УДК: 161.2 Stepan Ivanyk University of Warsaw THEORY OF
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Conventions, Styles of Thinking and Relativism
S t udia Philosophica Wratislaviensia Supplementary Volume, English Edition 2012 KRZYSZTOF SZLACHCIC University of Wrocław Conventions, Styles of Thinking and Relativism. Some Remarks on the Dispute between I. Dąmbska and L. Fleck* Abstract My comments are focused on the debate between Izydora Dąmbska and Ludwik Fleck. In the course of their debate, which took place in the 1930’s, they discussed some basic issues of epistemology, focusing on the problems of the sources of scientific knowledge, objectivity of knowledge, and truth. The aim of the paper is to place their debate in a the historical context and to demonstrate the novelty of Fleck’s arguments, especially in comparison with Thomas S. Kuhn’s later contribution. I also examine the dominant interpretations of Fleck’s theory of knowledge, as well as the reasons for which his philosophical ideas, especially Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache (1935) have fallen into the philosophical obliv- ion. I argue that Fleck’s views, although innovative, were less radical than it is commonly thought. My comments focus on the polemic that ensued in the 1930s between Izydora Dąmbska and Ludwik Fleck. The authors involved in it either directly or indirectly referred to the fundamental questions of the theory of cognition: the question of the sources of scientific knowledge, objectivity of knowledge (its communicabil- ity), relative nature of scientific knowledge, truth. The small total volume of texts which directly referred to the views of the adversaries as well as the place where the dispute occurred (Lvov, a geographically peripheral part of the “civilised world” at the time) could suggest that this was just a minor episode in the history of thought, not worth mentioning. -