Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact

Ludwik Fleck, Thaddeus J. Trenn, Robert K. Merton, Frederick Bradley, Thaddeus J. Trenn

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780226190341
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Biological Sciences

Originally published in German in 1935, this monograph anticipated solutions to problems of scientific progress, the truth of scientific fact and the role of error in science now associated with the work of Thomas Kuhn and others. Arguing that every scientific concept and theory—including his own—is culturally conditioned, Fleck was appreciably ahead of his time. And as Kuhn observes in his foreword, "Though much has occurred since its publication, it remains a brilliant and largely unexploited resource.""To many scientists just as to many historians and philosophers of science facts are things that simply are the case: they are discovered through properly passive observation of natural reality. To such views Fleck replies that facts are invented, not discovered. Moreover, the appearance of scientific facts as discovered things is itself a social construction, a made thing. A work of transparent brilliance, one of the most significant contributions toward a thoroughly sociological account of scientific knowledge."—Steven Shapin, Science

Commentary and Annotation

Biographical Sketch

Ludwik Fleck was an unusual man, a humanist with an encyclopedic knowledge. He had a very keen sense of humor and was erudite in many fields. In his person were united the excellence of a distinguished microbiologist and the depth and insight of a great philosopher.

Fleck was born in Lvov, Poland, 11 July 1896, to Maurycy Fleck and Sabina (neé Herschdörfer). He attended grammar school and high school in Lvov, where the German language still dominated from the period when Lvov, as Lemberg, had belonged to the Austrian Empire. In 1922, at the age of twenty-six, Fleck received his medical degree from Lvov University. From 1920 to 1923 he was assistant to Dr. Rudolf Weigl, well known for his research on typhus, both at the Typhus Investigation Laboratory of Lvov University and at the State Hospital for Infectious Diseases. He later specialized in bacteriology in Vienna. From 1925 to 1927 Fleck was head of the bacteriological and chemical laboratories of the State Hospital in Lvov. He spent the year 1927 in Vienna (during the heyday of the Vienna Circle), working in the State Serotherapeutic Institute under the direction of Dr. Kraus. From 1928 he was head of the bacteriological laboratory of the Social Sick Fund in Lvov until his dismissal in 1935—an anti-Jewish measure.

This sketch is based on correspondence and documents from the Fleck estate provided through the kindness of Mrs. Ernestina Fleck and Professor Marcus A. Klingberg, Israel Institute for Biological Research, Ness-Ziona, Israel.

By 1935 Fleck had already published extensively on various aspects of general serology, hematology, experimental medicine, immunology, and bacteriology. Among the specific topics of his research were the serology of typhus fever, syphilis, and a variety of pathogenic microorganisms. Before World War II, Fleck carried out extensive research on epidemic typhus fever. He developed an original method to obtain a vaccine and a diagnostic skin test, which he designated the “exanthin reaction.” This was internationally confirmed and is mentioned in textbooks. Besides his specialized scientific research on cytoserology and infectious diseases (including the concept of infection), Fleck published seven papers on methodology of science, some articles on the methodology of scientific observation, on principles of medical knowledge, on the history of discoveries, etc. He also developed an original theory about thought style and thought collectives which he formulated in the monograph translated above. Completed in 1934, the work was published in 1935 in Switzerland (because political conditions in 1935 did not permit a Jew to publish in Germany) and was widely discussed in Poland, Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland.

Between 1935 and 1939 Fleck worked in private practice at Lvov in his private microbiological laboratory, where he could also pursue his research. It was here that he continued his investigations into the variability of streptococci and the etiology of pemphigus vulgaris. He examined the role of normal sera on the course of serologic reactions, found a new method to strengthen the sensitivity of the Wassermann reaction, and discovered an original method for distinguishing true serological reactions from pseudoreactions. In December 1939, after the Russian takeover of Lvov (it is today just within the Ukrainian Republic’s borders), Fleck was made director of the City Microbiological Laboratory. At the same time he was appointed to the teaching staff in the microbiology department of the State Medical School in Lvov. Until 1941 he also served as head of the microbiology department of the State Bacteriological Institute in Lvov as well as consultant in immunology and serology at the State Institute of Mother and Child Welfare in that city.

During the German occupation of Lvov from 1941, Fleck was director of the bacteriological laboratory of the Jewish Hospital there until the following December. Concerned with the severe typhus epidemic which arose under the ghetto conditions, he succeeded with very primitive means to develop a rapid diagnostic test for typhus, which permitted early detection and isolation. The excretion of a specific ...