ABSTRACT This essay explores ways to “write together” the awkwardly jointed histories of “science” and “medicine”—but it also includes other “arts” (in the old sense) and technologies. It draws especially on the historiography of medicine, but I try to use terms that are applicable across all of science, technology, and medicine (STM). I stress the variety of knowledges and practices in play at any time and the ways in which the ensembles change. I focus on the various relations of “science” (...) and “medicine,” as they were understood for a succession of periods—from mainly agricultural societies, through industrial societies, to our biomedical present—trying to sketch a history that encompasses daily practices and understandings as well as major conceptual and technical innovations. The model is meant to facilitate inquiry across topics and across times, including those to come. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the role of regulation in the shaping new scientific facts. Fleck chose to study the origins of a diagnostic test for a disease seen as a major public health problem, that is, a ‘scientific fact’ that had a direct and immediate influence outside the closed universe of fundamental scientific research. In 1935, when Fleck wrote his book, Genesis and development of a scientific fact, he believed that the tumultuous early history of the Wassermann reaction had come (...) to an end, and that this reaction was successfully stabilized through the standardization of laboratory practices and thanks to the rise of a specific professional segment—the serologists. He could not have predicted that in the 15 years that followed the publication of his book, regulatory measures—barely metioned in his historical narrative—would play a key role in the destabilization of the original meaning of this reaction. The introduction of mass screening for syphilis—mainly via legislation that introduced obligatory premarital tests and promoted the testing of pregnant women—weakened in fine the link between Wassermann serology and infection by the etiological agent of syphilis, the bacterium Treponema pallidum. Fleck elected to study the Wassermann reaction because of its novelty, its complexity, and because it became the focus of a controversy regarding its origins. However, the Wassermann reaction was also one the first examples of a medical technology regulated by the state and incorporated into legal dispositions. It may therefore be seen as an exemplary case of the close intertwining of scientific investigations, their practical applications and regulatory practices. (shrink)

Ludwik Fleck’s theory of thought-styles has been hailed as a pioneer of constructivist science studies and sociology of scientific knowledge. But this consensus ignores an important feature of Fleck’s epistemology. At the core of his account is the ideal of ‘objective truth, clarity, and accuracy’. I begin with Fleck’s account of modern natural science, locating the ideal of scientific objectivity within his general social epistemology. I then draw on Fleck’s view of scientific objectivity to improve upon reflexive accounts of the (...) origin and development of the theory of thought-styles, and reply to objections that Fleck’s epistemological stance is self-undermining or inconsistent. Explicating the role of scientific objectivity in Fleck’s epistemology reveals his view to be an internally consistent alternative to recent social accounts of scientific objectivity by Harding, Daston and Galison. I use these contrasts to indicate the strengths and weaknesses of Fleck’s innovative social epistemology, and propose modifications to address the latter. The result is a renewed version of Fleck’s social epistemology, which reconciles commitment to scientific objectivity with integrated sociology, history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

This article argues that the meaning of the word ‘autism’ experienced a radical shift in the early 1960s in Britain which was contemporaneous with a growth in epidemiological and statistical studies in child psychiatry. The first part of the article explores how ‘autism’ was used as a category to describe hallucinations and unconscious fantasy life in infants through the work of significant child psychologists and psychoanalysts such as Jean Piaget, Lauretta Bender, Leo Kanner and Elwyn James Anthony. Theories of autism (...) were then associated both with schizophrenia in adults and with psychoanalytic styles of reasoning. The closure of institutions for ‘mental defectives’ and the growth in speech therapy services in the 1960s and 1970s encouraged new models for understanding autism in infants and children. The second half of the article explores how researchers such as Victor Lotter and Michael Rutter used the category of autism to reconceptualize psychological development in infants and children via epidemiological studies. These historical changes have influenced the form and function of later research into autism and related conditions. (shrink)

Ludwik Fleck is remembered for his monograph published in German in 1935. Reissued in 1979 as Genesis and development of a scientific fact Fleck’s monograph has been claimed to expound relativistic views of science. Fleck has also been portrayed as a prominent scientist. The description of his production of a vaccine against typhus during World War II, when imprisoned in Buchenwald, is legendary in the scholarly literature. The claims about Fleck’s scientific achievements have been justified by referring to his numerous (...) publications in international scientific journals. Though frequently mentioned, these publications have scarcely been studied. The present article discusses differences in interpretation and evaluation of science in relation to the background of the interpreters. For this purpose Fleck’s scientific publications have been scrutinized. In conjunction with further sources reflecting the desperate situation at the time in question, the results of the study account for a more restrained picture of Fleck’s scientific accomplishments. Furthermore, based on the review of the latter, certain demands characterizing good science could be articulated. The restricted possibilities of those not trained in science or not possessing field specific knowledge, evaluating science are discussed, as are also formal aspects of scientific papers and questions related to research ethics. (shrink)