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.