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Ludwik Fleck and the Art-Of-Fact 168 Evolutionary Anthropology CROTCHETS & QUIDDITIES Ludwik Fleck and the Art-of-Fact KENNETH WEISS Truth may be beauty, but more in the eye of the beholder than we generally with biological evolution: science acknowledge. Does it matter? works by contingently sorting through available facts or ideas in the context of their own time, but cannot really be In science we routinely assume that bursts of change by which we so often, teleologically heading for truth, be- whatever theory we may have about perhaps so vainly, characterize our cause we have no way to know where them, facts themselves are things that own research or field. Kuhn argued to find it. are—out there in the world to be ob- that a scientific revolution occurs Kuhn was influenced by a little- served. However, it has become rather when a new explanation for the avail- known 1935 book he had stumbled standard for historians and philoso- able data becomes accepted by the across, Genesis and Development of a phers to assert instead that “facts” are body of scientists, a sociocultural phe- Scientific Fact, by a Polish physician human constructs understandable nomenon very different from the pre- named Ludwik Fleck.4 Fleck had antic- only in a particular historical or soci- vailing notion of science as a fact- ipated (or shaped) many of Kuhn’s etal context. They note that scientists driven process. The notion has been ideas. Though rather obscure today, typically argue over very different the- applied, but not without discussion, to Fleck has been called the founder of the ories to interpret the same data. We in all fields of endeavor including an- philosophy of modern medicine. His turn resist this deconstruction by out- thropology.2,3 concern was not so much with revolu- siders who themselves don’t have to A new theory may be more accurate tions but with the way that even the face the struggles of understanding in some ways, or account for more supposed facts of science are driven by Nature. Nonetheless, there may have facts, but Kuhn’s notion of a paradigm context. He stresses that “concepts are been more than idle poetry in Keats’ shift was not about contests between not spontaneously created but are de- assertion that “truth is beauty and different ways to apply an existing termined by their ‘ancestors’.” Fleck’s that is all ye need to know.” Facts may theory, like that of evolution, to the term comparable to Kuhn’s “paradigm” be more determined by the theoretical available facts, such as fights between was thought collective (we might say lenses through which we view the cladists and phenetic systematists, or “school of thought”) and his objective world than we like to think. out-of-Africa versus regional continu- was to understand how an unorches- ity models of evolution. Rather, a par- trated community of scientists estab- lishes what are considered facts around TRUTH AND PROGRESS IN adigm shift is a gestalt change in which a new interpretation of the a theory that necessarily grows out of SCIENCE: “THE BONDS OF body of existing facts replaces, and is historical roots. What counts as fact HISTORY CAN NEVER BE CUT” incommensurable with, an existing varies with time and context. Fleck lik- Thomas Kuhn’s famous book The theory. Evolution contrasts with cre- ens science to troops on the march, a Structure of Scientific Revolutions1 ationism in this respect, for example. small vanguard followed by a main had a transforming effect across both Most scientists strongly assert—be- body. New observations provide some the academic and popular culture lieve—that such changes constitute corrective, but which of the vanguards landscapes. It gave us the satisfying progress in the sense of major steps the main troops follow is unpredictable, term “paradigm shift” for the episodic closer to understanding the truth that and affected—or determined—by so- we assume is out there to be found. ciopolitical and cultural factors. However, it is perhaps not sufficiently This challenges our cherished my- appreciated that scientific theories are thology that we are doing “original” almost always inconsistent even with research. Most of us are not as origi- Kenneth Weiss is Evan Pugh Professor of some of the established facts of their nal nor independent as we may fancy. Anthropology and Genetics at Penn State University. time, and this was true of the victors Without a herdlike ideological coher- in classical Kuhnian “revolutions,” in- ence, science as the public enterprise cluding even the archetypal Coperni- we know today might not be possible, Evolutionary Anthropology 12:168–172 (2003) can one. Whether this is progress to- since any individual can only see or do DOI 10.1002/evan.10118 Published online in Wiley InterScience ward truth is harder to answer than so much. But the herd itself defines (www.interscience.wiley.com). we may think. Kuhn drew an analogy what progress is, and the more who CROTCHETS & QUIDDITIES Evolutionary Anthropology 169 als, and other diseases such as leprosy also generated a positive test reactions as well as similar symptoms. Under these conditions, whether it was a “fact” that someone had syphilis or not was not purely objective but de- pended on the assumptions about its particular cause. Many investigators— the “thought collective”—worked, if only in a loosely coordinated way, to find a syphilis blood test. In 1906, Au- gust von Wassermann and colleagues developed the famous reaction that bore his name. On the assumption that the test directly detected bacterial anti- gens, a positive Wassermann reaction Figure 1. A. Thomas Kuhn (http://www.malaspina.com/site/person_733.asp); B. Ludwik Fleck (reprinted with permission, from Polish Philosophy web site: http://www.fmag.unict.it/PolPhil/ was used to define syphilis, separating it Fleck/Fleck.html). by this single criterion from other dis- eases with similar symptoms. Despite these elements of what seemed like “truth,” the inferences participate the stronger and more re- ON BECOMING FACT: THE from experiments leading to the Was- sistant to displacement (creative or WASSERMANN TEST FOR sermann test were incorrect or purely free thinking) it becomes, and the pre- SYPHILIS empirical in essential ways. The theo- vailing thought collective becomes a retical understanding of the reaction thought constraint. “Whole eras” can The predominant medical problem was in fact wrong. A positive reaction be ruled by a thought constraint. Her- of the time was infectious disease, and was interpreted as proving spirochete etics are not well tolerated; we don’t Fleck exemplified his ideas by show- causation because the theory was that burn them at the stake but the Ly- ing how concepts of syphilis, growing antigen-antibody reactions were spe- senko era showed that we may send from earlier notions of causation, led cific. The method to detect the pres- them to freeze to death in labor to the development of the Wasser- ence of antigen produced by the spi- camps, and today we freeze them out mann test to detect the disease. Syph- rochete is known as complement of research funds. As with any ideol- ilis had long been viewed primarily in fixation (Figure 2). In the first step, ogy, defendants of the thought collec- moral dimensions, a “carnal scourge.” syphilitic tissue used as a source of tive argue that they defend it because In part a legacy of the age-old humeral antigen was mixed with blood from theory, diseases of generalized or it’s true. the person being tested. In an infected vague symptomatology were assumed Ludwik Fleck worked in the pre- person, the antigen binds to antibody, to be due to fouling of the blood. This World War II era in his native Poland. and complement (a component of the notion grew to the point that the early Poland was intimately involved in immune system) is fixed to the anti- 20th Century demanded a “blood test” conflicts in that region, including the gen-antibody complex. A properly to detect the disease. Infectious mi- Communist revolution in neighboring prepared reagent, like red blood cells croorganisms were known by then, Russia. Social, historical, evolution- (rbc’s), is then added. This causes no and Pasteur had recently organized ary, and contextual analysis of human reaction in samples from infected per- (and orchestrated) the scientific and affairs was part of the intellectual life sons that at this state no longer con- bureaucratic machinery in France tain free complement, but the un- of that era in Europe. Fleck’s choice of around the concept of infectious dis- bound complement in the blood of an the term “thought collective” seems to ease causation.5 European nations uninfected person binds to the rbc’s, reflect that context, and he states a scrambled not to be left scientifically producing an easily detected hemo- rather classically Hegelian or Marxist behind in this endeavor. However, lytic reaction. assessment of conflict in science, as symptoms, specificity, and sensitivity Much of Fleck’s book is an account being between opposed theoretical of known reactions and available tests of the many ways this process was a views that resolve into a new consen- made both the disease and its diagno- prisoner of its history and the sus. Fleck says that “after the change sis problematic. Symptoms of syphilis thought-collective’s erroneous choice in thought style, the earlier problem is were not coincident with the visual of assumptions: “It is only after the no longer completely comprehensi- (microscopically detectable) presence choice has been made that the associ- ble.” This contrasts a bit with Kuhn’s of the spirochete bacterium Trepo- ations produced by it are seen as nec- idea, because a problem is not identi- nema pallidum, though people were essary.” I can’t give the details here, cal to an explanatory framework.
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