Theory can also be classified according to the field they are being used in but the most known type is the scientific theory. This includes all the statements, hypothesis and postulates that are proven from the paradigm.
Theories are usually used for explaining the existing phenomenon. It is also used for predicting natural phenomenon. Scientifically, it is said to be statements or explanations of a recurring phenomenon that has been proved repeatedly through scientific calculations, research and hypothesis.
Even though paradigm and theory involve structuring and forming new statements and proofs with a hypothesis for support, they are not the same. They are inter-dependent like in the case of analyzing and evaluating. Paradigm is the structure or framework for a theory to develop from it.
They are also considered to be an embodiment of various theories and ideologies for them. Paradigmatically would be the adverb usage of the word. Sentence with paradigmatically as an adverb. Paradigmatic is the adjective structure of the word. Sentence with paradigmatic as an adjective. There are several synonyms and antonyms that help with the understanding of the word theory. Synonyms chosen are: doctrine, concept, dogma, conditioning and basics Antonyms chosen are: conclusion, concrete, proof, practical.
Theory is used as a noun and a theorist is a person who develops a theory. Theories describe the plural of theory. Theoretical is an adjective. Theorize is a verb used to describe how one can suggest facts or ideas while forming a theory. A sentence with theorize: The book written for students to study theorizes about the psychology of dreams in adolescents.
A theory can also be used as an idiom. The decision sounds good in theory but has it been studied correctly? Theories can also be classified as countable or uncountable. A countable theory explains why things happen. It is the proof, the measurable explanation. The uncountable theory is a principle on which something was based.
Author Recent Posts. Christina Wither. Her teaching journey led her through several southern African countries and teaching English as a second language fostered a love of words and word meanings. She is proud to be associated with FundZamobi an outreach programme to promote reading amongst children and young adults in South Africa. Christina lives in a farming area in the Natal Midlands. She enjoys country walks with her dog and writing from the comfort of her home that over looks the Drakensberg mountains.
Latest posts by Christina Wither see all. Help us improve. Rate this post! Now let's go and see how we process more complex shapes, where there are many models, or categories of models, instead of only a few, to compare incoming sensory impressions.
Listen to J. Bach's 3 part invention 8 as you look at the vase. This is a type of musical piece known as a fugue. It has three voices with time delay melody lines which dance around one another. As you listen, try to pick out the individual melody lines. Then try switching your perspective to listen to the piece as a whole as the melodies blend in counterpoint.
Is she a young lady or an old hag? So maybe it's both, but then how do we decide which one to see? Or maybe it's nothing but a bunch of patterns of light and dark on the paper? Spots Quick, what is this one? Some people might see a face. Do you see a face, or is there something else? Look here to see. Watch the video program or read the online text to learn about the Canadian Flag. Here is a history of the flag from which you will see the long-standing nature of the controversy over the design.
Here's a real maple leaf. Does the Canadian flag really look like this? After watching the video,what do you think, was it a coincidence, does it reflect the tone of the negotiations subconsciously or otherwise, or is the image of the two men entirely in the mind of the beholder?
Transition In this series of pictures, at what point does the transition take place? Do you think it would be the same for all observers?
The way we have done this on the video program, where you saw the transition first, it is impossible now to go back and look at a part of it and ask, "What does it look like", because your mind already knows what is going on. It's like if I would say, "don't think of chocolate" and you do anyway. I have done this in the classroom many times and I can verify that in the majority of cases, the point of recognition in the transition depends on where it starts. It makes a difference as to how much you can alter it before you see the other picture.
At what point does the transition take place? Watch the movie 60 KB Rorschach ink blots The Rorschach ink blot test has been used by mental health professionals as a way to gain insight into someone's mind. By categorizing the types of images perceived by the patient, the doctor begins to understand how the patient categories and classifies information.
There has been controversy lately about the validity of the test however. What do you see in this picture? A ballerina, a bug, an ink blot?
Or something else? Some people see a man playing a horn, others see the face of a woman. People do. Still, nearly twenty-five years after his death, there are Elvis sightings reported around the world. It is relatively common for people to see images of familiar things, especially religious images:. The image was discovered by a year-old Salvation Army woman sheltering from the rain.
Believers say the eyes, nose and mouth of Jesus and the crown of thorns can clearly be made out on a wall of the Church of England's All Saints at Great Driffield, East Yorkshire. Hoggard was drying out in the church after a Christian march when she heard a dove cooing in the rafters, looked up and noticed the image on the wall.
It was such a moving experience for me, I was reduced to tears," Hoggard said. The reason we see these images has little to do with religion per se, although religious images are part of our culural heritage. The reasons go beyond culture to our genetic heritage. The first thing a newborn infant sees is mother's face, and it is important to be able to recognize faces.
So our brains are hard wired to fill in the blanks of an image to see faces. Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus often an image or sound being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia. One of the best examples of the way in which we create patterns is the famous case of the face on Mars.
In the s, Mars spacecraft sent back many pictures of the surface of the red planet. A cult has been built around this shadowy outline, whose followers suggest that it proves the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life, and a conspiracy by the Government to withhold this information from the rest of us.
It was part of the theme of the movie, "The Red Planet". Unaltered One level of enhancement. One could claim that intelligent aliens specifically designed this thing whatever it is, to be computer enhanced in that way. Here are some of the intermediate images in the enhancement process.
Note that the face only becomes apparent after several stages of enhancement. So, where is the face. Is it on the surface of Mars , is it in the algorithm which enhances the image, or is it in the mind of the beholder?
Or is it an interaction of all three, the thing itself, the processing algorithm, and the perception of the beholder? Here are two more levels of enhancement the third step is on the bottom, the fourth and final is on top.
Step 3 of enhancement. Step 4 of enhancement. Are computers part of the conspiracy? You can see from these pictures that the face only remotely begins to look like a face at the third level of enhancement. Analysis of this Martian "face" shows that it is not a face at all, but an illusion that depends on the angle of viewing and the angle of the sun.
The animation shows the crater with different lighting angles. Notice how the shapes and shadows change with the angle of light. The video program shows a virtual flyby of the cinder cone.
You can view it here. It is still possible to believe that the intelligent aliens constructed the cinder cone so that it would appear to us to be a face upon computer enhancement using the appropriate algorithms which we would have to invent when we were ready. It's possible. But which is more likely, and more consistent with our physical knowledge of the Martian environment:.
Take your choice, but the parsimonious and paradigmatically consistent, and therefore the scientific way is to conclude, subject to further verification or denial, that it is a cinder cone like those on earth. The pattern may or may not be there.
It may be in our minds. All we can say for sure is that what we see is influenced by a complex web of conscious and subconscious paradigms which sort, classify, prioritize, and file information. We know the human brain possesses the capability to provide missing information in order to make sense out of patterns and will do so, even to the extent of adding enough detail to create something which is not really there.
In fact, if we now go back to the enhanced image of the face, it is clear that in addition to the face, there is also a picture of Mickey Mouse. What conclusions do we draw from this? The intelligent aliens were Disney fans? No, I don't think so. Our conclusion is that we need to remember how easy it is to jump to conclusions based upon incomplete information. Unjustified and unwarranted assumptions get us into a lot of trouble.
Scientific observations and theories try to supply as much of the missing information as possible. We design experiments which can give us more information about those areas in which the pattern is weak. We learn much this way, but even then it is all too easy to think we know more than we really do.
Take a look at van Gogh's "Wheatfields", which is on display at the Honolulu Academy of Arts along with other impressionistic and pointillist art.
Go to the library and look at books on art, especially van Gogh. Here are some examples of impressionistic and pointillist art. In this respect, science and art overlap. Great artists take advantage of our tendency to create our own images from incomplete information, relying on the mind of the beholder to provide the missing experience so that each of us gets a slightly different impression.
Maybe that's why they call it impressionist! For those of you with 3D eyes, here is a stereopair of the "face". Describe what it looks like in 3D. Sketch a cross section of it from your 3D view. More recent Mars missions have taken much clearer pictures of this feature. The photo on the left is the original "face". The middle photo is the more recent one. The photo on the right is the same as the center, but a negative image.
By now we should find it easy to postulate why we rely so heavily on paradigms in all aspects of our lives. Because there is too much information to process each bit uniquely, and because the human brain functions on a metaphorical as well as a logical level, it stores representations of classes and categories with which to compare and classify incoming information. Learning requires us to have the ability to generalize, a concept like hot, from one situation to another.
It also requires that we can specify under what conditions a particular concept is valid, for example, you are supposed to talk in the classroom only at certain times, and those time will be different for different classes. Paradigm processing is advantageous for another reasons. For one, being able to send certain processing to the subconscious level leaves the conscious brain free to concentrate on other things. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman [2] are credited by many for having developed this perspective in sociology.
Truth is different based on who you ask, and people change their definitions of truth all the time based on their interactions with other people. According to this paradigm, we create reality through our interactions and the interpretations that we have of our interactions, as opposed to the existence of an objective reality. Key to the social constructionist perspective is the idea that social context and interaction frame our realities.
Researchers operating within this framework take keen interest in how people come to socially agree, or disagree, about what is real and true. To better understand the idea of relativity and social constructionism, consider how certain hand gestures can connote different meanings across the globe.
When someone raises their middle finger in North American culture, we can safely assume that neither the person raising the finger nor the person to whom the finger is being directed are very happy. Other gestures, such as the thumbs up, may carry similar eyebrow-raising meanings in other societies and cultures. While the thumbs up gesture may have a particular meaning in North American culture, that meaning is not shared across cultures Wong, It would be a mistake to think of the social constructionist perspective as only individualistic.
While individuals may construct their own realities, groups as small as married couples and as large as nations also agree on notions of truth. In other words, the meanings that we construct have power beyond the individual people who create them. Therefore, social constructionists are equally interested in the initial creation of meanings and the ways that people and groups work to redefine meanings.
A third paradigm is the critical paradigm. At its core, the critical paradigm is focused on power, inequality, and social change. Further, this paradigm operates from the perspective that scientific investigation should be conducted with the express goal of social change in mind. Researchers in the critical paradigm might begin with the knowledge that systems are biased against others, such as women or marginalized ethnic groups.
Moreover, their research projects aim to foster positive change in the research participants and the systems being studied as well as collect important data. The critical paradigm not only studies power imbalances but also seeks to change them.
While social constructionists may argue that truth is in the eye of the beholder s , postmodernists may claim that we can never know such truth.
Finally, while the critical paradigm may argue that power, inequality, and change shape reality and truth, a postmodernist may ask whose power, inequality, change, reality, and truth are in question. As you might imagine, the postmodernist paradigm poses quite a challenge for researchers. How do you study something that may or may not be real or that is only real in your current and unique experience of it?
This fascinating question is worth pondering as you begin to think about conducting your own research. Part of the value of the postmodern paradigm is its emphasis on the limitations of human knowledge. Table 6. If we are examining a problem like substance abuse, what would a social scientific investigation look like in each paradigm? A positivist study may focus on precisely measuring substance abuse and finding out the key causes of substance abuse during adolescence.
Forgoing the objectivity of precisely measuring substance abuse, social constructionist study might focus on how people who abuse substances understand their lives and relationships with various drugs of abuse.
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