The Internet: A Revolution in Human Conscience 3

development of Judaism and we can speculate on how Judaism will be affected by the transition from print to electrification. But what kind of medium is the Internet? Is it a cold medium that involves us or a hot medium that makes us passive?

In order to assess the possible impact of the Internet on the development of Judaism , let us refer to the philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn . In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , he introduced the concept of paradigm shift. The received wisdom about the development of science is that it is evolutionary, that each generation builds on the previous generation, extending knowledge one step further.~~ Kuhn challenged this notion. He suggested that the new generation did not, simply build on the concepts of the past, but created a whole new way of looking at things. Thus it integrated the past into the new paradigm. In other words the history of science is not evolution, but leaps. New paradigms don’t emerge from the previous paradigm; they are invented by the human mind. If Kuhn is right, perhaps more than science operates this way? Maybe, the development of all thought proceeds, not by evolution, but by leaps.

We know that the Talmud did not develop out of the Torah , but was a paradigm shift. If you start with the Talmud and work your way back, you would never arrive at the Torah . The Talmud integrates the Torah into its own paradigm through the use of its own methodology which suits the new paradigm. This, of course, would contradict nineteenth century liberal, Reform theories about the evolutionary development of Judaism . It implies that Reform did not evolve out of medieval Judaism ; it was a paradigm shift . Perhaps, the secret of Jewish survival is not an evolution operating under intrinsic historical laws, but the mysterious, Jewish creative ability to recreate Judaism in every historical paradigm shift. So the Talmud was a paradigm shift and integrated the Torah into its