[Ludwik Fleck and the sociocultural analysis of science(s)].

The Ideas of Ludwik Fleck and Their Application to the Eukaryotic Cell Cycle, the Restriction Point, and G1-phase Control

The ideas of Ludwik Fleck (1896-1961) analyzing the conservative nature of scientific ideas are discussed and applied to the proposed G1-phase restriction point as a regulatory element of the mammalian cell cycle. Fleck proposed that ideas become fixed and difficult to change because criticisms of current and dominant models are either ignored or turned to support of the current model. The idea...

Not Just a “Fleck” on the Epistemic Landscape: A Reappraisal of Ludwik Fleck’s Views of the Nature of Scientific Progress and Change in Relation to Contemporary Educational and Social Issues

In contrast to Thomas Kuhn, the work of Ludwik Fleck, a Polish-born physician, microbiologist, and epistemologist, is conspicuously absent from the science education literature. His originally obscure monograph first published in German in 1935, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, anticipates a number of views explicated by contemporary philosophers of science, cognitive psychologists...

Medicine and thought-styles: on the 50th anniversary of the death of Ludwik Fleck (1896-1961).

l ast year, 2011, marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Ludwik Fleck, a physician, microbiologist [1] and a passionate philosopher of medicine [Figure 1]. Fleck suffered many of the humiliations that the 20th century inflicted upon the Jews of Eastern Europe [2]. He experienced racial persecution during World War II and in the years preceding it. He survived that long period of brutal ant...

Challenging Incommensurability: What We Can Learn from Ludwik Fleck for the Analysis of Configurational Innovation

This paper argues that Ludwik Fleck's concepts of thought collectives and proto-ideas are surprisingly topical to tackle some conceptual challenges in analyzing contemporary innovation. The objective of this paper is twofold: First, it strives to establish Ludwik Fleck as an important classic on the map of innovation analysis. A systematic comparison with Thomas Kuhn's work on paradigms, a conc...

Chicago and London Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact