Extended Commentary: Pandemic, Paradigm, and Philosophy in Social Science Research

A paradigm is also known as worldview, a description of the world indicates ways to find answers to any given phenomena. Crisis occurs in the social system when a paradigm can’t provide us with ways of producing knowledge due to some anomalies. The Covid-19 pandemic is one such anomaly, that neither ended nor has completely disappeared from our social world, posing a serious epistemic challenge to our research paradigms, be it scientific or social. Ontology, a (philosophical) inquiry of the ‘nature of the reality’ has itself changed due to the pandemic as the virtual and real worlds collide and the distinction between the two realities become ambiguous. Epistemology, a branch of philosophy that determines “how and what realities can be known?”  is determined by ontological assumptions.  It must be noted that the methodology, which is the philosophical justification of employing  particular types of research methods and techniques, is based on the philosophical branches of ontology and epistemology.  A catastrophe like the Covid-19 pandemic is predetermined, given that pandemic and devastating catastrophes are the watershed moments of human history. Hence, the paper argues for a new paradigm to understand the changing social realities while recognizing the limitations of the existing (research) paradigms to seek answers to the challenges posed by the pandemic. The recognition of the limitations in the existing research paradigms is necessary toward formulation of a new paradigm for newer ways of understanding and knowing changed social realities.