At the Edge of Chaos

It took me the better part of eight years to fully understand what a’ paradigm’ was. I first encountered the word in ‘Jurassic Park’ (the novel) and was rather enamoured by it. It seemed full of promise, as a sufficiently esoteric word to be used in writing. There was a hitch, though: I did not fully understand what it meant. Despite the succinct explanation provided by the omniscient Michael Crichton, I was confused when it did not quite match its English dictionary meaning. At least, not in my head. Of course, I later understood that the subtle difference in meaning between the two sources was due to the difference in contexts: one scientific, one literary. In the former context, it means a model on which certain fundamental notions are based. In the latter, it means a perfect example. It is, of course more commonly used as a ‘paradigm shift’ i.e. a fundamental change in a model which changes the way we look and think about certain things. For instance, Copernicus’ hypothesis, fol