Ludwik Fleck
Ludwik Fleck | |
---|---|
Born | Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (1935, German; 1979, English) | 11 July 1896
Influenced | Thomas Kuhn[2] Michel Foucault |
Ludwik Fleck (Polish pronunciation:
The concept of the "
Life
Fleck was born in
In 1920 he became an assistant to the famous typhus specialist
With
Between 1945 and 1952, he served as the head of the Institute of Microbiology of the School of Medicine of Maria Sklodowska-Curie University of Lublin. In 1952, he moved to Warsaw to become the Director of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Mother and Child State Institute. In 1954 he was elected a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Fleck's research during these years focused on the question of the behavior of leucocytes in infectious and stress situations. Between 1946 and 1957 he published 87 medical and scientific articles in Polish, French, English and Swiss journals. In 1951 Fleck was awarded the National Prize for Scientific Achievements and in 1955 the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.
In 1956, after a heart attack and the discovery that he was suffering from
The
Thought collective
Fleck wrote that the development of truth in scientific research was an unattainable ideal as different researchers were locked into thought collectives (or thought-styles). This means "that a pure and direct observation cannot exist: in the act of perceiving objects the observer, i.e. the epistemological subject, is always influenced by the epoch and the environment to which he belongs, that is by what Fleck calls the thought style".[10] Thought style throughout Fleck's work is closely associated with representational style. A "fact" was a relative value, expressed in the language or symbolism of the thought collective in which it belonged, and subject to the social and temporal structure of this collective. He argued, however, that within the active cultural style of a thought collective, knowledge claims or facts were constrained by passive elements arising from the observations and experience of the natural world. This passive resistance of natural experience represented within the stylized means of the thought collective could be verified by anyone adhering to the culture of the thought collective, and thus facts could be agreed upon within any particular thought style.[11] Thus while a fact may be verifiable within its own collective, it may be unverifiable in others. He felt that the development of scientific facts and concepts was not unidirectional and does not consist of just accumulating new pieces of information, but at times required changing older concepts, methods of observations, and forms of representation. This changing of prior knowledge is difficult because a collective attains over time a specific way of investigating, bringing with it a blindness to alternative ways of observing and conceptualization. Change was especially possible when members of two thought collectives met and cooperated in observing, formulating hypothesis and ideas. He strongly advocated comparative epistemology. He also notes some features of the culture of modern natural sciences that recognize provisionality and evolution of knowledge along the value of pursuit of passive resistances.[7] This approach anticipated later developments in social constructionism, and especially the development of critical science and technology studies.
Honors
- 1954: Fleck became a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
- 1955: He was honored with the Order of Polonia Restituta (Officer's Cross).
See also
- List of Polish people (Biology, medicine)
Bibliography
- ISBN 978-0393081015.
- Allen, Arthur (22 July 2014b). How Scientists Created A Typhus Vaccine in a 'Fantastic Laboratory' (Radio broadcast). NPR books author interviews. Fresh Air. Event occurred at time 3:33 PM ET.
- Allen, Arthur (23 July 2014c). "How a Jewish Doctor Duped the Nazis". Politico. Retrieved 20 July 2023.
- Aronova, Elena; Turchetti, Simone, eds. (2016). Science Studies during the Cold War and Beyond: Paradigms Defected. Palgrave Macmillan.
- Cohen, R.S..; Schnelle, T., eds. (1986). "The Problem of Epistemology (1936)". Cognition and Fact: Materials on Ludwik Fleck. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
- Fleck, Ludwik (1935). Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache – Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollektiv (in German). Basel: Schwabe und Co., Verlagsbuchhandlung. OCLC 257469753.
- Fleck, Ludwik (1979). Trenn, T.J.; Merton, Robert K.; ISBN 978-0-226-25324-4.
This is the first English translation of Fleck (1935)
- Fleck, Ludwik (1983). Schäfer, Lothar; Schnelle, Thomas (eds.). Erfahrung und Tatsache. Gesammelte Aufsätze [Experience and Fact. Collected Essays] (in German). Frankfurt am Main: ISBN 978-3-518-28004-1.
- Fleck, Ludwik (2011). Werner, Sylwia; Zittel, Claus (eds.). Denkstile und Tatsachen: Gesammelte Schriften und Zeugnisse [Styles of Thought and Facts: Collected Writings and Testimonies] (in German). Frankfurt am Main: ISBN 978-3-518-29553-3.
- LCCN 70107472.
- Matthäus, Jürgen (2018). Predicting the Holocaust: Jewish Organizations Report from Geneva on the Emergence of the "Final Solution," 1939–1942. Rowman & Littlefirled. ISBN 9781538121689.
- Olesko, Kathryn M. (24 December 2020). "Ludwik Fleck, Alfred Schutz, and Trust in Science: The Public Responsibility of Science Education in Challenging Times". HoST - Journal of History of Science and Technology. 14 (2): 50–72. .
- Sady, Wojciech (8 October 2021). "Ludwik Fleck". In Zalta, Edward N.; Nodelman, Uri (eds.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 23 July 2023.
- ISBN 978-3-031-24004-1.
- Sciortino, Luca (24 August 2021). "The Emergence of Objectivity: Fleck, Foucault, Kuhn and Hacking". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. 88 (1): 128–137. PMID 34166921.
- Siwecka, Sofia (2011). "Genesis and development of the "medical fact". Thought style and scientific evidence in the epistemology of Ludwik Fleck" (PDF). Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences. 4 (2): 37–39.
- Tansey, Tilli (16 July 2014). "Typhus and tyranny". doi:10.1038/511291a.
- Zittel, Claus (21 February 2012). "Ludwik Fleck and the concept of Style in the natural sciences". Studies in East European Thought. 64 (1–2): 53–79. S2CID 255071311.
External links
- Polish Philosophy Page: Ludwik Fleck at the Wayback Machine (archived January 15, 2008)
- "Ludwik Fleck Prize". Society for Social Studies of Science (4S). Retrieved 20 July 2023.
- "Investigation of epidemic typhus in the Ghetto of Lwów in 1941–1942" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-09-12. Retrieved 2023-07-20.
References
- ^ Kuhn 1970, p. vi.
- Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.[1]
- ^ Aronova & Turchetti (2016, p. 149): "some of [naukoznawstwo's] contributors (Kazimierz Twardowski, Maria Ossowska, Stanisław Ossowski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Florian Znaniecki, Ludwik Fleck, Stefan Amsterdamski) have gained international recognition."
- ^ a b Sady 2021.
- ^ Matthäus 2018, p. 10.
- ^ Tansey 2014.
- ^ a b Fleck 1979, pp. 118–120, 142–145.
- ^ Allen 2014a.
- ^ Allen 2014c.
- ^ Siwecka 2011.
- ^ Fleck 1979, pp. 101–102.