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Paradigm vs Hypothesis - What's the difference?

paradigm | hypothesis |

As nouns the difference between paradigm and hypothesis

is that paradigm is an example serving as a model or pattern; a template while hypothesis is used loosely, a tentative conjecture explaining an observation, phenomenon or scientific problem that can be tested by further observation, investigation and/or experimentation. As a scientific term of art, see the attached quotation. Compare to theory, and quotation given there.

paradigm

English

Alternative forms

* paradigma (archaic)

Noun

(en noun)
  • An example serving as a model or pattern; a template.
  • * 2000 , "":
  • According to the Fourth Circuit, “Coca-Cola” is “the paradigm of a descriptive mark that has acquired secondary meaning”.
  • * 2003 , Nicholas Asher and Alex Lascarides, Logics of Conversation , Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0 521 65058 5, page 46:
  • DRT is a paradigm example of a dynamic semantic theory,
  • (linguistics) A set of all forms which contain a common element, especially the set of all inflectional forms of a word or a particular grammatical category.
  • The paradigm of "go" is "go, went, gone."
  • A system of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality.
  • A conceptual framework—an established thought process.
  • A way of thinking which can occasionally lead to misleading predispositions; a prejudice. A route of mental efficiency which has presumably been verified by affirmative results/predictions.
  • A philosophy consisting of ‘top-bottom’ ideas (namely biases which could possibly make the practitioner susceptible to the ‘confirmation bias’).
  • Synonyms

    * (example) exemplar * (way of viewing reality) model, worldview * See also

    Derived terms

    * paradigmatic * paradigm shift * paradigmaticism

    References

    * * *

    hypothesis

    Noun

    (hypotheses)
  • (sciences) Used loosely, a tentative conjecture explaining an observation, phenomenon or scientific problem that can be tested by further observation, investigation and/or experimentation. As a scientific term of art, see the attached quotation. Compare to theory, and quotation given there.
  • * 2005 , Ronald H. Pine, http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/intelligent_design_or_no_model_creationism, 15 October 2005:
  • Far too many of us have been taught in school that a scientist, in the course of trying to figure something out, will first come up with a "hypothesis" (a guess or surmise—not necessarily even an "educated" guess). ... [But t]he word "hypothesis" should be used, in science, exclusively for a reasoned, sensible, knowledge-informed explanation for why some phenomenon exists or occurs. An hypothesis can be as yet untested; can have already been tested; may have been falsified; may have not yet been falsified, although tested; or may have been tested in a myriad of ways countless times without being falsified; and it may come to be universally accepted by the scientific community. An understanding of the word "hypothesis," as used in science, requires a grasp of the principles underlying Occam's Razor and Karl Popper's thought in regard to "falsifiability"—including the notion that any respectable scientific hypothesis must, in principle, be "capable of" being proven wrong (if it should, in fact, just happen to be wrong), but none can ever be proved to be true. One aspect of a proper understanding of the word "hypothesis," as used in science, is that only a vanishingly small percentage of hypotheses could ever potentially become a theory.
  • (general) An assumption taken to be true for the purpose of argument or investigation.
  • (grammar) The antecedent of a conditional statement.
  • Synonyms

    * supposition * theory * thesis * educated guess * guess * See also

    Derived terms

    * hypothesize * hypothetic * hypothetical * hypothetically