Fleck's Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact foregrounds claims traditionally excluded from reception, often regarded as opposed to fact, scientific claims that are increasingly seldom discussed in connection with philosophy of science save as examples of pseudoscience. I am especially concerned with scientists who question the epidemiological link between HIV and AIDS and who are thereby discounted—no matter their credentials, no matter the cogency of their arguments, no matter the sobriety of their statistics—but also with other classic examples of (...) so-called pseudoscience including homeopathy and other sciences, such as cold fusion. The pseudoscience version of the demarcation problem turns out to include some of the details that Latour articulates multifariously under a variety of species or kinds in his essay/interactive research project/monograph, ‘Biography of an Investigation’. Given the economic constraints of the current day, especially in the academy, the growing trend in almost all disc.. (shrink)

A curious feature of medical literature on the evaluation of diagnostic accuracy is the frequent deployment of circular arguments. Using a case study from the medical literature on the diagnosis of child abuse, I argue that this occurs because researchers fail to distinguish what Ludwik Fleck called the ‘active’ and ‘passive’ elements of knowledge. I review the scholarly literature on this aspect of Fleck’s epistemology to try to understand why it has not been put to more use in the medical (...) literature. Scholars have admitted that Fleck’s account of the active and passive elements of knowledge has confused them, and it has been read in at least three different ways: as an extreme form of relativism, as a form of realism, and as a more ‘middle way’ in-between these poles. I argue that he ‘middle way’ view is both more congenial with the bulk of Fleck’s work, and more palatable to medical practitioners. (shrink)

Using the conceptual tools of philosopher of science Ludwik Fleck, I argue that the reframing of autism as a neurodevelopmental spectrum disorder is constrained by two governing ‘styles of thought’ of contemporary psychiatry. The first is the historically conditioned ‘readiness for directed perception’ of, and thinking in terms of, ontologically distinct diseases. The clinical gaze of mental health professionals, the bureaucratic needs of health administration, the clinical and scientific utility of disease categories, and the practices of autism-oriented advocacy groups all (...) imply a bias toward thinking about autism and related disorders as ontologically distinct psychiatric and scientific entities. Second, within the ‘neuromolecular style of thought’, mental disorders are more and more located at the neurobiological levels of the brain. In autism research, one of the biggest challenges is the identification of autism's neurobiological singularity. However, at a moment when biological and categorical approaches toward autism face serious empirical difficulties, a balance is established that holds together these two styles of thought. With a need to account for some of the most persistent uncertainties and conflicts in autism research, namely ubiquitous heterogeneity and a failure to identify disease specific biomarkers, the reframing of autism as a neurodevelopmental spectrum disorder satisfies the scientific, institutional and socio-political needs for stability and homogenization. (shrink)

Kollaboration und Konkurrenz gibt es in der Wissenschaft zwischen Individuen oder verschiedenen Gruppen, größeren Organisationen, Schauplätzen und Nationalstaaten. Die Spannung zwischen individuellem Ansehen und Gruppenmeriten oder individuellem Ehrgeiz und Gruppenleistung ist der wissenschaftlichen Arbeit inhärent und trägt zu ihrem Erfolg bei. Die Autorin vergleicht zwei soziale Modelle der Wissenschaft, die entwickelt wurden, als Wissenschaftler im 20. Jahrhundert zunehmend begannen kollaborativ zu forschen: Michael Polanyis individualistische Freie-Markt-Republik der Wissenschaft und Ludwik Flecks Denkkollektiv. Diese beiden Modelle sollten Praktiken beschreiben und Ideale für (...) die Wissenschaft im allgemeinen auf der Grundlage der Erfahrungen spezialisierter Forschungsgruppen vorschreiben. Die Arbeitsgruppen von Linus Pauling und Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin dienen hier der Erläuterung der beiden Modelle. Die Autorin untersucht verschiedene Auswirkungen von Paulings und Hodgkins Praktiken auf das persönliche Ansehen des Direktors und der Mitarbeiter, und schließt mit der Frage, ob eine kollektive Wissenschaft möglich ist. (shrink)

Abstract„What thinks in man, is not he himself, but his social community.“ These words by the early sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838–1909) were quoted several times by Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961) and seem to be in complete agreement with his own theory of thought collectives. The assumption that even scientific ideas were not so much generated by the scientist as an autonomous individual but rather by and within the social environment was still considered provocative by Fleck in the 1930s. This article will (...) explore the implications of this assumption by comparing Fleck with Gumplowicz as well as with Tadeusz Bilikiewicz (1901–1980), a psychiatrist, philosopher and historian of medicine working like Fleck in the cultural milieu of Lwów/lemberg. (shrink)

This paper aims to trace individual as well as collective aspects of ‘sight styles’ in diagnostic computed tomography. Radiologists need to efficiently translate the visualized data from the living human body into a reliable and significant diagnosis. During this process, their visual thinking and the created images are incorporated into a complex network of other visualizations, communication strategies, professional traditions, and (tacit) visual knowledge. To investigate the interplay of collective as well as individual dimensions of diagnostic seeing, the concept of (...) ‘sight collective’ (Sehkollektiv) is developed. On the one hand, this concept is based on critical reading of Ludwik Fleck’s epistemological writings and his notions of thought collective (Denkkollektiv) and thought style (Denkstil). On the other hand, it is tested by means of qualitative empirical studies in a radiological university clinic (participatory observations and informal interviews). By employing this approach, the paper traces the collective foundations of a certain diagnostic sight. Moreover, it shows how the individual abilities of radiologists to perform stylized seeing rely remarkably on software-based interactions with the processed images and on tacit dimensions of visual knowledge. (shrink)

Kollaboration und Konkurrenz gibt es in der Wissenschaft zwischen Individuen oder verschiedenen Gruppen, größeren Organisationen, Schauplätzen und Nationalstaaten. Die Spannung zwischen individuellem Ansehen und Gruppenmeriten oder individuellem Ehrgeiz und Gruppenleistung ist der wissenschaftlichen Arbeit inhärent und trägt zu ihrem Erfolg bei. Die Autorin vergleicht zwei soziale Modelle der Wissenschaft, die entwickelt wurden, als Wissenschaftler im 20. Jahrhundert zunehmend begannen kollaborativ zu forschen: Michael Polanyis individualistische Freie-Markt-Republik der Wissenschaft und Ludwik Flecks Denkkollektiv. Diese beiden Modelle sollten Praktiken beschreiben und Ideale für (...) die Wissenschaft im allgemeinen auf der Grundlage der Erfahrungen spezialisierter Forschungsgruppen vorschreiben. Die Arbeitsgruppen von Linus Pauling und Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin dienen hier der Erläuterung der beiden Modelle. Die Autorin untersucht verschiedene Auswirkungen von Paulings und Hodgkins Praktiken auf das persönliche Ansehen des Direktors und der Mitarbeiter, und schließt mit der Frage, ob eine kollektive Wissenschaft möglich ist. (shrink)