The Birth of New Paradigms

Galileo

If you Google the phrases ‘paradigm shift’ or ‘new paradigm,’ you’ll find more than a million potential links. If anything the terms are overused. Just as Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity, Thomas Kuhn coined paradigm shift in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a book about the history of science. Kuhn contends that change in science rarely comes from the mainstream scientists, who tend to prove what is already accepted as true ‘normal science.’  Change comes from outliers who disrupt the orderly affairs.

While that doesn’t sound like much of a startling idea today, it was in 1962 when Kuhn’s book was published. Prior to his book, it was thought that science evolved by the gradual addition of new truths that supported the established truths, and that especially did not undermine mainstream science.

Here are three outliers who rocked science.

Galileo

Just in the course of my daily life, I’m aware that a new paradigm is on its way into the world, but that it’s encountering a lot of resistance – from religious dogma, scientific dogma, political dogma. But the birth of a new paradigm has always been challenging, the kind of delivery that keeps the mother in labor for hours. Look at just this small slice of history.

In 1609, the intrepid Italian astronomer Galileo began a serious observation and study of Jupiter and in January 1610, he discovered the four largest moons that orbit Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. His discovery proved to be a critical curve ball for the geocentric scientific theories at the time that said all planets orbited Earth. It laid the foundation for the heliocentric model of the solar system – i.e., all planets orbit the sun. Ultimately, Galileo’s discovery also proved to be his nemesis.

The Catholic Church contended that scripture was absolute about the sun moving around the Earth, that Earth was, in fact, the center of the universe. They deemed Galileo’s beliefs as heretical. In 1633, Galileo was forced to recant his own scientific discoveries as “cursed.” It caused him profound anguish but saved him from being burned at the stake. From 1633 to his death in 1642, he lived under house arrest.

The really appalling part of this story is that it took the Catholic Church 350 years to admit that Galileo was right – the planets really do revolve around the sun!

Gregor Mendel

In the mid-1800s, the scientific consensus in biology was that all characteristics were passed to the next generation through “blending inheritance” – an idiosyncratic term that means the traits from each parent are averaged together. Then along came Gregor Mendel who, through his work on pea plants, figured out that genes come in pairs, are inherited as separate units, one from each parent, and that each inherited trait is defined by a gene pair; that genes for different traits are sorted so the inheritance of one trait isn’t dependent on the inheritance of another

He published his findings in 1865, but it wasn’t until 1900, sixteen years after Mendel’s death, that other biologists rediscovered Mendel’s work. Over the years since, various scientists have tried to disprove Mendel’s work, accusing him of falsifying information. Finally, in 2008, a book was published that settled the controversy – Mendel didn’t deliberately falsify his results.

So it took 143 years after Mendel published his work for science to fully accept he was right. It’s a great example of how i scientific dogma can be as intractable as religious dogma.

Nikola Tesla

Then there was Nikola Tesla, a wild card, a brilliant eccentric who for years was best known because of his feud with Edison. Yet, more than 70 years after his death, he’s now recognized as the inventor of alternating current, the harnessing of light, X-rays, radio, remote control, the electric motor, robotics, laser, wireless communication and limitless free energy.

Tesla arrived in New York in 1884 and was hired as an engineer at the Edison headquarters. He worked there for a year and at one point, Edison told Tesla he would pay $50,000 for an improved design for his DC dynamos. After months of experimentation, Tesla presented a solution and asked for the money. Edison told him he didn’t understand “American humor.” Not surprisingly, Tesla quit soon afterward.

The light company he tried to start didn’t pan out and he resorted to digging ditches for two bucks a day. He finally found financial backers to fund his research into alternating current. In 1887 and 1888, he was granted more than 30 patents for his work and was invited to address the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. George Westinghouse was impressed with his lecture and subsequently hired Tesla, licensed the patents for his ACV motor, and gave him his own lab.

In 1891 in Chicago, Tesla and Westinghouse lit the World’s Columbian Exposition and partnered with General Electric to install AC generators at Niagara Falls, creating the first modern power station. Four years later, Tesla’s New York lab burned and his notes and equipment were destroyed. He moved to Colorado Springs, then returned to New York in 1900 and was backed financially by J.P. Morgan. He started building a global communications network on Long Island, but funds ran dry and Morgan got fed up with Tesla’s grandiose ideas.

Throughout this life, Tesla was persecuted by the energy power brokers of that time – Edison, Morgan, and other heads of industry. On January 7, 1943, he died broke and alone in a hotel room where he had lived for decades, working on inventions as his physical and mental health decayed. That same day, the U.S. government moved into his apartment and confiscated all his scientific research. Why? Because of his material on zero point energy?

These three men came up against the scientific and religious dogma of their time and as a result of their work, new paradigms were ushered into existence. In much the same way, scientists and researchers studying consciousness today are birthing a new paradigm about the nature of time and reality.

“I believe that we stand on the threshold of a new phase of science,” says biologist Rupert Sheldrake.

The problem is that for every 21^st century visionary, there are dozens of skeptics like Michel Shermer and his Skeptical Inquirer magazine whose worldview is threatened by any change in the status quo. I like to think their paradigm is in its death throes.