dominant paradign

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Such a paradigm shift occurred in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. During this time, the Catholic Church was dominant, and its theological world view included the beliefs that, the world was a flat planet located in the centre of the universe, and that humans were created in the image of God. This theological paradigm, however, was challenged by the findings of Christopher Columbus and other' explorers, and by the discoveries of scientists such as Copernicus and Galileo. Gradually, the theological paradigm was replaced by a scientific paradigm that offered coherent and logical explanations for the radical new evidence uncovered by these pioneers. Fundamentally, the scientific paradigm perceives the universe as a 'giant machine', not unlike a motor vehicle, that can be 'disassembled' in order to see how it operates. Once these subcomponents and their functions are perfectly understood, then future events within the universe can be predicted with certainty. Underlying the scientific paradigm is 'scientific method', which reveals knowledge through a rigorously objective procedure of hypothesis formulation and testing .

By the nineteenth century science was established as the dominant paradigm within Europe, and within the world as a whole through the colonial expansion of England, France, Spain and other major 'western' powers. One of the major characteristics of the scientific paradigm to emerge during this evolution was the belief that humans are the centre of all things. This anthropocentric view holds that humans are apart from and superior to the natural environment, which has no intrinsic value on its own, but only extrinsic value in relation to its perceived usefulness for people. Thus, oil came to be valued because of its usefulness as a fuel and source for plastic, while swamps were assigned little or no value, as they were perceived to be economically unproductive.

Related to this is the belief in 'progress', or the idea that the application of science and technology will result in a continuous improvement in the quality of human life. Ideologically, the view that progress could best be attained through a capitalist economic system became widely accepted in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States. This perspective emphasises the role of individual incentive and the free market, which determines the value of various elements of the natural environment, such as oil and swampland. These nature-based aspects of the scientific paradigm are described by Knill (1991) as comprising the dominant western environmental paradigm.