Culture Paradigm Essay

749 Words3 Pages
Culture Paradigm Thomas Kuhn is very famous in the field of physics. His popular book The Structure of Scientific Revolution argues that most of what science does in research is designed to provide further proof for “paradigm”. In its established usage, paradigm is an accepted model and pattern. Also a scientific model is already in place and accepted by the scientific community or the general public. That is what Kuhn calls “Normal Science”. Kuhn says, “When in the course of the research, scientists bump up phenomena that do not “fit” into the paradigm or model. They either try to make the data fit.” Then “paradigm shift” occurs when the bits of ill-fitting or ignored materials add to a critical mass. These ideas are stated in the story of “By the Other Name” which is written by Rau. It presents the cultural clash between English and Indian paradigms. One example we can see the temptation of Premila to fit into the English paradigms. For example, when eating sandwiches becomes a common thing in the school, Premila tells her mother “take sandwiches to school next day, it would be simpler for me to handle”. Premila is an Indian girl. In the Indian culture, she usually eats Indian food—“thin wheat chapattis, some vegetable curry and a bottle of buttermilk.” That is an Indian paradigm for food. However, after she goes to the Anglo—Indian school which is a British colonial school, she finds out that most of the children eat sandwiches there. At this moment, the English paradigm becomes a general pattern accepted by most of the children in the school. Therefore, Premila tries to conform to the English paradigm through changing her lunch because that is the other children usually do. One more example we can see she refuses to fit into English paradigm, when she watches the ill-fitting of Indian girl’s dressing. Rau states “if I couldn’t wear a dress to school, instead

More about Culture Paradigm Essay

Open Document