1. the Near-Eastern prophetic religions:
Judaism, Christianity and Islam
2. the Indian mystical religions:
Hinduism and Buddhism
3. the Far-Eastern wisdom religions of Japan and China:
Confucianism, Daoism
Paradigm shifts
The notion of “paradigm” and “paradigm shift” derives from Thomas
S. Kuhn, a physicist and historian of science. According to Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago
1962), a “paradigm” is “a whole constellation of convictions, values, procedures etc. which are held in common by the members of a given community”.
The paradigm notion is an interpretive model that Kuhn used to explain why the development of thinking in the natural sciences is not progessively continuous, but rather is marked by repeated crises giving rise to revolutionary paradigm shifts. Kuhn described how, in the natural sciences, the different paradigms or worldviews succeeded each other, showing where they interconnected and where they broke with their predecessors.
Hans Küng applied Kuhn's notion of paradigms to the study of theologies and of religions. He has shown that the history of religions can be interpreted as a succession of religious and theological paradigm shifts.
