Model Revolution

Model revolution is the fourth step in the Kuhn Cycle. The step begins when it's obvious the old model has become useless as a reliable guide for decision making, and ends when the new model is discovered. Once the new model is stable and correct enough to began telling others about it, the next step, Paradigm Change, begins.

The model revolution step is a revolution because the old model is usually so entrenched into the mental habits and even the lifestyles of those using it that a new way of thinking is incomprehensible and/or unacceptable, at least at first. The Model Revolution step could also be called the Search for a New Model step. The length of this step is best minimized if the consequences to failing to find a new model in time are catastrophic. Howeverm, unless this step is performed with an appropriate process it is almost always rocky, unnecessarily slow, and unpredictable.

Actually the model that civilization uses to run itself has started to enter the model revolution stage. This can be seen from the way some environmentalists and environmental NGOs are starting to see that their current model of solving the sustainability problem is not working, and that a new one is needed. For example, in September 2005 the Sierra Club, at its first national convention, voted on the subject of "When it comes to change and the environment, the best approach is what?" The winner of the vote, by an amazing and totally unexpected 60%, was "a new way of thinking."

Another example is the way the United Nations is promoting sustainable development as the new model for all countries to follow. This model is a large break from the past. However, it has not caught on, which indicates that the Model Revolution step is still underway. Some might argue that the invention of the model of sustainable development signals the end of the Model Revolution step. But my analysis of this proposed model shows that it is so flawed it is not a viable replacement for the old model, because it is the old model under a new name. For more on this please see the chapter on The Fallacy of Sustainable Development in A Model in Crisis.

The Two Requirements for Successful Model Revolution

Thomas Kuhn argued that the heart of why a new paradigm is accepted depends on two requirements:

"First, the new candidate must seem to resolve some outstanding and generally recognized problem that can be met in no other way. Second, the new paradigm must promise to preserve a relatively large part of the concrete problem solving activity that has accrued to science through its predecessors." (1)

The essence of the new paradigm promoted by Thwink.org is that the process must fit the problem. The System Improvement Process (SIP) is presented as an example of a better fit. SIP satisfies the two requirements described by Kuhn, and thus has the potential to cause the new paradigm to be swiftly accepted.

The first requirement is that "the new candidate must seem to resolve some outstanding and generally recognized problem that can be met in no other way." The outstanding problem of environmental activism is that despite decades of work and mountains of proof that civilization should change course, it has not. The new paradigm resolves this by introduction of the proposition that change resistance is the reason for this, and that if systemic changer resistance is analyzed as a separate problem it will quickly yield to root cause analysis, which will reveal deep solutions which have never been tried and have a high probability of success.

The second requirement is that "the new paradigm must promise to preserve a relatively large part of the concrete problem solving activity that has accrued to science through its predecessors." SIP accomplishes this by the concept of the proper coupling subproblem. The Normal Science of environmentalism considers proper coupling to be the problem to solve. SIP views it as merely one of three subproblems: how to overcome change resistance, how to achieve proper coupling, and how to avoid avoid excessive model drift. This decomposition preserves the "relatively large part of the concrete problem solving activity" that centers on proper coupling.

In other words, once environmentalists use the new insight that change resistance is the crux of the problem, then after it's overcome they can return to what they have been doing for so long: addressing the proper coupling part of the problem.

Thus the new paradigm is not that big a change after all. It's evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

References

(1) From the first edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, page 168, as cited in the Wikipedia entry on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, on May 30, 2008.