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Around the same period, in 1935, Ludwik Fleck, a Polish medical microbiologist published his Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact which used a case study in the field of medicine (of the development of the disease concept of Syphilis) to present a thesis about the social nature of knowledge, and in particular science and scientific 'thought styles' (Denkstil) which are the epistemological, conceptual and linguistic styles of scientific (but also non-scientific) 'thought collectives' (Denkkollektiv). This work's importance was not noticed, as [Thaddeus J. Trenn] editor of the English edition published in 1979 writes, 'Fleck's pioneering monograph was published at almost the same time as Karl Popper's Logik der Forschung. But, developed in very different cognitive styles, the books met with contrasting response. In Popper's own words, his book "was surprisingly successful, far beyond Vienna. [...]" [...] It is perhaps most diagnostic that the book received no review notice at all in George Sarton's Isis, by then the leading international journal of the history of science.' [pp. xvii-xviii]. As evident from Fleck's book's title, it revolves around the notion that epistemologically, there is nothing stable or realistically true or false about any scientific fact. A fact has a 'genesis' which is grounded in certain theoretic grounds and many times other obscure and fuzzy notions, and it 'develops' as it is subject to dispute and additional research by other scientists. Fleck's work, unlike Hessen's focuses more on the epistemologic and language factors that affect scientific discovery, innovation and progress or development, while Hessen's work focuses on socio-political factors. Fleck's work was one of the major influences noted by Thomas S. Kuhn which lead to the writing his Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn also wrote the foreword to Fleck's English translation. |
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