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- Convenor:
-
Krzysztof Abriszewski
(Nicolaus Copernicus University)
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- Location:
- C. Humanisticum AB 2.07
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 17 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Warsaw
Long Abstract:
Ludwik Fleck, a Polish-Jewish bacteriologist, philosopher, and historian of science and medicine, survived the Holocaust and worked as a professor of microbiology in Warsaw after WW II. He died four years after his emigration in Israel.
Today he is famous for his book on the making of scientific facts. He chose to write in German--the "lingua franca" of philosophy at that time--and he produced a witty and smart polemic against the "wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung" (the scientific world view) of the Vienna Circle and logical empiricism: instead of striving for context-free and emotionless thinking he emphasized the complexity of "thought styles" and their multiple realities.
Our interdisciplinary panel will discuss the extraordinary afterlives of Fleck's book: his "discovery" by one of its first and most influential English speaking readers, Thomas Kuhn, the difficulties of its translation, its probable impact on radical and social constructivism (a term Fleck was probably not familiar with during his lifetime), and the contradictory assessments of his impact on Science and Technology Studies. While Jon Harwood argued in 1986 that Fleck can only be of historical interest without any impact on the sociology of knowledge, Bruno Latour claimed in 2008 that Fleck's insights - even after 30 years of science studies - are still radical and revolutionary "still very far in the future".
We want to discuss Ludwik Fleck's multiple afterlives from historical, sociological, philological, and philosophical perspectives, wondering how many future lives there are yet to come.
The papers will be presented in the order shown and within one session
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 17 September, 2014, -Paper long abstract:
Ludwick Fleck's work isn't finished. He draw quite interesting and very useful model of science as a social entity - or better - as a social organisation of thinking. The power and weakness of this model dwell in his generality: the concepts of thought style and thought collective can be used in many different scientific and philosophic approaches with results dependent on inherent aims of kind of a school. That is the power of his work because it seems to be very handful and efficient for hermeneutic orientated philosophers as well as for medicine historians and sociologists of science. On the other hand, the Fleckian model of science absorbed by various discipline loses its clarity and uniformity. Even more - loses the chance to be an autonomous observation of scientific processes. When we say today, that scientific fact is constructed by the collective and Fleck can be seen as a ancestor of constructivism is - from my point of view - still far too little.
In my conference paper I'll try to complement the ideas of Fleck using systems theory, that was used in the discourse of Radical Constructivism. The model of collective thinking enriched by concepts of self-organisation, system boundary and contingency may become an original and practical research tool, allowing for empirical observations.
Paper long abstract:
The target audience of Ludwik Fleck's texts was his contemporary collective of philosophers of science, thus he wrote about 'truth', 'objectivity', 'observation', 'reality', 'discovery' and scientific 'fact'. The Metaphors he used to conceptualize these notions (inter alia Gestaltpsychologie metaphors) made these notions contradictory, he introduced his own terms (using the same metaphors) - not only 'thought style' and 'thought collective' but also for instance of 'active' and 'passive couplings' or 'elements of knowledge' and others. Communication failed. The "circulation" of Fleck's thoughts begun more or less 40 years after he had formulated his "philosophy". He tried to change the change of meaning some concepts to rapid. How did the "gestalt of Ludwik Fleck" change from a sophist (Dąmbska, 1937) to proponent of 'social ontology not a social epistemology' (Latour, 2006). What problems were found and what have been put in his theory by his positive recipients (like Kuhn, strong programme, Latour et al.)? My talk will trace the reception of his theory of science from the perspective of philology and translation studies - half of his legacy is in German, other half in Polish and worldwide reception is in English. On the basis of philological analysis of his philosophical writings I ask if Fleck invented any other concepts that could be developed in the studies of science and technology?
Paper long abstract:
(within the Panel: "The Multiple Afterlives of Ludwik Fleck (1896-1961): New Opportunities and Perspectives for and from STS", Bogdan Balicki, Paweł Jarnicki, Sandra Lang, Martina Schlünder)
This talk will discuss the structures of solidarity in the reception of Ludwik Fleck's theory and practical works. By giving an overview on the broad landscape of post-Fleckian thought style research I will present a revised methodological approach to scientific innovations, entanglements between science, science and politics, and especially the solidarities that play an important role in the emergence of scientific knowledge. According to Ludwik Fleck knowledge production must always be seen in the social circumstances within which it emerges. Scientists are not independent "geniuses"; they are real people interacting with concrete research groups, with real institutionalized hierarchies, correspondences, and media of communication that become manifest in solidarities among certain scientists and moments of competition with others. I will discuss the thought style as a specific moment of solidarity and the knowledge produced in conformity to it can be approached methodically by interdisciplinary analyses. Engagement with Fleck's ideas by a huge number of Flecksperts all over the world shows us how knowledge migration through esoteric and exoteric circles of thought collectives represent solidarities (and hostilities) between scientists and other persons involved into knowledge production.
Paper long abstract:
Improving by Translating? The Contorted History of the English Translation of Ludwik Fleck's "Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact"
In 1979 the University of Chicago Press published an English translation of Ludwik Fleck's German book on the development of scientific facts first released in 1935 by the Swiss publisher Schwabe Verlag. Even though several editors and translators were in charge of the project or contributing to it - among them the well known scholars Robert Merton and Thomas Kuhn - it turned out to be a (linguistically) difficult task to catapult Fleck's book from the margins of "old Europe" to the heart of Anglo-American academic elite institutions and programs. All together it took five years to translate a book of 150 pages. The English speaking editors and translators complained about Fleck's neologisms, were suspicious that his neologisms and writing style betrayed an incomplete mastery of the German language, and finally decided that the English translation should "improve(s) upon Fleck so far as style, accuracy, and readability are concerned". They even considered not translating major concepts of the book like "thought style" or "thought collective" and cutting half of the book's original title. Which kind of Fleckian theory do we encounter, then, in the English translation? My talk will explore the "relational history" of the two books. By including new archival sources from Robert Merton's and Thaddeus Trenn's papers I will explore the cultural and linguistic difficulties of this trajectory between continents, cultures, religions, times, and languages.