use reflect want individuals want? Are there cultural processes at work that we continue to participate in even when we’re basically saying, “We want things to be different?” And can these cultural processes actually undermine our capacity to change our attitudes?
While it may seem piddling to be talking about language when there are real, observable, physical processes and social inequalities at work that threaten life on this planet, I ask, what enables us to come together and act on these issues? Language!
For that reason, I want to inquire into the specific terms we use to call for these “collective behavioural and attitudinal shifts”.
When Thomas Kuhn, philosopher of science, wrote in 1962 about the way in which scientific theories and practice were embedded within structures that validate certain ways of understanding nature whilst discrediting others, and that these were subject to change over time, it is unlikely that he would have anticipated the degree to which the word for these structures; “paradigms”, would find usage beyond its original meaning, as they have today. In particular, the idea of the “paradigm shift”, where a dramatic intellectual rift occurs in the scientific community about the fundamentals of scientific knowledge, after which one idea usually triumphs over another, turned out to be a popular way of referring to other kinds of shifts in ideas. You could say it’s almost a cliché.
I want to question the popularity of the “paradigm shift”. It is problematic on two fronts: Firstly, it seems to be indicative of a kind of ‘problematising’ that implicitly defines the environmental crisis in scientific terms, i.e, it is a crisis that can be reduced to the physically observable and therefore we can only act to prevent crises with sufficient objective certainty. This normalises one discourse at the expense of others. Secondly, it might not be an accurate term to describe how ideas and practices actually shift in societies. Societies after all, are far more complex than the shared scientific understandings that Kuhn called “paradigms”.
So, firstly, what do I mean by discourse? Broadly speaking: a set of practices and beliefs expressed through dialogue in a given culture. It is a central concept in the work of the postmodern French philosopher, Michel Foucault who was interested in examining the conditions necessary for the validation of knowledge about human beings at certain times and places. He developed an “archaeological” method to excavate historical artefacts, i.e. texts, to establish how knowledge becomes an instrument of power.
Central to this process, and the term I want to offer as a non-scientistic, more open-ended conception was the idea of the episteme, or the “epistemological field of power” which creates the necessary conditions for the emergence of knowledge. These epistemes flow into one another with no natural rhythm or progression, but can be metaphorically expressed as changing climate patterns. In this sense, Foucault was not interested in the weather, i.e. isolated ideas and historical figures, but the climate; the complex interrelations that create the weather.
I’m asking the reader to consider the potential social effects of using “paradigm shift” to refer to social and behavioural shifts in our attitude to global climate change. Does this usage not imply that everyone in human societies, like a group of scientists in the 16th century moving from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican model, is at the same level of understanding and appreciation of the problem of global climate change to collectively understand and choose to act upon a shift to a “new paradigm”?
Does it also not imply that global climate change is only a problem for science? And if the dominant ideology in scientism happens to be one of materialism, does using “paradigm shift” not add to a climate of popular understanding that the problems of climate change can be reduced to its materially observable effects?
We need to remember that when we call for a “paradigm shift” in our environmental beliefs and practices, we are employing a metaphor from the world of science. Metaphors work on the principle of shared understanding and reveal value-laden, culturally embedded meaning-making processes. They also work on the principle of “feedback loops”, so that those meanings and values embedded in a metaphor are circulated back into society through their regular use, validating those meanings and values.
Might we consider using a term more focused on the broad analysis of intellectual climates rather than a metaphor from a specific discipline? Or better yet, abandon the call for “paradigm shifts” all together?