Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact Quotes

“Thoughts pass from one individual to another, each time a little transformed, for each individual can attach to them somewhat different associations. Strictly speaking, the receiver never understands the thought exactly in the way that the transmitter intended it to be understood. After a series of such encounters, practically nothing is left of the original content. Whose thought is it that continues to circulate?”
― Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact

“Discovery is thus inextricably interwoven with what is known as error. To recognize a certain relation, many another relation must be misunderstood, denied, or overlooked. The operation of cognition [Erkenntnisphysiologie] is analogous to the physiology of movement. To move a limb, an entire so-called myostatic system must be immobilized to provide a basis of fixation. Every movement consists of two active processes; namely, motion and inhibition. The corresponding features in the operation of cognition are purposive, directed determination and cooperative abstraction, which complement one another.”
― Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact

“Whatever is known has always seemed systematic, proven, applicable, and evident to the knower. Every alien system of knowledge has likewise seemed contradictory, unproven, inapplicable, fanciful, or mystical. May not the time have come to assume a less egocentric, more general point of view and to speak of comparative epistemology?”
― Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact

“Whether we like it or not, we can never sever our links with the past, complete with all its errors. It survives in accepted concepts, in the presentation of problems, in the syllabus of formal education, in everyday life, as well as in language and institutions. Concepts are not spontaneously created but are determined by their "ancestors." That which has occurred in the past is a greater cause of insecurity—rather, it only becomes a cause of insecurity—when our ties with it remain unconscious and unknown.”
― Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact

“Very different thought styles are used for one and the same problem more often than are very closely related ones. It happens more frequently that a physician simultaneously pursues studies of a disease from a clinical-medical or bacteriological viewpoint together with that of the history of civilization, than from a clinical-medical or bacteriological one together with a purely chemical one.”
― Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact

“The current state of knowledge remains vague when history is not considered, just as history remains vague without substantive knowledge about the current state.”
― Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact

“This social character inherent in the very nature of scientific activity is not without its substantive consequences. Words which formerly were simple terms become slogans; sentences which once were simple statements become calls to battle. This completely alters their socio-cogitative value. They no longer influence the mind through their logical meaning – indeed, they often act against it – but rather they acquire a magical power and exert a mental influence simply by being used.”
― Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact

“The explanation given to any relation can survive and develop within a given society only if this explanation is stylized in conformity with the prevailing thought style.”
― Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact

“His basic assumptions were untenable, and his initial experiments irreproducible, yet both were of enormous heuristic value. This is the case with all really valuable experiments. They are all of them uncertain, incomplete, and unique. And when experiments become certain, precise, and reproducible at any time, they no longer are necessary for research purposes proper but function only for demonstration or ad hoc determinations.”
― Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact

“In science, just as in art and in life, only that which is true to culture is true to nature.”
― Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact

“Biology taught me that a field undergoing development should be investigated always from the viewpoint of its past development. Who today would study anatomy without embryology? In exactly the same way epistemology without historical and comparative investigations is no more than an empty play on words or an epistemology of the imagination.”
― Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact

“We have even lost any critical insight we may once have had into the organic basis of perception, taking for granted the basic fact that a normal person has two eyes. We have nearly ceased to consider this as even knowledge at all and are no longer conscious of our own participation in perception. Instead, we feel a complete passivity in the face of a power that is independent of us; a power we call "existence" or "reality.”
― Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact

“La introducción en un campo de conocimiento es más un adoctrinamiento que un estímulo del pensamiento crítico-científico. El tiempo de aprendizaje —en la ciencia tanto como en la industria, el arte o la religión— se caracteriza por una «sugestión de ideas puramente autoritaria».”
― Ludwik Fleck, La génesis y el desarrollo de un hecho científico

“Sie findet den Ausdruck als gemeinsame Verehrung eines Ideals, des Ideals objektiver Wahrheit, Klarheit und Genauigkeit. Sie besteht aus dem Glauben, daß Verehrtes erst in weiter, vielleicht unendlich weiter Zukunft erreichbar sei. Aus der Lobpreisung sich seinem Dienste aufzuopfern. Aus einem bestimmten Heroenkult und einer bestimmten Tradition. Dies wäre der Grundton der gemeinsamen Stimmung, in der sich das naturwissenschaftliche Denkkollektiv auslebt. Kein Eingeweihter wird behapten, das wissenschaftliche Denken sei gefühlsfrei.”
― Ludwik Fleck, Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache. Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollektiv.