Hello all,
        Having just read Ludwik Fleck's _Genesis and Development of a
Scientific Fact_ for the first time, and reread bits of Kuhn as a
result, I'm enjoying this thread, and would like to thank Norman for
starting it off! I'm wondering if others on the list think--as I do,
upon a first read--that Fleck's work is a nice antidote to some of the
problems with Kuhn (eg. the 21 different meanings of paradigm shift
identified by Margaret Masterman). (Let me say though that I'm with
Hollinger that Kuhn IS good to think with despite his problems--and
thanks go to Kuhn for saving Fleck from permanent obscurity). Although
Fleck's concept of thought-style (his closest equivalent to Kuhn's
paradigm) has its own problems, it seems to me that some of his
arguments are germinal here. Kuhn doesn't like Fleck's distinction
between active and passive knowledge (see his foreword to _Genesis..._),
but it strikes me as a quite useful way of dealing with the
subjective/objective dichotomy in  scientific research--such that active
parts of knowledge involve subconscious choices in protocols, theories
etc. on the part of researchers in line with dominant frameworks, and
passive elements--what we would call objective findings--flow from those
active choices but nevertheless really advance knowledge. Versus some
other approaches that seem to have trouble accounting both for the
social elements of science and the fact that it so often _works_. And
Fleck's distinction between journal science (tentative, exploratory,
vanguard) and vademecum science (textbook science, consensus statements
in medicine, or 'normal science' in Kuhn's formulation) also seems
useful as a way of thinking about both change and consensus in science.
Third, versus paradigm shift, Fleck argues (as Norman did in an earlier
post) that innovations in science in most cases do not result in a
massive change in thought-style, but rather are incorporated into the
thought-style, in which many remnants of the old ways of thinking remain
quite comfortably alongside new facts. Fourth--and here is an advantage
over Kuhn I think--Fleck's discussion of the feedback loop in exoteric
(expert) and esoteric (lay) circles in thought collectives seems helpful
in thinking about the relationship between scientists and publics and
between science and cultural stocks of knowledge. Many of the members of
this list will I suspect find Fleck too much of a relativist for their
liking, but he is quite clear, I think, that there is real growth in
medical knowledge, in large part _because of_ the social elements in
science. And his discussion of how puzzling and incoherent findings in
science push things along but then get Whiggishly reworked into
vademecum science once they are effectively operationalized seems useful
too in understanding the relationship between innovation and stasis.
        And in reading H. Tristram Engelhardt's article in _The Growth of
Medical Knowledge_ the other day, it seems important that we bear in
mind the specificity of particular scientific communities and the
differences between pure and applied sciences when we talk about the
epistemic workings of scientific communities--particularly important for
me in studying medical science where the goal is not so much truth as
effectivity (eg. as Engelhardt points out, medical classification
systems are often widely acknowledged as not approximating 'reality' but
as heuristic and practical devices that somehow must be brought to
'work'--this is certainly the case in the endometriosis classification
systems I'm studying). Fleck's case is based on the Wasserman reaction
as a test for syphilis, and my biomedical researcher friends often
comment on how findings and protocols must be "massaged" in order to be
put to work...perhaps Fleck works better for conceptualizing medical
knowledge than other, nonapplied sciences?
        I'm just starting to read published evaluations of Fleck. I'd be
interested in hearing from other members of the list who've read Fleck
as to what their reading is and whether they think I'm (a)
misinterpreting or (b) too excited about what I've just read!

cheers,
Emma Whelan
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Emma Whelan <[log in to unmask]>
Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University