ZITTEL - Ludwik Fleck and The Concept of Style in The Natural Sciences

Stud East Eur Thought (2012) 64:53–79
DOI 10.1007/s11212-012-9160-8
Ludwik Fleck and the concept of style in the natural

sciences
Claus Zittel
Published online: 21 February 2012

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
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.
Keywords Social construction of knowledge Relativism Science and art Style
Introduction
In the year 1933, an unknown Jewish microbiologist sent a thin manuscript of about
one hundred pages from the distant Polish Lwów (now the West-Ukrainian town of
Lemberg) to the philosopher and physicist Moritz Schlick, the famous founder of
the Vienna Circle, to ask him for help in publishing it. The work bore the
provocative title: Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. ‘‘Introduction to the
Doctrine of Thinking-Style and Thinking-Collective’’ (Entstehung und Entwicklung
einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache. »Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und
Denkkollektiv«). Its author was Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961). In an accompanying
letter, Fleck emphasized that never before had ‘‘serious investigation been
employed [to determine] whether the announcement of an item of knowledge, its
C. Zittel (&)
Institut für Deutsche und Niederländische Philologie, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter
Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany
e-mail: zittel@zedat.fu-berlin.de
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54 C. Zittel
wandering from person to person, from magazine article to handbook, isn’t

principally bound with […] particularly directed transformation.’’ And although
researchers take their findings chiefly from books, one does not know ‘‘how much a
body of knowledge influences the act of cognition.’’ Finally ‘‘some odd, general
aspects, such as the particular style-appropriate closedness of each system of
knowledge, have been found, also in the historical development of knowledge,
which require a knowledge-theoretical investigation’’ ([‘‘Endlich finden sich auch in
der historischen Entwicklung des Wissens einige merkwürdige allgemeine Ersch-
einungen, wie z.B. die besondere stilmäßige Geschlossenheit jeweiliger Wissens-
systeme, die eine erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchung fordern’’] Fleck 2011,
561–562).
What Fleck sketched here was the program of a revolution in the theory of
science, whose goal was to show that not only the external circumstances of
scientific production, but also the content, the structures of problems, and the
verification and justification procedures of the sciences, were principally style-
dependent.1 According to Fleck, there are no solid facts that only need to be found
and their meanings deciphered; neither are the facts merely dependent on our
descriptions, rather facts come into existence by themselves and change—they have
a history and a specific cultural imprint. Not only what a fact is supposed to mean,
but what a fact is, is determined by the respective thinking-style of the local
thinking-collective.
Schlick could not help. Fleck’s book appeared in Switzerland in 1935 (Fleck
1980 [1935]) and has since lived an astonishing career. Today it counts as a seminal
work of the theory of science, representing a milestone not only for the historical but
also for the systematic investigation of how thinking, seeing, and acting taken
together can form a unified theoretical design. For Fleck’s concept of thinking-styles
comes out of the heart of the natural sciences and, at the same time, makes use of a
theme which openly and directly situates it in the realm of the aesthetic.
After their publication, Fleck’s writings enjoyed an initial, astonishingly broad
reception which was cut short, however, by the Nazi occupation.2 In the nineteen-
eighties, a second phase of Fleck reception was set in motion through the Suhrkamp
editions by Thomas Schnelle (Fleck 1980, 1983) and the English translations of
Fleck’s texts edited by Trenn (Fleck 1979, 1986). This second phase, however, is
marked by the one-sided discussion of the extent to which Fleck presaged and
influenced the dominant theory of science of the twentieth century, the paradigm
theory of Thomas Kuhn, since Kuhn mentioned Fleck en passant in the preface to
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).
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Ludwik Fleck and the concept of style 55
his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago 1962). The contempo-
rary reception of Fleck’s ideas, however, covers a much broader intellectual
spectrum cutting across all disciplines, with the notable exception of philosophy,
where his work has received little, if any, attention. Fleck’s theories have finally
emerged from Kuhn’s long shadow and are being acknowledged today as holding a
position of their own within the theories of science. Before too long, Kuhn’s
Paradigm Theory might well become a mere footnote to a full-fledged Fleck
renaissance.
Much more than Kuhn, Fleck understood the need to combine scientific and
cultural theory and to free scientific theory from the narrow confines of the scientific
community. Where Kuhn measures epochs generously, Fleck’s writings give
today’s cultural theory of science a practicable methodology and conceptual
instruments with impressive descriptive exactitude for particular scientific cultures.
While for Kuhn, illustrations are ‘‘in the best case byproducts of scientific activity’’
and can, ‘‘after publication of the research results,…even be destroyed’’ (Kuhn
1977, 340), not so with Fleck. In fact, the reception of his work has been fueled by
the increased interest today in the role of images and instruments in the natural
sciences, by new insights into the meaning of emotions in epistemological theory
and by the trend toward interdisciplinary research bringing the natural sciences and
humanities ever closer.
Noteworthy, however, is that many of the countless historians of science
currently working with Fleck’s ideas rarely take the time to reconstruct the
methodical concepts that serve as their basis. A close reading of the text seldom
takes place. Indeed, more work is done using his work than is done about the man
and his work itself. As a result, we are left with the largely casual use of a concept—
thinking style—which, upon closer examination, is not only strategically central to
research but is quite unusual and not readily understood.
Before I turn to Fleck’s Theory of Thinking-Style, I would like to provide some
basic thoughts about this concept and its history as a context in which to better
understand the development and appreciate the uniqueness of Fleck‘s notion of
thinking-style.
The history of how the concept of style entered scientific theory and what
conceptual transformations the concept underwent in the process are particularly
interesting. It not only indicates the opening of scientific theory for aesthetic
concepts but reveals its methodological valence as well. As I will argue below, there
are not only methodological but political consequences depending on whether a
morphological concept of style in the spirit of Wölfflin is taken up, whose objective
is to define the general physiognomy of an epoch; or whether, by contrast, a
dynamic concept of style is offered, whose objective is the description of
phenomenal micro-worlds. Fleck’s concept of style is often wrongly seen as an
instance of the former, yet Fleck sought to define his concept differently, precisely
so that it could not be ideologically misused as a fixed form. Instead, it could be
used to distinguish the differences between multiple, co-existent styles, whereby
aesthetic and scientific styles differ only slightly since, for Fleck, they must both be
equally seen as aspects of culture. He writes, ‘‘In science, just as in art and in life,
only that which is true to culture is true to nature’’ (Fleck 1979, 35; 1980, 48).
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Style and thinking. On the history of the concept of thinking-style before Fleck
Style and Thought—this was the title of a famous lecture by Arnold Schönberg in
the year 1930 (Schönberg 1976 [1930], 25). Style or Thought, it should have been
called, since for Schönberg style stood for the bonds of tradition, against which the
autonomous thought of the new music had to assert itself (‘‘styles rule, thoughts are
victorious’’). Though Schönberg only had musical thought in mind, his opposition
of thought and style makes clear that the relationship between the two elements of
the compound word thinking-style, which to us has become almost second nature,
was then in no way self-evident as a common idea. In fact, the term thinking-style is
a comparatively recent coinage that cannot even be found in Nietzsche3 and notably
first appears at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Often one encounters the claim that Karl Mannheim4 was the first to relate the
concept of style to the sciences or humanities and in doing so coined the term
thinking-style. It is, thus, commonly held that Fleck’s ideas were influenced, if
indirectly, by Mannheim’s work (T.J. Trenn 1979, 271; Elkana 1986; Wessely 1991,
271; Babich 2003a, 76; Egloff 2007; Schütz 2007). Yet systematic similarities
between Mannheim and Fleck do not stand up under closer inspection and the
reception of Mannheim’s ideas by Fleck cannot be proven. It is more likely that
other authors, such as Cassirer who had already introduced the concept of thinking-
style into the history of science,5 come into play here as pioneers for the application
of the concept of style to the sciences. Mannheim developed his concept of style in
correspondence with Panofsky. Cassirer and Olschki6 also belong to the circle of the
Warburg School; in these cases the connection to art history is obvious. I therefore
firstly supposed that Fleck also took up an art-historical concept of style. In the
meantime, however, I have come to the opinion that there was a direct takeover of
art-historical style conceptions among the opponents of Fleck, such as Tadeusz
Bilikiewicz, who was clearly a follower of Wölfflin, while Fleck developed his theory
in opposition to such transfers of models and concepts. Mannheim, for example,
targets with his concept of thinking-style a formal analysis of thought-forms, with
which worldviews and relationships between experiences are then correlated.
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.’’
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Theory and practice of natural sciences are left out. His concept of thinking-style
stands more in the tradition of investigations in the psychology of worldviews which
typologize types of thinking with quasi-transcendental intention, such as problem
thinker-system thinker, synthetic or impressionistic thinking-style. As I will later
show, Fleck has nothing in common with this a priori worldview lens.
The whole story is much more complex: One finds quickly and easily that the
notion of style in the early nineteen-twenties was adopted and absorbed by
extremely different movements; Fleck was therefore only one of many who
presumably came together here. The starting point was generally the style theories
of Riegl (1893) and Wölfflin. Wölfflin had, in his book Kunstgeschichtliche
Grundbegriffe, defined styles as forms of seeing, and thereby offered art history a
formal analysis raster in order to scientificize the humanistic discipline of art history
as an ordinary science of laws. Wölfflin developed basic categories: the linear and
the artistic, the surface and the depth, the closed and the open form, multiplicity-
unity, absolute and relative clarity, to each of which an epoch was assigned, in
which one form of seeing then dominated. In order to recognize and differentiate
between individual styles, one must compare works of art. A thinking-style also
defines a space of possible comparisons, but appears, however, to transfer the
problem of the style from the material form of the artwork to the psychological-
mental condition of a subject or a group. Extrapolating from Wölfflin’s project ‘‘Art
History without Names,’’ (Wölfflin 1917, VII)7 thinking-styles could then also be
described as cognitive patterns and explained in psychological, anthropological or
transcendental-philosophical terms. Such concepts actually came into being in the
works of Hans Leisegang or Karl Jaspers, Husserl (Jaspers 1919; Leisegang 1928)8
and Cassirer, and later in the influential theories of science by Alistair Crombie and
Ian Hacking under the titles Styles of Scientific Thinking and Styles of Reasoning
(Hacking 1985; Crombie 1994).9
As is well-known in art history the concept of style is ambiguous, indeed
paradoxical. On the one hand style is used as a formal-aesthetic epochal concept,
such as baroque style, in order to name normatively or descriptively a consistent and
constant principle of form in different arts; on the other hand, the genius-aesthetic of
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.
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58 C. Zittel
individual artists or works of art is characterized through their individual style. Why,
at a particular time, a particular style is found to be, for example, clear, remains
unexplained. This situation becomes even more complicated in that the art history of
style epochs has from the very beginning come under constant criticism, since, due to
the many individual-style-based deviations and exceptions, as well as the different
cultural and social roles of the individual art forms at a given time, neither were the
great unifying syntheses of etiquette-fanatics convincing nor was the sequence of
style epochs, reviled early on by William Pinder as the goose-stepping of styles and
dismissed in favor of a consistent style pluralism with the formula ‘‘simultaneity for
the non-simultaneous’’ (Pinder 1926; Eisenwerth 1970).10 This criticism has
admittedly not prevented the concept of style epochs in an unproblematized form
from quickly being taken up in other disciplines, for example in psychology,
sociology, business and economics (Bechtel 1930), philosophy (Rothacker 1934a, b;
Groos 1924, VII; Gebhardt 1927, 161–181),11 and the theory of science of the 1920s.
In particular, the humanities and the emerging cultural sciences assigned great
synthetic performances of the mental component to the total creativity of an epoch—
such as in Dilthey’s, Karl Joël’s (Joël 1928–1934) or Georg Simmel’s Lebensphilo-
sophien. Essays on mass psychology and ideological typologies came next, cultural-
morphological wholes [‘‘Ganzheiten’’] were examined closely, cultural styles
described, ‘‘style-societal groupings of people’’ distinguished (Plessow 1931, 58).
These cultural styles mutated rapidly into national- or even race-based styles12 and
still exist today in the form of national styles. All this occurred in the name of the
liberation from the so-called naturwissenschaftliche Begriffsbildung and worked
with strong assumptions such as Daseins-Gesetze or Ur-Phänomene (Strich 1922).13
The history of style, it would appear, began in the nineteen-twenties to merge more
and more with Geistesgeschichte.
With the concept of style, however, historically and socially comparative
approaches also made their way into scientific epistemology. Demands arose for
greater systematic comparisons of different individual sciences. Pierre Duhem had
begun to differentiate between the scientific characteristics of the national identities
of different nations14; in 1926 Kurt Lewin developed a comparative doctrine of
science merging psychology and biology based on Gestalt Psychology; and Erwin
Schrödinger even claimed in his 1931 lecture, Ist die Naturwissenschaft
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).
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milieubedingt? (Is Science Milieu-Determined?), that one can ‘‘in all areas of
culture find common ideological currents and, even more plentifully, common
stylistic currents in politics, art, and science’’ (Schrödinger 1932 [1931]; Kramers
1935). Even Carnap resorted to similar formulations (Carnap 1928, XX).15 Richard
Müller-Freienfels finally demanded in 1936 that one ‘‘apply the history of science as
a history of style and as a history of scientific styles’’ (Müller-Freienfels 1936, 68).
There was no internal differentiation between styles among individual natural
sciences, apart from the admittedly important exception of Oswald Spengler in
Untergang des Abendlands (Spengler 1961 [1919], 79–82),16 a work which,
however, abounds in attempts at great syntheses.
The concept of style offered apparently a new unity-promoting category as a
reaction to the new experience of multiple realities preceded by the general
naturalization and historization of thinking, knowledge, and realization. The
so-called crisis of historicism and, in the natural sciences, quantum physics had
undermined traditional certainties, and, as we will see, Fleck too was at the
beginning inspired by these views.17 At the end of the nineteenth century, through
Durkheim’s sociology of knowledge, a priori categories already held for certain
were relativized and embellished with a time index. Freud and Nietzsche had
demonstrated that presumably simple elementary mental operations could suddenly
turn out to be highly complex and feed off of different conscious-external sources.
The concept of style accommodated this, to the extent that it allowed for differing
and even incomparable representational forms to be described on equal footing.
The term thinking-style is admittedly a weaker concept than other candidates
which describe the organization or function of thinking, such as thinking structure,
thinking form, thinking pattern, thinking type, thinking system, conceptual schema
or discourse. Yet, such constantly robust thinking structures can be regarded in the
collective or individual mind as anchored a priori forms determining the directions
and content of realization.
As long as style is understood as the mere external wrapping of a thought which
could also be expressed differently, the concept of thinking-style is unproblematic.
Once, however, the weak concept of style is seen as a constitutive element of
philosophical or scientific thought, and not simply its wrapping, questions are
raised: Is style a describable or explicable category? Should and can appropriate
style replace logical style? Would logic then simply be a sub-category of style?
Which roles do sight and action play in style-bound thinking? Are claims of validity
of scientific theories reduced to the noncommittalness of aesthetic judgments?
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).
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60 C. Zittel
Do differing scientific positions stand noncommittally and on equal footing next to

one another like differing forms of style? Does science become art?18
Examining one of the very first mentions of the term thinking-style brings the
problem to light. In Edgar Zilsel’s post-doctoral thesis Die Geniereligion from
1918, the author insisted, with an eye simply to style, on a difference between
natural science and art: Art is ‘‘subject to an aristocracy of ideals…the logical ideal
of truth [on the other hand] rules as monarch. Truth also is likely only a formal
stylistic ideal’’; yet science and philosophy must consider reality, which they cannot
alter but only recognize: ‘‘This reality is not a fully pliable clay like the material of
art and cannot be logically formed in completely random styles.’’ Are thus ‘‘perhaps
rationalism and empiricism not two equally justified styles of thought which can
simultaneously or successively exist, such as Gothic and Baroque, but instead their
antagonism must be decided through a victory or a compromise?’’ (Zilsel 1990
[1918], 96) The natural sciences are defended as style-free bastions. Zilsel, who
would later belong to the Vienna Circle, advocated a notion which Fleck derided as
a characteristic mistake made by ‘‘all these thinkers trained in sociology and
classics’’, since they attest to ‘‘an excessive respect, bordering on pious reverence,
for scientific facts’’ (Fleck 1979, 47; 1980, 65).
The development of Fleck’s concept of thinking-style
The doctrine of thinking-style
Earlier notions of thinking-style produced a good deal of confusion. It is with

anticipation, then, that we turn to the one theory that expressly presents itself as the
‘‘Doctrine of Thinking-Style’’ [Lehre vom Denkstil]. Straight away, in the first
sentence of his first scientific-theoretical publication from the year 1927, Über
einige besondere Merkmale des ärztlichen Denkens (On Some Particular Features
of Medical Thinking), Fleck claims that medical knowledge has ‘‘led to the rise of a
particular style.’’ Fleck, however, also means here that medical thinking, because it
has its own style, differs from the harder natural sciences, which have no style.19 For
only in medicine do so ‘‘many elusive—as far as logic is concerned—imponderable
factors’’ come ‘‘into play,’’ which allow it, with the help of ‘‘specific intuition, to
predict’’ the course of research and to identify in its developmental phases a ‘‘style
peculiar to the epoch.’’ Medical thinking thus has style, since it cannot proceed by
logical deduction, which is why a medical doctor ‘‘is worse, the ‘more logical’ his
therapy is’’ (Fleck 1986, 42; 2011, 45).
Two years later, in his essay Zur Krise der Wirklichkeit (On the Crisis of Reality),
inspired by new developments in quantum physics, Fleck dared to go farther and
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.
123
expanded the regional concept of thinking-style, derived from the field of medicine,
to the other natural sciences as well, thus making the transition from an
epistemology specific to medicine to a broader epistemology, which was now
brought to bear not only on individual intuition but also on style in the sense of
cultural tradition (Fleck 1986, 47; 2011, 52). This text is Fleck’s most relativistic
and radically constructivist contribution to scientific theory. Here, the concept of
style is applied to all sciences in an effort to advance a marked pluralism of realities.
‘‘Every thinking individual, being a member of some society, has his own reality in
which and according to which he lives. Everybody has even many, sometimes
contradictory, realities: the reality of everyday life, a professional, a religious, a
political, and a small scientific reality.’’ Correspondingly, ‘‘every knowing [Wissen]
has its own style of thought with its specific tradition and education’’ (Fleck 1986,
49; 2011, 54).
In this essay, Fleck admittedly recognizes thinking-style as both the personal
style of great researchers and the broader manifestation of a style tradition.20 It was
the more intensive involvement with the story of the origin of a test method for the
diagnosis of syphilis, the Wassermann Reaction, that lead him to investigate more
closely the role of researcher collectives. Only then, in the early 1930s, did Fleck
introduce the term thinking-collective, and together with this concept, his notion of
thinking-style also matured.
Fleck introduces these concepts in two works, an extended essay on the
Wassermann Reaction and his major work, Entstehung und Entwicklung einer
wissenschaftlichen Tatsache. The latter consists of two main parts, each of which
takes a different approach, a diachronic, or developmental historical approach, and a
synchronic investigation of the sociology of knowledge, respectively. At first glance,
these two approaches seem ill-suited to one another: Thus, in the first part, in which
Fleck recounts the history of the notion of syphilis from its initial conception as a
pestilence of lust all the way to modern views of disease, he appears to carry out an
investigation of the history of an idea closely analyzing a line of thought across
different epochs and social contexts. The second part, however, places the
development of a serological test into a local social context. In the first part,
accordingly, he covers a broad period of about five hundred years. In the second part,
he examines in detail the genesis of the Wassermann Reaction from 1906 to 1932.
Modern admirers of Fleck’s work frequently embrace only the approach he
adopted in the second essay, but for Fleck, synchronic and diachronic investigations
go hand-in-hand. He wants to show that in the local, synchronic formation of a
thinking-style, the concepts and practices of long-standing traditions are at play at a
deeper level and are permanently transformed in the process. The traditional lines of
thought intertwine to some extent with synchronic networks, become starting points
of new lines, of new entanglements, which in turn change the old lines: ‘‘new
junctions [nodes] are produced time and again and old ones displace one another.
This network in continuous fluctuation is called reality or truth’’ (Fleck 1979, 79;
1980, 105). Thus, for Fleck, there is no radical break or paradigm change but rather
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).
123
62 C. Zittel
a transformational process that both admits continuity while enabling us,

nevertheless, to distinguish between different thinking-styles. Fleck is a thinker of
difference and of fluctuation, rather than of epistemological breaks.
But how can we envision such a notion of epistemological transformation?
Fleck’s prime example is syphilis. This venereal disease was treated from the
beginning as a dishonorable illness, which not only poisoned the blood but bore the
additional stigma of sin. Such a specifically emotionally-loaded notion Fleck called
a pre-idea. Such pre-ideas are not archetypes, but only general and vague basic
notions that roughly predetermine the direction for the development of a field of
research, such as the idea of the elements or of the atom. The original idea can
change completely, but nevertheless continue to exert influence, like a specter
haunting the collective of syphilis researchers, guiding them to look for pathogenic
agents in the blood and making them believe they have actually succeeded in doing
so. Moreover, the view of syphilis as a lust pestilence introduces a certain ethical
coloring in European culture, so that more research was focused on this disease than
on other pestilences, which were no less severe. This meant, in turn, that funding for
syphilis research was also easier to obtain (Fleck 1979, 76 f.; 1980, 102).
Two things about this phenomenon interested Fleck in particular: (1) How
starting from false assumptions and erroneous methods could nevertheless produce a
result, and (2) How, in retrospect, in the textbooks and even in the memories of the
participating researchers, the chaotic story of discovery could be constructed as a
logical progression.21 That research is loaded with theories and prejudices is a
truism even logical empiricists have conceded. In contrast, according to Fleck, the
irrational factors—the indeterminate, the unconscious, the social constraints
governing– constraining the discovery, testing, and justification of knowledge
cannot be filtered out after the fact through revision, but instead become evident as
non-eliminable epistemologically functional values with a transformative influence
on thinking-style.
The thinking-collective
For Fleck, the thinking-collective is the real protagonist in the history of ideas and
style. He called it a ‘‘a community of persons [human beings] mutually exchanging
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.
123
ideas [thoughts, Gedanken] or maintaining intellectual interaction [being mutually

affected by each other’s views [gedanklicher Wechselwirkung]]’’ and ‘‘the special
‘carrier’ for the historical development of any field of thought, as well as for the
given stock of knowledge and level of culture. This we have designated thought
style, [thus of a particular thinking-style]’’ (Fleck 1979, 39, translation amended,
CZ; Fleck 1980, 54). Fleck’s concept of the collective, however, warrants some
discussion. For Fleck, interaction between people, a collective practice, initially
constitutes an unspecific group. An individual person can also form a collective
when he or she discusses with him/herself. If two conflicting collectives interact
with each other, they form a new collective on another level, even if they are
conflicting groups. The formation of a collective, then, is dependent only upon the
existence of an exchange of ideas, and not on the common understanding of the
parties within it. Agreement ‘‘is only possible within one collective, while within
kindred collectives’’ it already leads to complications, since the words change their
meaning when transferred, the concepts receive another ‘‘style colouring,’’ the
sentences ‘‘another meaning, the opinions a new value.’’ Already in the intra-
collective exchange of thoughts, communication takes place according to the
principle of Chinese whispers. (Fleck 1986, 86).22 ‘‘That which I express, is always
different from that which I think. That which is understood is always different from
that which I have said.’’ (Fleck 2011, 198). If the groups are widely distant from one
another, the transformation of a thought can result ‘‘in its complete destruction’’
(Fleck 1986, 85; 2011, 267). It is thus decisive to recognize that the circulation of
thoughts never occurs without transformation and that there are various phases in
which a thinking-style is more open or more closed. If the exchange of thoughts is
constant, the exchange acquires, through repetition, a particular form. The intra-
community wandering of a thought strengthens the thought, which, in turn, creates a
collective mood of self-confirmation, a particular thinking-style takes shape, is fixed
and envelopes the group. General collectives, such as that of a nation, do not allow
precise measurement, for the members of a nation have no specific thinking-style in
common. Additionally, all members of a nation should exchange thoughts with one
another, and the nation is furthermore the bearer of all things cultural; for the same
reason, it also makes no sense, according to Fleck, to define a race as a collective. In
his eyes there are no thinking-styles specific to a nation, race, class or generation
(Fleck 1979, 107; 1980, 141).23
Style and mood
Only the members of an individual collective are able to sense the specific [colorings]
of style (Fleck 1986, 100; 2011, 286). Scientific terminology demonstrates a
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).
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64 C. Zittel
‘‘style-charm’’ [Stilzauber, my translation] giving it a kind of sacramental power

(Fleck 1986, 101; 2011, 285). Those who succumb to this ‘‘thought-charm’’
[Denkzauber] form a community and a ‘‘collective mood’’ [Stimmungskamerads-
chaft] arises (ibid.). The mood is the collective’s cement; it creates a readiness for the
directed perception, evaluation, and application of what is perceived; it is the driving
force of collective action consistent with thinking-style. However, this style in no way
limits itself to thinking. It also encompasses the perception, as well as the practices
and instruments, of a collective.
Once a thinking-style has established itself it is propagated, not through better
arguments, but through training and initiation rites, such as one encounters in certain
academic rituals. Different thinking-styles are contested. This kind of ‘‘formulation
and transmission of an idea’’ is called ‘‘propaganda’’ (Fleck 1986, 85; 2011, 286).
Fleck, whose formulations, here, are reminiscent of Wittgenstein,24 cites the
sociologist Gumplowicz for clarification: ‘‘The greatest error of individualistic
psychology is the assumption that a person [human being] thinks…. What actually
thinks within a person [human being] is not the individual himself but his social
community. The source of his thinking is not within himself but is to be found in his
social environment and in the very social atmosphere he ‘breathes’ and he can’t at
all think other than in the way the social environment surrounding him necessarily
arises out of the influences concentrating in his brain.’’ [my translation, CZ] (‘‘Die
Quelle seines Denkens liegt gar nicht in ihm, sondern in der sozialen Umwelt, in der
er lebt, in der sozialen Atmosphäre, in der er atmet und er kann gar nicht anders
denken als so, wie es aus den in seinem Hirn sich konzentrierenden Einflüssen der
ihn umgebenden sozialen Umwelt mit Notwendigkeit sich ergibt‘‘Fleck 1979, 46 f.;
1980, 63).25
In order for a change in thinking-style to come about, the mood must be
irrevocably disturbed, such as through intrinsic transformations or the influence of
other styles. These disturbances ensure a ‘‘period of unrest’’ (Zeit der Unruhe)
(Fleck 1986, 75–6; 2011, 229–232, 330; [my translation, CZ])26 in which new
thoughts can then be introduced. Thoughts may wander within a thinking-collective
from the esoteric circle to the exoteric circle of the lay person, where they become
factual knowledge and return to the collective as such.27 By the time a thinking-
style becomes exoteric, the thinking-style of the esoteric researcher collective which
originally produced it has long since mutated into another style.
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).
123
Before moving on, I would like to draw a preliminary conclusion: While Fleck
does, on occasion, use terms such as ‘‘thinking-system’’ and ‘‘thinking-structure’’
synonymously, his detailed descriptions of ‘‘thinking-styles’’ make it clear that they
are neither methods nor thinking forms; nor do they describe epochs or worldviews,
nor characterize social groups. Rather, thinking-styles are understood as processes,
circulations of ideas, and social practices, and the style-appropriate conditioning of
perception, thinking and action of researchers, which results from these ideas and
practices and which are, admittedly, undergoing constant transformation. Social
interactions create a thinking-style. Thinking-style, in turn, creates the collective
and the mentality it later comes to represent. The more frequent and denser the
circulation of thoughts, the more consistent it becomes, and the more pronouncedly
a particular style emerges. Yet this thinking-style is understood or experienced
differently by each member of the thinking collective. Within a single epoch there
can be different, contradictory thinking-styles and an individual can be a ‘‘carrier’’
of several, incongruous thinking-styles. Consequently, there can be no personal
thinking-style, such as ‘‘Galileo’s thinking-style,’’ just as there can be no universal,
invariant styles, such as Husserl’s universal causal style. Moreover, there can be no
style-less thinking, acting and observing.
Style in play
On occasion, Fleck offers widely accessible examples of thinking-style. For

example, he believes that ‘‘[t]he individual may be compared to a soccer player and
the thought collective to the soccer team drilled for cooperation.’’ And then
concludes, ‘‘[c]an an adequate report of this progress be made [simply] by
examining the individual kicks? The whole game would lose its meaning
completely’’ (Fleck 1979, 46, 99; 1980, 62, 129).
Readers familiar with the sport will extend the analogy. The way in which the
ball circulates among the members of a well-practiced team develops their style
through the constant repetition of plays, and this style is only visible as long as there
is movement in the game. In other words, a thinking-style, like the style of a soccer
team, is transitory; it exists only during the action, is visible only as action. If play
stops, one discerns nothing. By analogy, then, ideas in a researcher collective
circulate like balls, providing orientation to their thinking, seeing and acting and, in
the best case, form a common style or, alternatively, the mutation of sub-styles may
occur. If a substitute player is sent into the game, his particular characteristics of
play modify the style of the team, which further depends on and is formed by the
style of play of the opposing team as well as by external circumstances. If such a
style is fixed in textbooks, it can again affect teams, yet the soccer avant garde has,
in the meantime, already changed its styles.
Epistemological styles: seeing and acting
Despite the accent on thinking in the term thinking-style, it now becomes clear that
this also always consists of the selective, even structured, seeing and directed action
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66 C. Zittel
of collectives.28 Fleck now develops, in many places en detail, a proper

phenomenology and psychology of scientific seeing and acting that warrants closer
attention. Here, Fleck describes exactly what is to be understood by the expression
thinking with the eye. In essence, he distinguishes between three stages of the
epistemological process:
A discovery appears at first in the form of a feeble advice [‘Widerstandsa-
viso’], noting the resistance which inhibits the alternate mental oscillations in
the creative chaos of thoughts. By way of social stylizing, by this circulation
of the thought, there arises from this advice a demonstrable thought, i.e., a
thought which can be placed in the style-system. Further development
transforms it into an obvious thought—within the framework of the given
style, into a specific, directly cognizable form, into an ‘‘object’’ which
members of the collective must treat as a fact existing outside and independent
of them. Such is the evolution of what we call the ‘‘real’’ (Fleck 1986, 72 f.;
2011, 227).
In the first phase, the observation of laboratory preparations initially shows a ‘‘chaos
of contradictory, alternate pictures’’ (Fleck 1986, 76; 2011, 232). The image that
until then had been established breaks down ‘‘into blots which arrange themselves
into different, contradictory shapes…. It depends on the intensity of feeling of the
investigator whether the fact, whether the new shape will appear to him within this
chaos as a symbolic vivid vision, or else as a weak hint of a resistance which inhibits
the free, almost discretional choice between alternatives.’’29 This form must then be
separated from unimportant details and stabilized by creating a readiness to think
and training people to do it (Fleck 1986, 77; 2011, 232.). Once this has succeeded
the form becomes directly evident and will be perceived ‘‘as if it were the only one,
everlasting truth’’ (ibid.). Truth is, thus, an effect of style rather than style being an
expression of a Kunstwollen as Riegl or Mannheim maintain.30 A great advantage of
Fleck‘s theory is that it requires no such ontological hypostases.
Seeing, as Fleck describes it, takes place when all the bodily and mental faculties
of the researcher are mobilized:
The first, chaotically styled observation resembles a chaos of feeling:
amazement, a searching for similarities, trial by experiment, retraction as
well as hope and disappointment. Feeling, will, and intellect all function
together as an indivisible unit. The researcher gropes but everything recedes,
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).
123
and nowhere is there a firm support. Everything seems to be an artificial effect

inspired by his own personal will. Every formulation melts away at the next
test. He looks for that resistance and thought constraint in the face of which he
could feel passive. Aids appear in the form of memory and education…the
totality of his physical and intellectual ancestors, and of all his friends and
enemies (Fleck 1979, 94; 1980, 124).
Fleck emphasizes that we must use language in order to be able to view the object of
observation, as such, at all. For this object is in no way already available in a
particular form that could be described as neutral. There are no simple observations
which can be recorded and transcribed, and certainly such transcriptions cannot
serve as the foundation for the development of the sciences, as appeared to Carnap.
On the one hand, words are never enough to adequately capture the particular
observational experience; on the other hand, they are necessary for stylizing the
observation in such a way that we can recognize anything at all. One must, at first,
additionally pose a series of suggestive questions, such as: What is here the
foreground, what is the background? Is it ‘‘a set of dark lines on a bright
background, any accidental figure arranged from these points, e.g., a jagged island?
(Are the lines of the same thickness throughout the entire length? Are they straight?
Are they dyed uniformly? Are they parallel to one another? etc.)’’ (Fleck 1986, 63f.;
2011, 216). If one observes a microscopic preparation of diphtheria bacilli, one thus
has:
…(as it could seem) only a number of small, colored lines of particular form,
structure, and layout before oneself, which together give a characteristic
image. The effort would be in vain to describe with mere words the
characteristic of the image which the expert instantly sees and which goes
initially unrecognized by the lay person. One must first prepare him: through
analogies which contain figures known to him and through comparisons with
other microscopic images, finally through habituation on the assignment of
corresponding technical jargon; one must awaken a directed readiness for
perception of this particular form, a readiness which science created (Fleck
2011, 250).
Stylization through apparatuses
With the development of a thinking-style, a reality appropriate to that style also

developed. ‘‘To see’’ meant for Fleck ‘‘to re-create a picture, at a suitable moment
created by the mental collective to which it belongs’’ (Fleck 1986, 78; 2011, 323).
But, it is not language alone that determines the appropriateness of an observation to
style. Instruments and apparatuses also play a role in this interplay and, together
with language-based descriptions, force the observer to adopt a particular style of
seeing. Thus, someone who is not familiar with a microscope would ‘‘not perceive
the picture at all, he will not look into the eyepiece, he will not catch hold of the
light, he will not focus the preparation. Following the suggestion of the form of the
microscope, he will search for the object on the stage, he will turn the mirror toward
himself and look into it. If he knows that one must look into the eyepiece, he will
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68 C. Zittel
see his own eyelashes, he will accommodate to the eyepiece surface, he will look
obliquely and will see the dark inner wall of the tube or, finally, ‘the bright disc on a
dark background’’’ (Fleck 1986, 64; ET, 217).
According to Fleck, the scientific device itself requires a ‘‘separate study,’’ since
it, as ‘‘a realization of some results of a definite thought-style, directs our thinking
automatically on to the tracks of that style. Measuring instruments force one to
apply the notion of unit for which they were constructed; even more so, they force
one to apply the notions from which they originated’’ (Fleck 1986, 109; 2011, 297).
The telescope, for example, makes it impossible to see in the clouds ‘‘‘fantastic’
forms…, i.e., forms foreign to the scientific style, which means that the telescope
directs us toward the scientific style, just as molten wax, a pack of cards or other
similar devices direct the fortune-tellers towards their thought style. Living as we do
among devices and instruments from the current scientific thought-style, we always
obtain ‘objective’ stimuli urging us to that way of thinking but no other. Hence, the
conviction that the products of that style have a ‘factual’ nature’’ (ibid.).31
Fleck’s examples of scientific observations come chiefly from the field of
microbiology. The best are related to the difficulties of observing diphtheria bacilli
and the bacteria proteus. When he includes microscope images with his texts, in
each case Fleck reports exactly which of various methods was used to record an
image, gives information on the type and the focal length of the lens, the dyeing
technique, names time point and the age of the bacteria culture.
Additionally, he introduces many individual images with differing degrees of
abstraction which, while they clearly complement one another, cannot be fused into
a single, coherent image which would then represent the true image of the
Streptococcus. What, then, does the bacteria look like?32
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.
123
Scientific images stylize the observation of fictional entities so that they appear as
actual objects. The images published first in scientific journals and, later, in
textbooks ultimately lead researchers to begin believing that the printed image is
what a bacterium actually looks like—the image created by scientists, an image
manipulated with great effort, becomes reality.
What Fleck leaves unmentioned, however, is that around 1930 there was an
intense debate within serology concerning the photograms of Pijper, who published
the images of bacteria with peritrichous and polar flagellation he had produced by
positioning dyed bacteria between a light-sensitive film and a light source.33 It was
clear to everyone in the scientific community that only through the artificial
processing and dying of the preparation could anything at all be made visible,
raising the question whether the flagella shown on the images were nothing more
than artificial products of the preparation procedure. Fleck was quite familiar with
these discussions and even summarized them for scientific congresses.34 It was not,
therefore, his study of art literature that guided Fleck. Instead, as we see here, in
vitro, so to speak, in the bacteriological laboratory, he distilled his comparative
epistemology of seeing and thinking-style out of the difficulties arising from
practical research and the debates about right seeing, imaging, and describing. In
light of this epistemology, it becomes clear that ‘‘To observe, to cognize (erkennen)
is always to test and thus literally to change the object of investigation. […] This is
the day-to-day praxis of science’’ (Fleck 1986, 53; 2011, 59). ‘‘Each new
observation is an experiment,’’ he wrote (Fleck 1986, 66; 2011, 220). Now, we can
reformulate and expand Fleck’s earlier definition of thinking-style on the basis of
this new insight. Seeing is not only a commonly-structured seeing, but—above all—
a creative seeing which, via collective action, creates reality.
Science as art: Fleck versus Bilikiewicz
Fleck’s concept of thinking-style was refined for the last time in 1939, in the context
of his debate with the psychologist, philosopher, and historian of science Tadeusz
Bilikiewicz (1901–1980).35 Bilikiewicz belonged to the school of the leading
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), Przegla˛d 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«). Przegla˛d Współczesny, 157–167;
Ludwik Fleck: Odpowiedź na uwagi Tadeusza Bilikiewcza (Answer to the Remarks of Tadeusz
Bilikiewicz). Przegla˛d Współczesny, 18, 168–174; Tadeusz Bilikiewicz (1939): Odpowiedź na replike˛
Ludwika Flecka (The Reply to the Counterplea of Ludwik Fleck). Przegla˛d 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).
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70 C. Zittel
medical historian of the time, Henry Sigerist, and had published a book in German
several years earlier which, initially, appeared to confirm Fleck’s thesis regarding
the cultural dependency of science: Die Embryologie im Zeitalter des Barock und
des Rokoko, Leipzig, 1932. Bilikiewicz refers here specifically to Karl Joël and
Wölfflin whenever, in the course of a style comparison, he is preparing to
characterize epochs uniformly and to demonstrate analogies between different areas
of culture. Like his teacher, Sigerist,36 he was one of the first to apply the art-
historical concept of style to the history of science.
Fleck exploited the opportunity to create controversy in order to advance his own
theory of thinking-style by means of a sharp criticism of Bilikiewicz. The central
point of contention in the debate, which was fought out in four, in part long, essays
in the transdisciplinary periodical Przegla˛d Współczesny, is the concept of style. But
Fleck’s attack may have been motivated by another factor. In the beginning, his
main work had also been positively reviewed by the Nazis, whose only criticism
was that he had neglected race as a formative factor of style.37 Fleck’s theory of
thinking-style was caught up in the mixture of national character, style and race that
emerged in the nineteenth century out of the combination of history, anthropology,
and biology. Exclusion and differentiation became the rule of the day, and
Bilikiewicz’s book was an invitation to do just that.
Bilikiewicz sought to demonstrate that the struggles in the baroque era between
preformism and epigenetics on the one hand and between vitalism and mechanism
on the other each had their political, artistic, philosophical, and cultural
backgrounds, which, in turn, influenced the science of the particular epoch. For
example, just as notions of individual liberty were spreading following the downfall
of absolutism, in embryology the Animalculists discovered the independent lives of
individual sperm cells. Style comparisons bring a great many further parallels to the
surface, such as a connection between the growing social importance of women and
the emergence of the Ovulists in embryology. Bilikiewicz stated, for example,
Buffon has ‘‘gone so far with regard to the apportionment of equal rights among the
sexes, that he feels he has discovered female sperm’’ (Bilikiewicz 1932, 116).38
Fleck’s criticism was harsh. Bilikiewicz’s observations, he claimed, are nothing
more than ‘‘a source of superficial sayings’’ on the non-existence ‘‘of prerequisite-
less science,’’ but these are dangerous, particularly in the present time, since a
political camp has already ‘‘made the political slogan of a social, class-dependent
knowledge out of the fact of the sociological, communal nature of perception,’’ and
then the opposing political camp invented ‘‘the national and racial spirit, in order to
spin a mythical worldview further through the epochs’’ (Fleck 2007, 267–269; 2011,
329). In other words, Fleck accused Bilikiewicz of providing the politicians with a
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.
123
program for demagoguery. He wants, Fleck says, to introduce ‘‘a command

economy for thinking’’ which prescribes the appropriate knowledge for each
environment. And, suddenly, one has left or right or proletarian chemistry (ibid.).
At this point, Fleck begins to consider the methodological consequences of his
critic without hesitating to to extent it to a text which he had previously and
frequently mentioned as a positive confirmation of his theories, the aforementioned
lecture of Schrödinger: Are the Natural Sciences Milieu-Dependent? (Ist die
Naturwissenschaft milieubedingt?).39 Meanwhile, Fleck himself felt compelled to
expressly warn against confusing his science of thinking-styles with the aesthetic
scientific outlook of the new generation of scientists, who had already begun to
think relativistically.
It is nonsense,40 based on artistic impressions and intuitive suppositions, to invent
style analogies between areas and processes which have nothing at all to do with one
another. Bilikiewicz uses the concept of style to make generalizations about
simultaneous commonalities between science and politics. According to Fleck,
however, it is precisely these individual thinking-styles which should be considered
in their development and in their differences from one another. ‘Intuition’ is thus for
Fleck, in contrast to Bilikiewicz, only applied to comprehending distinct, individual
thinking-styles, and not for the construction of analogies between culture and
science.
Bilikiewicz did not understand Fleck’s point and accused him of misjudging the
metaphysical consequences of his own work. These consequences can be deduced
simply from the concept of style, which Fleck undoubtedly does not use ‘‘in its
usual meaning,’’ since he relates it not only to the form but to the material of
creation as well (Fleck 2007, 271; 2011, 342).41 The consequence is ‘‘that it is
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).
123
72 C. Zittel
impossible to determine a general criterion for truth….’’ Resulting from this is ‘‘an
indubitable cognitive relativism that concedes equal importance to various images
of reality which have grown out of different thinking-styles—even when these
images are contradictory’’ (Fleck 2007, 272; 2011, 342).
Bilikiewicz then went into detail with respect to characteristic patterns of style
which are manifest in similar ways in diverse areas of culture, maintaining that there
are gradations, such as Chopin’s style, which fits with a Polish style, which in turn
fits in with a Slavic one and this with a European style. He wanted to show that
‘‘creativity in other areas, which aesthetic thought apparently doesn’t reach, is also
structured according to a particular style…which we know from the arts.’’ He
therefore tried to demonstrate the supremacy of style ‘‘in the form of fashion,…in
scientific theories, hypotheses, research interests in the area of embryology’’
(Fleck 2007, 274; 2011, 344).
More than a few Fleck scholars would likely conclude that these are Fleck’s
words, but this is simply an approach in the spirit of Wölfflin–Bilikewicz’s words!
Here, in Bilikiewicz’s work, we see the obvious and often exemplary transfer of the
art-historical concept of style, which in Bilikiewicz’s eyes a natural scientist like
Fleck cannot correctly understand. Bilikiewicz now criticized Fleck sharply,
declaring his postulations were not ‘‘of humanistic, but of philosophic-scientific
nature.’’ As a historian, Fleck remained a dilettante who ‘‘at no moment ceases to be
a scientist.’’ Production in the realm of science is not production, ‘‘but only and
exclusively an after-production…. Between culture and ‘nature’ there remains an
insurmountable chasm’’ (Fleck 2011, 348).42 Obviously, this controversy unfolded
under reversed polarities in comparision with the later science wars. The historian
knocks on hard facts, while the scientist dissolves them historically and
epistemologically.
Fleck, however, did not admit defeat. Firstly, he rebutted the metaphysical
accusation; he held ontology to be completely senseless (Fleck 2007, 281; 2011,
353). Therefore, ‘‘no cognitive relativism’’ results from the theory of thinking-
styles. ‘‘Truth,’’ as a current stage of the transformation of thinking-style, is always
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).
123
only one thing: it is completely determined by thinking-style. The variety of images

of reality is simply a result of the variety of objects of perception in various
thinking-styles. ‘‘I don’t claim,’’ Fleck continues, ‘‘that ‘the same proposition’ can
be true for A and untrue for B. When A and B are participants in the same style, the
proposition is for both either true or false. If they have different thinking-styles, they
do not share ‘the same proposition’, since for each the proposition of the other is
incomprehensible or it is understood in another way’’ (Fleck 2007, 281; 2011, 354).
My position regarding Fleck’s epistemology43 holds also for Fleck’s epistemol-
ogy of style; it is not relativistic, but relational. Sentences which express in one
style indubitable facts may no longer make sense when situated within another style.
As an illustration Fleck offered examples from extra-European thinking-styles,
those familiar from Whorf and Sapir, but also from Malinowski, Lévy-Bruhl,
Cushing and Radcliffe-Brown, pointing out that some cultures ‘‘don’t have a general
term for horse, but instead dozens of terms for all kinds of horses’’ (Fleck 2007, 284;
2011, 356). In what seems like an obvious attempt to avoid criticism as a scientist,
Fleck made the mistake of not presenting any examples from laboratory practice
and, instead, used only those that clarified thinking-style differences based on
differences in grammar and vocabulary. Insofar as the relationship of science to art
is concerned, the difference between reproduction and creative production is ‘‘only
a seeming’’ or quantitative one. A scientist, like an artist, transposes his experiences
into the traditional material of the discipline according to traditional methods, only
‘‘his methods and his material [are] even more bound to a specific (scientific)
tradition,’’ which has determined in more detail the symbols and the way they are to
be used. The scientific collective has merely a much larger social density than the
artistic collective. The opposing forces which limit researchers in their free
production, that ‘‘hard floor of reality’’ which they sense during their work, arise
according to Fleck out of this great density and not from an ominous natural world
itself (Fleck 2007, 286; 2011, 358).44 The more prominent a researcher’s position,
the less will he or she be surrounded by collectives and his or her production will
rather resemble artistic production. It is a matter of course that scientific production
is never individually free, since it is connected to other areas of science; it requires
training and education, hence, it is also connected to scientific history.
Fleck’s position can now be more distinctly outlined. He rejected intuitive
analogies between thinking-styles where unequals were made equal. For Fleck,
there are no general rules of discourse which simultaneously organize all areas of
culture and society. In his comparative research on thinking-style he sought to
emphasize the peculiarities of individual thinking-styles and to describe the
differences between thinking-styles, and not to propose a general meta-theory of
thinking-styles or order of things in a particular epoch. Such grand theories level out
peculiarities and it remains, in Fleck’s view, unclear, for example, according to
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.
123
74 C. Zittel
which structural principles did people during the Renaissance think in terms of
similarities and, in the era of the classical episteme, representationally. Thinking-
styles of science and art are comparable: Both consist of relational networks, that of
science being more determinate, and both create their own realities; in this sense
science can be considered an art. Thinking styles have no logically systematic
construction, thus one cannot rationally reconstruct, correct or complete them. They
are not worldviews but mechanisms for the production of worldviews (cf. Fleck
1986, 123; 2011, 416).
Fleck’s style
As we have seen, Fleck’s concept of thinking-style arose from a completely specific

collective practice which, in turn, and in an equally specific way, influenced and
colored it. Obviously, Fleck’s style concept adapts itself to medical practice. Put
another way, a concept of style saturated with metaphors and images carved its way
out of Fleck’s specific medical practice. Fleck called style an organism which defies
logical analysis and a thinking-collective a ‘‘carrier’’ of a style (Fleck 1986, 98;
2011, 287). Thus, a thinking-collective carries a style in the same way it might carry
an infectious agent. An organism, on the other hand, as Fleck made clear elsewhere,
can no longer be understood today, from the viewpoint of psychology, ‘‘as a self-
contained, independent unit with fixed boundaries’’ (Fleck 1979, 60; 1980, 80) but
as a harmonious life-unit of different organisms which form a kind of nation. The
old preconceptions of immunology, which operated with battle images of the
invasion of foreign bodies and their repulsion by antibodies, no longer suited the
advanced medical thinking-style which recognized the body as a collective life-form
harboring at all times a large number of migrants. One should rather speak,
with respect to illness, ‘‘of a complicated revolution within the complex life unit’’
(Fleck 1979, 61; 1980, 82).
Accordingly, Fleck describes transformations of a thinking-style as intrinsic,
organic changes. Cultures change like ‘‘bacteria cultures’’ during periods of unrest
(,,Zeiten der Unruhe‘‘, Fleck 2011, 134, 229–232, 330). ‘‘Sciences…grow…like
living organisms’’ (Fleck 1986, 114; 2011, 370). Founding ideas function as
‘‘germs,’’ out of which lines of thought develop, whose evolution then proceeds
through the mutation of concepts45 (Fleck 1979, 26; 1980, 38). In individual
research fields, such as in the investigation of diphtheria bacilli, there is even an
‘‘evolution of the observation[s]’’ with which ‘‘a parallel evolution of notions’’
occurs simultaneously, and through which something like a diphtheria bacillus first
arises (Fleck 1986, 71; ET, 226). For Fleck, the observations of streptococcus ‘‘grew
up on the basis of psychology’’ (Fleck 1979, 88; 1980, 116, my translation).
Concepts have a ‘‘style-dependent aura [aura is also a medical term for a subjective
field of perception]’’ (Fleck 2007, 268; 2011, 331). Since a person simultaneously
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).
123
belongs to different collectives, this individual is—now come concepts from

epidemic hygiene—‘‘the carrier of the influences of one collective on another,’’
thinking-collectives, which are otherwise ‘‘carefully isolated’’ from one another,
thus intersect within the individual through whom elements are ‘‘transmitted’’ from
one style to another where they assimilate or cause changes, analogous to an
infection (Fleck 1986, 103; 2011, 289).
Thinking-styles circulate—the omnipresent circulation metaphor Fleck also
borrowed from medicine. When Fleck presents examples for thinking-styles he
speaks of ‘‘looking at samples [Proben]’’ (Fleck 1979, 126; 1980, 166, my
translation). These, like a laboratory specimen, are turned over again and again
under the microscope until a stylized form appears. The cultural advantage of
comparative research on thinking-styles is that it allows us to avoid combating other
styles as a ‘‘dogged fanatic of one’s own style,’’ since one sees through the
mechanisms of style propaganda and thus ‘‘immunizes’’ oneself against it
(Fleck 1986, 112; 2011, 301).
Conclusions
We now understand that, according to Fleck, a thinking-style in the natural sciences,

in that it is comparable to a work of art, is partially constituted by extra-logical
factors. Non-propositional meaningful components such as the coloring and aura of
a concept, atmosphere, feeling, mood, and structured seeing are formative factors of
a thinking-style which, in turn, exerts collective constraints. Hence, the particular
thinking-styles of different collectives are incommensurable, and the possibilities
for mutual comprehension are either starkly limited or lacking altogether. Thus, the
task is not to consider how one translates old concepts into modern terminology, but
how one obtains a feeling for the colorings and moods of the concepts of another
thinking-style.
Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that Fleck’s comparative
research on thinking-style does not seek to become a typology of different thinking-
styles, but rather to make those constraints on thought transparent that form the
basis of differences between the viewpoints of different collectives. That is to say,
he sought to determine how it is that what is evident to the member of one group
may make no sense at all to the member of another. The goal of Fleck’s comparison
of different points of view was not to form an objective or synthetic overall image,
but instead to embrace the confusion of contradictions. In Fleck’s view, there are no
better or worse epistemic contexts, a differentiation which would require the
assumption of a basal, universal rationality. This would represent the absolutization
of one knowledge ideal and of the basic intuition of a particular thinking-style. For
Fleck, it would be an example of thinking-style fanaticism.
If we understand the concept of thinking-style as the description of an
unchanging form of thinking, it could form the pretext for anthropological
arguments seeking to ground thinking-styles on the basis of race or nationality. To
preclude the adoption of his concept by the Nazis, Fleck gave it a very particular
spin that distinguishes it from all other notions of style. According to Fleck’s
123
76 C. Zittel
dynamic concept of thinking-style, it is a phenomenon in permanent transformation

and this will lead historical investigation in new directions, no longer paying
attention to paradigms, rules of discourse, or progress in the sciences, but to
dynamic procedures in specific epistemic and historical configurations. The
advantage is that this concept allows him to formulate a relational and constructivist
position in scientific theory that cannot be ideologically abused to justify the
superiority of any single thinking style over others.
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ZITTEL - Ludwik Fleck and The Concept of Style in The Natural Sciences

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Stud East Eur Thought (2012) 64:53–79

Ludwik Fleck and the concept of style in the natural

Published online: 21 February 2012

Abstract Ludwik Fleck is a pioneer of the contemporary social constructionist

Keywords Social construction of knowledge Relativism Science and art Style

wandering from person to person, from magazine article to handbook, isn’t

Do differing scientific positions stand noncommittally and on equal footing next to

The development of Fleck’s concept of thinking-style

The doctrine of thinking-style

Earlier notions of thinking-style produced a good deal of confusion. It is with

a transformational process that both admits continuity while enabling us,

ideas [thoughts, Gedanken] or maintaining intellectual interaction [being mutually

Style and mood

‘‘style-charm’’ [Stilzauber, my translation] giving it a kind of sacramental power

On occasion, Fleck offers widely accessible examples of thinking-style. For

Epistemological styles: seeing and acting

of collectives.28 Fleck now develops, in many places en detail, a proper

and nowhere is there a firm support. Everything seems to be an artificial effect

Stylization through apparatuses

With the development of a thinking-style, a reality appropriate to that style also

Science as art: Fleck versus Bilikiewicz

program for demagoguery. He wants, Fleck says, to introduce ‘‘a command

only one thing: it is completely determined by thinking-style. The variety of images

As we have seen, Fleck’s concept of thinking-style arose from a completely specific

belongs to different collectives, this individual is—now come concepts from

We now understand that, according to Fleck, a thinking-style in the natural sciences,

dynamic concept of thinking-style, it is a phenomenon in permanent transformation

Fehr, J. (2011). »…die Kunst, eine demokratische Wirklichkeit zu formen…«—Wissenschaftsphiloso-

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