For identical quantum channels, order matters

Physicists have demonstrated that using two quantum channels in different orders can enhance a communication network's ability to transmit information—even, counterintuitively, when the channels are identical. This result ...

Why moderate beliefs rarely prevail

(Phys.org)—We live in a world of extremes, where being fervently for or against an issue often becomes the dominant social ideology – until an opposing belief that is equally extreme emerges to challenge the first one, ...

Model shows how scientific paradigms rise and fall

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientific concepts such as climate change, nanotechnology, and chaos theory can sometimes spring up and capture the attention of both the scientific and public communities, only to be replaced by new ideas ...

How researchers solved a decades-old mystery regarding cell volume

A psychedelic movie of stressed cells under a microscope sent a team of kidney physiologists and biologists from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University on a journey to solve a mystery: How do cells control ...

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Paradigm

The word paradigm ( /ˈpærədaɪm/) has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" (paradeigma), "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" (paradeiknumi), "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" (para), "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" (deiknumi), "to show, to point out".

The original Greek term παράδειγμα (paradeigma) was used in Greek texts such as Plato's Timaeus (28A) as the model or the pattern that the Demiurge (god) used to create the cosmos. The term had a technical meaning in the field of grammar: the 1900 Merriam-Webster dictionary defines its technical use only in the context of grammar or, in rhetoric, as a term for an illustrative parable or fable. In linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure used paradigm to refer to a class of elements with similarities.

The word has come to refer very often now to a thought pattern in any scientific discipline or other epistemological context. The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines this usage as "a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated; broadly: a philosophical or theoretical framework of any kind."

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