Constructing the automobile industry paradigm

Abstract

Paradigms are an established method for viewing the advance of knowledge from a systematic viewpoint. Instead of seeing human progress as a chaotic accumulation of facts, theories, and processes, paradigms group these endeavors into communities focused on a specific principle. This creates fields of knowledge, each strictly defined and mutually exclusive. Although the concept of paradigms is well known in science where the founding principles for each area of study are explicitly stated, examples of paradigms abound in other areas of human activity. These include astronomy and astrology, music and painting, Darwinian evolution and creationism. No matter how free-thinking adherents to a paradigm might like to believe they are, in practice they are bound to the rules that govern them. Thus it is no more possible to foretell the future by landing a scientific probe on the surface of a planet than it is for a novel to be painted. Within the paradigm, the nature of the problems that can be tackled are preordained and the methods by which they can be solved are preset. Consequently, the paradigm has clarity of focus and a defined area of relevance.