The term paradigm refers to any pattern or genre, model or example that must be followed in a given situation. In general, it refers to a theory or sets of theories that serve as a model to follow to solve problems or certain situations that arise.

One of the first characters in history to address this term that we now use was the great Greek philosopher Plato , who carried out his own definition of what he considered to be a paradigm. In the same vein, the aforementioned thinker stated that this word has the function of determining what are the ideas or the types of example of a specific thing.

The American Thomas Kuhn, an expert in philosophy and a prominent figure in the world of science, was the one who was in charge of modernizing the theoretical definition of this term in order to give it a meaning more in line with today, to adapt it in order to to describe with him the series of practices that draw the guidelines of a scientific discipline over a certain period of time.

Examples of paradigms

Scientific paradigms

In the scientific area , a paradigm is a principle, knowledge or theory that arises from research in a scientific field that will be a model to follow for future research.

According to the philosopher and physicist Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922-1996), in his book “the structure of scientific revolutions, the paradigms are:

“The scientific books that create the models, which for a more or less long period, and in a more or less explicit way, guide the subsequent development of the explorations only in the search for solutions to the problems posed by them.”

Programming paradigms

A programming paradigm refers to the way in which a programmer or a group of programmers provide solutions to one or more clearly defined problems. In this way, they present a unique way of offering solutions.

There are various kinds of programming paradigms. The four main ones are: the declarative, the imperative, the logical, the functional, and the object-oriented. These paradigms differ between them by the way of approaching the elements involved in the problem, as well as the steps to follow to achieve a solution.

Educational paradigms

An educational paradigm is a model that is carried out in education . The paradigm used by the teacher has a great influence on the way in which the student is going to face and react to knowledge, understanding it or rejecting it from the way it is approached.

A clear example of this is the way of learning of new generations, which is completely different from previous generations. Because of this, a conservative educational paradigm will not have great influence on a social level.

Instead, new paradigms can lead to dynamic learning, which serves to stimulate the student, producing a real change in this.

Complexity paradigm

It is a term used in linguistics, philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, pedagogy, statistics, biology, economics, sociology, psychology, medicine, meteorology, and informatics or computer science.

Due to this, its concept may vary depending on the area. Complexity theory is also classified as a complexity challenge or complexity thinking.

The paradigm of complexity, also called complex thinking, aims to relate various disciplines and forms of science, but without uniting them.

The paradigm of society backs up to different areas of society and includes uncertainty as an opening to new opportunities, and not as a barrier that slows down the thought process.

Paradigm in linguistics

For the expert in the area,  Ferdinand de Saussure , in his general linguistics course (1916), absolutely all language units (semantic, morphological and phonological) are related by syntagmatic or paradigmatic links.

In the part of the paradigmatic sentences, reference is made to those in which an element establishes with a set of linguistic elements with similar characteristics, which due to their grammatical category and their meaning, can occupy the same place in the syntagmatic chain.

A clear example of this is the sentence “patricia will travel by car”, the word car, evokes a group of semantic associations that refer to means of transport, such as automobile, vehicle, bus, cars, boat, train, plane, which They could very well substitute the word “car.”