INCOMPLETE PARADIGMS

A scientific paradigm is incomplete when it cannot explain all of the scientific facts with which it is confronted.

Does a scientific paradigm explain or predict everything?  No.  There are always interpretations, transference and areas in which the paradigm does not address.  There are always additional scientific facts which are discovered which the paradigm does not explain.  This inability to address all future facts is inimical to the scientific endeavor.  We expect that a scientific paradigm will be confronted with the unexplainable and the unpredictable.  And when that occurs, science progresses.  Science evolves.  There are new opportunities.  There is what is commonly called progress.

Yet given our societal and cultural worship of science, this almost seems wrong.  We have been conditioned to think of, say, Newton’s Laws of Physics to be absolute and complete.  In our early education at least, we are not taught that scientific paradigms are incomplete.  Rather we are taught that the paradigm has answers.  We are expected to know the answer using the rules of the scientific paradigm.  The paradigm will provide the means to answer every question.

Yet when we consider design paradigms (link to previous post on design paradigms), most of us would readily agree that the design paradigm is less than complete.  In fact I would think that most of us would laugh when asked to compare the completeness of a scientific paradigm compared with the completeness of a design paradigm.  Most would agree that Design paradigms are inherently incomplete.  This is another way to say that most of us would readily agree that our design paradigms are inexact, difficult to predict, imprecise, fuzzy, etc.

The parallel that I am making, of course, is that while we have a cultural predisposition to overlook incompleteness in scientific paradigms, we expect design paradigms to be inexact.  Yet they both suffer from the same traits.

Do these incomplete paradigms bring science down, or does it bring design up?  That is not the question as it is not a zero sum game.  Rather, both endeavors can benefit and learn from each other.  Design will gain greater precision.  Science will gain enormously thru visualization (link to post on scientific visualization).  And I submit that both will be raised.