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Ludwik Fleck and the concept of style in the natural sciences

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Abstract

Ludwik Fleck is a pioneer of the contemporary social constructionist trend in scientific theory, where his central concept of thinking style has become standard fare. Yet the concept is too often misunderstood and simplified with serious consequences not only for Fleck studies. My essay situates Fleck’s concept of thinking style in the historical context of the 1920s and ‘30s, when the notion of style was first applied to the natural sciences, in order to illustrate the uniqueness of Fleck’s concept among the uses of style by his contemporaries and, finally, to examine the epistemological, methodological, and political consequences of this distinction.

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Notes

  1. On Fleck's style concept compare: Buchdahl (1983), Hacking (1985, 1992), Wessely (1991), Rochel de Camargo (2002), Babich (2003a, b), Hörl (2004), Janik (2006), Pankow (2007). On the subject of style in science in general: Dittmann (1967), Gauger (1980), Gumbrecht and Pfeiffer (1986), Frank (1992), Daston and Otte (1991), Myers (1991), Otte (1991), Weiss (1991, 1997), Crombie (1994), Vicedo (1995), Ginzburg (1998), Gayon (1999), Moulines (1997), Davidson (2002). Further references in the selected bibliography by Lutz Danneberg under: http://fheh.org/images/fheh/material/disziplin-schule-stil-v02.pdf—Cited 05 Aug 2010.

  2. The widely held view, that Fleck had found no resonance in his lifetime, is false, as attested by 19 overwhelmingly positive reviews in nine different countries, various disciplines and organs, from medical journals to cultural magazines, from the pens of overwhelmingly prominent specialists in their fields. Compare: Fehr (2011).

  3. Nietzsche admittedly demanded that one must structure one’s life like a work of art, thus giving it style, and with the style, also improve the thoughts, but he primarily demanded improvement of the language: “Den Stil verbessern—das heißt den Gedanken verbessern, und gar Nichts weiter!—Wer dies nicht sofort zugiebt, ist auch nie davon zu überzeugen!”—(Nietzsche 1980, 610). Nonetheless, Nietzsche makes remarks which occasionally go further, such as when he referred to the time between Leibniz and Schopenhauer “mit ihrem Zopf und Begriffsspinngewebe” as a “Art Barokko im Reiche der Philosophie” (ibid., 69) and thus characterizes a philosophical epoch with an art-historical style concept.

  4. Compare: “Zur Soziologie des Wissens kann eine solche systematisch ideengeschichtliche Vorarbeit nur werden, wenn das Verankertsein dieser geistigen Standorte und der verschiedenen ‘Denkstile’ in das dahinter stehende historisch-sozial determinierte Sein zur Frage wird” (Mannheim 1925, 641); but also compare earlier: Mannheim (1923 [1921/22]). On Mannheim: Barboza (2005).

  5. Compare Cassirer’s title: Lessings Denkstil (1968 [1917]) and Cassirer (1922). In the preface to the first volume of his Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (1923, 10), Cassirer already speaks, for example with a view toward Kant’s understanding of reality, of “einer Art Stilgesetz des Denkens.” Already in 1910, Avicenna was praised by Franz Strunz (1910, 51) as a “genialer Darsteller im Form- und Denkstil.”

  6. Compare Olschki (1927, 219), who writes: “Und so schuf er (Galilei) einen wissenschaftlichen Stil, indem er Dinge selbst sprechen ließ.”

  7. Upon closer inspection, however, the question of the transfer between philosophy and art history turns out to be complicated: The title of Wölfflin’s book already alludes to formulations in Cassirer’s book, published in 1910: Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit. Cassirer describes there with “wissenschaftlichen Grundbegriffen […] ein Grundsystem letzter allgemeiner Begriffe und Voraussetzungen, [mit welchem] eine Epoche die Mannigfaltigkeit des Stoffes, den ihr Erfahrung und Beobachtung bieten, meistert und zur Einheit zusammenfügt.” (Cassirer 1911, V). As much for perception as for artistic execution, these basic concepts constitute the form of the object which Cassirer specifies as “geistige Auffassungsweise” since it gives an object a certain meaning, a singular content. Cassirer understands his basic concepts thus as intellectual symbols for the orderings and functional combinations within what is real (ibid., 3).

  8. Husserl also stated in his “Krisis-Schrift”: “Things and happenings” are “bound a priori through the invariant form of the concrete world” (II9b, 31).

  9. Crombie’s comparative historical anthropology of (European) thinking distinguishes six style types: 1. postulating according to mathematical example; 2. experimentation; 3. the hypothetical construction of analogical models; 4. taxonomy; 5. statistics; 6. historical genesis. According to Crombie, styles develop in succession, whereby each mature style remains, thus all styles exist today and can be freely chosen. With Crombie, style is almost identical with method.

  10. On the problem of the style concept and possibilities of saving it, see: Bredekamp (2008).

  11. Without mentioning Riegl, Gebhardt uses the concept of style-desire as a style-unit-producing category that makes possible comparisons between architecture, creative art, and philosophy; but then he suggests understanding the problem of style transformation as the result of “Blutmischung und Rassenverschmelzung” (Gebhardt 1927, 161). Gebhardt connects the style-concept and race, not, however, with the goal of exclusion but with the belief in the fertility of a productive mixing of races. For this, he finds his guiding lines in Wölfflin, whom he amply quotes. Dilthey’s student Hermann Nohl (1929) tried to typologize worldviews (dualistic, pantheistic, and naturalistic) and then to correlate them with artistic styles, but not in such a way that philosophy is described in a style-appropriate way; on the contrary, artistic styles are interpreted through worldviews.

  12. Compare, for example, Günther (1926).

  13. And on the reception: Kluge (1977), Lepper (2006).

  14. Compare Duhem (1908, 1915).

  15. Cfr. Wolters (2004).

  16. Spengler obviously drew heavily from Wölfflin’s model, in the wake of whose transfer onto the cultural-historical, mathematics transforms itself into art whose “empire of numbers” next to the “empire of sounds, lines and colors” was declared the “image of world-form” and whose “language of forms” was recognized as related to “that of the adjacent great arts” (ibid., 82). “Mathematik ist also auch eine Kunst. Sie hat ihre Stile und Stilperioden. Sie ist nicht […] der Substanz nach unveränderlich, sondern wie jede Kunst von Epoche zu Epoche unvermerkten Wandlungen unterworfen” (ibid., 83) Spengler’s comparative morphology of Weltanschauungen is however basically different from Fleck’s comparative thinking-style research. Allan Janik claims nonetheless that Spengler is the source for Fleck’s thinking-style concept. See: Janik (2006).

  17. See in particular his essay „Zur Krise der Wirklichkeit“ [1929]. In Fleck (2011, 52–69).

  18. See further to this discussion: Feyerabend (1984), Frank (1992), Steinbrenner (1995).

  19. The special role of medicine results precisely from the fact that it does not treat any normal, average cases, but studies aberrant phenomena. It therefore seeks, especially with the help of statistics, laws for abnormal phenomena (Fleck 1986, 42; 2011, 42) and the abstraction process, driven quite far as a result, creates category concepts whose “fictivity is significantly greater than in any other area of knowledge.” Furthermore, one can only study units of disease in their various stages.

  20. “If the individual was strong enough, and his qualities were not only those of a pioneer but those of a leader, then his style became universally accepted into the body of science” (Fleck 1986, 51; 2011, 57).

  21. Fleck’s set out his description as a criticism of the scientific-historical genius cult. His declared goals are “to prove that (1) a community, a certain thinking-collective and not a single individual, was the author of this time period (as of the previous ones). August Wassermann was—as are all individuals in all other successful scientific discoveries—only a person who represented this collective. (2) But that to which this narrower collective intentionally aspired, however, was completely different from what he finally achieved. (3) The driving force of perception formed—also here—not just any rational motives, but that specific social mood with regard to syphilis… Finally, therefore, it was just this mood which triumphed, not the conscious idea which Wassermann and his colleagues had had before. (4) Even in the very course of producing and demonstrating the long-sought-after blood sample, a specific development of a thinking-style was taking place at the same time, which in the end so determined and changed the scientific concept and the scientific technique that the first attempts by Wassermann and his colleagues were incomprehensible and irreproducible. And even those persons who had themselves worked on the experiments finally gave up trying to understand their initial work.” "How the Bordet-Wassermann Reaction Came to Be and How does a Scientific Discovery in General Come to Be?" [1934]”. In: Fleck 2011, 181–210, see 190.

  22. And compare Fleck (1979, 42); Fleck (1980, 58).

  23. The investigation of national thinking-styles has contributed in recent times to the boom in interest in Fleck’s ideas. Compare, for example: Galtung (1985), Nicolson (1989), Maienschein (1991), Reingold (1991), Harwood (1993), Crowley (2001), Amsterdamska (2004).

  24. »Wieviel von dem, was wir tun, besteht darin, den Stil des Denkens zu ändern, und wieviel von dem, was ich tue, besteht darin, den Stil des Denkens zu ändern, und wieviel tue ich, um andere zu überzeugen, ihren Denkstil zu ändern. In einem gewissen Sinn mache ich Propaganda für einen Denkstil und gegen einen anderen. Ich verabscheue den anderen ehrlich. Außerdem versuche ich zu sagen, was ich denke.« Wittgenstein (1970, p. 44).

  25. Fleck quotes from: Gumplowicz (1905, p. 269), Jerusalem (1924), and Lévy-Bruhl (1921).

  26. Here Thomas Kuhn’s Crisis Theorem obviously preluded the declaration of shift of paradigm; however, Fleck and not Kuhn was forced to rely on the minimally plausible religious model of conversion in order to describe the change in conviction. Compare also: Köchy (2005).

  27. Compare Fleck (1986, 102; 2011, 199–201, 287–293).

  28. “Thought style […] it’s a definite constraint on thought, and even more; it is the entirety of intellectual preparedness or readiness for one particular way of seeing and acting and no other. The dependence of any scientific fact upon thought style is therefore evident” (Fleck, 1979, p. 64; 1980, p. 85).

  29. Flecks concept of resistance advice reminds one of Wittgenstein’s spade, which suddenly bends back when it meets the hard cliff of reality. Philosophische Untersuchungen § 217. »›Wie kann ich einer Regel folgen?‹—wenn das nicht eine Frage nach den Ursachen ist, so ist es eine nach der Rechtfertigung dafür, dass ich so nach ihr handle. Habe ich die Begründungen erschöpft, so bin ich nun auf dem harten Felsen angelangt, und mein Spaten biegt sich zurück. Ich bin dann geneigt zu sagen: ›So handle ich eben.‹« Fleck, too, describes here a "baseless action," but the hard cliff proved to be a construct for him (compare Fleck (1980, 124, 129)).

  30. On the discussions of the time on Kunstwollen see: Hart (1993).

  31. Fleck’s descriptions, saturated with concrete research practice, make Hacking’s opposing position appear to be a philosophical pipe dream. Compare: Hacking (1981).

  32. See, for instance, Fleck (2011, 126–171). To expect that illustrations mimetically depict reality is, according to Fleck, not only illusory in the area of microscope images but also when viewing macroscopic images. If one views the “oldest anatomical illustrations, we at first become aware of their schematic and primitively symbolic character: we see schemes in conventionally uniform positions, the organs are symbolically suggested, such as the circular path in the chest cavity which is supposed to represent the circulatory path of the breath in the chest, or beneath it, to the right, the schematic limp liver. Before us lie thus sense images which likely bring to depiction the contemporary view, but not the form faithful to nature—as corresponding to our views. When, for example, intestinal twists are shown, we don’t thus see a certain number of sections mounted in a certain way, but snail-like lines which symbolize the twists” (Fleck 2011, 242). There are thus, in principle, no true-to-nature illustrations in an objective sense, the thinking-style creates reality, not unlike other products of culture (Fleck 1986, 112; 2011, 301) and only from within a thinking-style is it possible to speak of a naturalistic representation. The gap between nature and culture disappears, so “truth” is then nothing other than “a current stage in the changes of a thinking-style” (Fleck 1986, 111; 2011, 301). Compare also the drawings in Schauen, Sehen, Wissen (Fleck 1986, 129; 2011, 390–413). There, Fleck refers quite uncertainly to teachings of the “psychology” of the seeing of form (Fleck 1980, 121ff). Thus far it has not been possible to determine exactly from where his examples arise. Schnelle supposes that Fleck borrows from the Graz School of Gestalt psychology of Alexius Meinong and Christian von Ehrenfels, since it had been present in Lemberg through Twardowski (Schnelle 1982, 152–158). The only concrete hint which Fleck gives, however, is found in Fleck (1986, 26) and Fleck (1980, 39, footnote 4) and mentions a combined lecture of Wolfgang Metzger which presents works on Gestalt theory in the music psychology of Erich von Hornbostel (Metzger 1929). Hornbostel, whom Fleck also mentions in Das Problem einer Theorie des Erkennens, was part of the Berliner School of Gestalt Theory around Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler.

  33. Compare also Pietschmann (1942).

  34. Ludwik Fleck (1948): Summary of the lecture and the discussion: »Problem obserwacji naukowej« (The problem of scientific observation). In Sprawozdanie z działalności Towarzystwa Filozoficznego i Psychologicznego w Lublinie w latach 1945–1947 oraz uzupełnienie za r. 1948 pp. (49–51), Lublin: VERLAG. Translated from Polish into German by Sylwia Werner. In Fleck (2011, 534–537).

  35. Ludwik Fleck (1939): Nauka a środowisko (Science and Environment), Przegląd Współczesny 18, 8–9, 149–156; Tadeusz Bilikiewicz (1939): Uwagi nad artykułem Ludwika Flecka »Nauka a środowisko« (Remarks on an Article by Ludwik Fleck »Science and Environment«). Przegląd Współczesny, 157–167; Ludwik Fleck: Odpowiedź na uwagi Tadeusza Bilikiewcza (Answer to the Remarks of Tadeusz Bilikiewicz). Przegląd Współczesny, 18, 168–174; Tadeusz Bilikiewicz (1939): Odpowiedź na replikę Ludwika Flecka (The Reply to the Counterplea of Ludwik Fleck). Przegląd Współczesny, 8–9, 175–176. The controversy is substantiated in the following, based on the new editions Fleck (2007, 264–288) and (2011, 327–363).

  36. The adaptation of Wölfflin’s style epochs as well as influences from Spengler’s culture morphology are present in Sigerist (1928). I thank Lutz Danneberg for this clue.

  37. Compare also Fehr (2011) and Zittel (2010).

  38. In a review of Bilikiewicz’s book, published in 1932, Edith Heischel remained sceptical and asked, “ob es überhaupt angängig ist, die Woelfflinschen Begriffe, die rein vom Formalen in der Kunst ausgehen und nicht einmal in der Kunstgeschichte allgemein anerkannt sind, einfach auf eine andere Wissenschaft zu übertragen” (Heischel 1932, 1260f.). Fleck is following Heischel’s critique on this point and with respect to other details.

  39. Schrödinger had provocatively claimed the relationship between modern physics and certain properties of contemporary art (The Pure Objectiveness) or particular properties of social life (Methods of Controlling the Masses, Partially Through Rational Organization, Partially Through Factory-Style Mass Production; The Statistical Method of a Trait of Our Time etc.). Compare Fleck (2007, 266; 2011, 324).

  40. “…such an artistic and literary rather than scientific position, which is mainly followed by the authors and which rests on an intuitive grasp of commonalities and relationships (Schrödinger: smooth surfaces in architecture—empty, unfilled areas in science; Bilikiewicz: Struggle between comprehension and feeling in life—struggle between mechanism and vitalism in science…” is “for research still unsuitable. Too much [that is] literary and arbitrary is contained within: Sentences torn out of a nice text, coldly considered, convince no one” (Fleck 2011, 330). What Fleck does not like is thus exactly the transfer of general epochal concepts onto scientific history, as well as the intuitive glimpsing of commonalities that goes along with this transfer. Historians, according to Fleck, overestimate both “the meaning of the individual epochs” as well as “the commonalities seen from the historical perspective,” which is even easier, since one defines an epoch by means of a few representative individuals. We consider the history of the life of ideas much more real when we investigate individual thinking communities and their development, reciprocal effect, opposing effect and cooperation through the epochs. Science of today is in many areas already an outdated synthesis or an unsolved dispute among authors. It does not become more transparent, only less unified and more entangled, whereby this process occurs according to unknown laws, it is thus “easier to orient oneself in the forest” in botany (ibid., 33).

  41. Fleck’s “‘style’ [means] essentially an attitude, a point of view, a disposition of perception, a readiness to think—this is all brought forward and made possible thanks to knowledge learned and newly created concepts. Only with such content and with such a scope of the concept of style can we understand why, for Fleck, the theory of perception is simply a science of thinking-styles and their historical as well as sociological development” (Fleck 2007, 272; 2011, 342).

  42. Bilikiewicz states: “In the area of culture, for example art, one ‘may,’ without penalty, productively create, absent any control from the side of reality, one may err. Only theories, suppositions, formulations, constructions and hypotheses can vary, and sometimes appear in the face of presumably real facts to be equally important, even when contradictions crop up between them. If contradictory theories which blossomed simultaneously or consecutively from various thinking-styles have equal importance, then this is always only an expression of the inadequacy of the human ability to perceive. I must however emphasize that it had to do with historical studies in both Joël’s and Wölfflin’s investigations, as well as in my own. When these types of conceptions make an impression, to be considered preferably artistically, literarily, intuitively and subjectively rather than scientifically, that is only because we are moving in a region in which it is extraordinarily difficult to determine facts. Capturing the relationships which occur between the individual formations of one and the same style is in no way as simple as some of Fleck’s remarks appear to suggest. It can, for example, in no way be suggested to introduce into historical research of this type the kind of exactitude which would unconditionally require ‘particular laws of the sociology of thinking and thought development.’ The similarity of different formations of the same style results from unbelievably complicated psychological processes. We can assume admittedly that these processes take place according to certain exact laws in which the sociological element plays a considerable role. But there is a considerable distance between such an assumption and the discovery of the causes and mechanisms of the mutual influencing of people” (Fleck 2007, 279; 2011, 348).

  43. Compare Zittel (2010).

  44. Bilikiewicz, in a short, final answer, does not respond to Fleck’s arguments, but instead one more time reinforces his own point of view. Bilikiewicz cannot be held responsible for the fact that the reception of Fleck’s work came to a stop immediately thereafter, and even after the Second World War Fleck’s scientific-theoretical work was also almost completely ignored in Poland and even today remains largely unknown.

  45. “The transformation in physics and in its thought style [which] brought about relativity theory represents such a mutation. … Suddenly we no longer see clearly what is specific and what is individual, or how broadly the concept of life cycle is to be taken. What just a few years ago was regarded as a natural event appears to us today as a complex of artifacts” (Fleck 1980, 38).

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Zittel, C. Ludwik Fleck and the concept of style in the natural sciences. Stud East Eur Thought 64, 53–79 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-012-9160-8

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