Abstract
Thomas Kuhn regarded the Copernican Revolution (CR) as the one which best illustrates the nature of scientific revolutions in the history of science. This is related with the essence of the paradigm in a Kuhnian sense that is a mental shift involving change in the theories, instruments, values and assumptions used to understand a set of phenomena. Copernicus had to change the well-established geocentric system, which functioned not only in the science of his day but also in the culture, tradition, social perception, and even the mentality of religious and political The concept of Paradigm of Unity (PU) is used to denote the societal activity of Chiara Lubich and the Focolare Movemen—in building the psychosocial infrastructure for unity in various social domains; for example, in the economy of communion, in politics (politicians for unity project), in public media (journalists for unity), in ecumenism and interreligious contacts (ecumenical and interreligious Focolari Centers). This conception is a great inspiration, a kind of Copernican revolution for the social sciences, which would motivate researchers in the social sciences to build their own research paradigm with a mental and methodological power and potentiality that could offer new vision to the social sciences (as Copernicus did in the natural sciences).
Highlights
Aristotle in his Rhetoric (1356 b 3) (Note 2) distinguishes two kinds of inferences that generate persuasion: enthymeme and paradigma
The discoverer should transfer this mental revolution into his or her social environment, i.e. research societies and social authorities. This means that the new vision of the researcher, his or her methods of investigation and outcomes should be formulated in such a way that it is understood and accepted by this social environment
As far as the paradigm of unity is concerned, its primary cognitive goal is to recognize human behavioral regularities in social contexts which lead towards creating a person’s internal unity with him/herself and with other persons, with the physical and natural environment, and with transcendental reality
Summary
Aristotle in his Rhetoric (1356 b 3) (Note 2) distinguishes two kinds of inferences that generate persuasion: enthymeme (ἐνθύμημα) and paradigma (παράδειγμα). Copernicus’ transformation of the paradigm from geocentric to heliocentric encompassed a stability of this new vision of the world, one based on the objective facts of empirical astronomical observation discovered by Copernicus himself and introduced with his own mathematical analysis (i.e., advanced trigonometrical relations). He did so in a well-prepared empirical, methodological and psychological way which we can observe, among others, in the dedicatory letter to his contemporary Pope Paul III—published as an introduction to his treatise De revolution bus orbium coelestium (Copernicus, 1543, 1996) (Note 4). One can pose the question: Is it really possible to identify a paradigm for the social sciences in a Kuhnian sense?
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