Paradigm shifts in thinking and action

The history of mankind is marbled with extraordinary leaps forward, changes in how we see our world. I think of these changes as paradigm shifts in thinking. An ancestors ‘suddenly’ learned to make flaked stone tools 2.6 million years ago, and to make and harness fire 1 million years ago, and 500,000 years later they had figured out how to fix stone points to wood shafts, and then only 70,000 years ago humans had learned to develop projectile points, bedding materials the chemistry know how to make glues, and then discoveries speeded up so that by 40,000 years ago humans had mastered how to make a musical instrument, paint on the wall of a cave, make sewing needles. This also was the beginnings of the mental jump, discovery, and recognition of the value of symbols and language. These seemed to all be collective paradigm shifts in thinking. Individual pioneer contributions from such as the likes of DaVinci, Mozart, Einstein, and others followed later.

Paradigm shifts in thinking occur in all of us, individually and we of course can also appreciate the extraordinary discoveries of others that result in abrupt changes in how we think about things we thought were always true until proven not to be true.

For example, when thinking about the influences that shaped the life of Günther Barth, or any of us, we have been taught to think of the role of nature (heredity, genes) and nurture (our experiences in living). Not so. In a series of very recent experiments it turns out that the experiences can be transmitted to new generations by directly altering the activity of genes, gene expression. The fixed boundary between the effects of nature and nurture has been erased (see one example of the published works on this subject by Dias & Ressler, in Nature Neuroscience, Vol. 17, 1, 2014). Isn’t that an extraordinary change in how we see our genetic heritage? An experience that we have had can be passed on to our future generations through changes in gene activity. Wow! And I would add Pow!

So here we are, or where I am at trying to take a peek at what we know about paradigm shifts in thinking? Might what we know about shifting states of mind help clarify the changes in Barth’s art or even whether his most recent work is even his but rather that of a forger. In addition was Barth’s brain damaged, particularly in the area of language functioning and might that sort of damage have accounted for the dramatic changes in his most recent art. How might disruptions or changes in language functioning influence how we see and interpret our visual world?

Throughout our lives we stumble onto mini epiphanies that provide us with some new insights about some small facet of our experienced universe of people, phenomena, things that fill our lives. What we suddenly grasp and see in a new light is not some old picture or mural seen anew but a morsel of our experience that fills a little crevice in our mind. However sometimes we, as individuals, discover an extraordinary new truth that changes the path we take into the future. This can also be the case for a discovery, a paradigm shift in thinking that is shared with many of our fellows contained in the social and cultural context in which we move and breathe.

What makes it possible for one person or group of individuals to construct a bridge from their well established knowledge and to then leap into the into space with a completely new way of thinking about things and doing things

What might account for sudden changes in how we think, solve problems, respond to our world? What might be some of the conditions that might allow someone (or group) to suddenly shift how they think about phenomena in their lives, art, cookery. Arguing with Burston isn’t worth it and especially when he is so animated and drunk and despite it reasons that what I might have to say might be helpful in understanding the dramatic shift in the style and focus of the artist Günther Barth during the last decade of his life. I have learned that Ian Burston can be demanding and easily discounts that what I have to say will valueless. Oh well.

Some experiences suddenly change our world forever. An experience, a scientific discovery, someone new in our life, induces a mind shift, or a mind quake. Often our changed minds are narrow, limited in scope, like changes in how we see someone who has been part of our lives, or rediscovering and reevaluating some films, art, music, political events. A more dramatic change in how we think can be reflected in how we see ourselves.

These are all examples of mind shifts in how we think as individuals but there are also many examples where a large group of people or a society of individuals suddenly thinks about their world differently. We can all think of lots of examples of both individual and group paradigm shifts in thinking now and throughout history.

How do these mind shifts or what I would call paradigm shifts in thinking take place? What are the ingredients that stir and spur a creative spirit to suddenly conjure up a totally new way of looking at a problem or a complex phenomenon? What happens in our brains that take our thought and knowledge into a new place that can then create reconfigured knowledge that provides a vision of a totally new and useful application, which can change how we live? I and likely you have asked questions like, “How did someone come up with that idea, that experiment, that view of the havens, that view of how lyrics can be set to music or that melody, that…..What conditions allow our fellow humans to make the kind of thought leap that makes our jaw drop and then we might step back with wonderment and admiration. What are the ingredients in that creative mental pie that is responsible for imagining and then expressing something totally new that then can influence how the rest of us see what we have never seen or imagined before. What are the mental roots of dramatic paradigmatic shifts in how we think about our world?

Of course these are questions that have been raised and studied by many, even those who are well trained in something or other or think they have valuable keys to doors with locks that don’t work. But that is my opinion except of course all sorts of perspectives are worth considering and also discarding. Certainly cognitive scientists have explored this topic in all sorts of ways, as have historians, sociologists, theologians, business managers, and linguists. Most of my colleagues would agree that the study of paradigm shifts in thinking is so complex that it is still out of the reach of mind/brain science methods and theory.

This is quite a long-winded wind up so what got me started in this track that has left me out of breath. How the hell can you look at a history of thinking, or art, or music, or science and say, “Wait a minute this last bit doesn’t follow all the shenanigans that proceed the now.

So as starters you might classify (and always nice to put things in boxes) the types of changes in mind state that can suddenly result in paradigm shifts in thinking, seeing, listening, interpreting, almost anything.

My list of favorite ingredients needed for paradigm shifts in thinking that results in a product that makes us exclaim, “Wow. That is amazing. How did you get there.”? Obviously much more should and could be said about these ingredients and how they might be put together to make and excellent creative pie.

1. You have to be smart and know a great deal about all sorts of things which includes knowledge that may seem totally irrelevant to the problem you are trying to solve and then, maybe, just maybe you can leap forward to a place that none has ever been and can show them to the way to the truth, the music, the picture, the discovery, you have somehow uncovered. To be smart you need a well-tuned prefrontal cortex that can orchestrate and manage the bridge between thought and action.
2. Learning to let the mind wander around the networks of associations and knowledge nestled in brain circuitry.
3. Many of us are so controlled that we might appear in a video of a minor crook handcuffed by the cops. Somehow, sometimes, we must be able to uncouple the prefrontal and frontal brain lobes from the rest of our brain hardware. If we can manage that kind of inhibition we might go to a place that is new to us and then we just might think of all sorts of ideas in trying to solve a problem that eluded us till now. That is just the time that we have to reengage the brain inhibitory circuitry so that we can challenge all of the creative stuff that bubbled up while we were floating in space. I guess I would call it an inhibition-cerebral release dance of brain cells in action.
4. Think outside the box. What is that about? I suppose it applies to being stuck in a trolley track which has always gotten us somewhere we wanted to go but then we want to consider going to another part of the forest and so how do we risk crossing the tracks and going by foot to a place that we have never visited before? How many of us are adventurers that might be encouraged to link ourselves to a wire and slide over a cliff?
5. This brings us full face to the courage ingredient, which is often, intimately linked to a centered sense of confidence that you are ok have been and will be ok and that you are neither fragile nor easily defeated. Courage without self-confidence is different and the sort that in many ways raises courage to a new level with elements of stupidity that may be charming but in the long run is ridiculous.
6. How do we move around the circuitry the associative networks in our brain that allows for new vistas and new connectivity? Moving about our brains associative networks, the basis of our knowledge, is generally repetitive, familiar and devoid of new interpretations of what we already know, Some of us, and just sometimes we can move about our knowledge terminals in novel ways that reveal what we have always known in a new light.
7. How can we do without this most unromantic of ingredients No doubt it is boring but without discipline, hard work, dedication, plugging away you have nothing to say but “Do I have a fairy tale story to tell you and can you imagine and elephant walking into this room, or wouldn’t it be fun to play pin the tail on the donkey. Coming up with a new scheme for looking at some facet of the universe requires the kind of hard work that is so often dismissed as pedestrian bullshit….which it is not.
8. Being able to generalize smoothly, easily but also to move from the general to the specific example even if distantly related. What doesn’t help in paradigm shifts in thinking is oversimplified generalizations like “have discovered that all people are really pretty much the same because almost all have 2 arms.
9. Frustration tolerance
10. Gatekeepers that provide a pushback for paradigm shifts in thinking about all sorts of phenomena.
11. Fluctuating states of mind (state-dependent cognition). We think differently in different mood states, differing states of arousal, drug altered brain states.

……..A thought that would have us wait a moment, or even an hour. Perhaps thinking about sudden jumps in how we thing about a phenomenon, i.e., a paradigm shift, is an artifact of poor visibility, and the whole concept may be sliced baloney. Maybe all changes in how we think are essentially graded, made up of incremental learning steps. When we view changes in thinking at a distance, and through glasses with loads of fingermarks and dust, then we don’t see all those small steps that led to a change in thinking and…..wah lah we invent the notion of a paradigm shift.