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NOTES ON THE ORIGINS OF FLECK’S CONCEPT OF “DENKSTIL” Ludwik Fleck’s Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache) is a work that resembles Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations in several crucial respects. For example, at the time of their appearance, which in Fleck’s case means with the publication of the English translation, both books were considered to be without predecessors.1 Like the later Wittgenstein with the publication of the Philosophical Investigations in 1953, Fleck seemed to be an Athena emerging fully-grown from the head of Zeus when the book appeared in 1979. True, Polish philosophers were eager to claim him but they were not really able to illuminate anything about the origins of his chef d’oeuvre on the basis of their discussions of Polish analytical philosophy in the inter-war period.2 Moreover, the works explicitly cited by Fleck were not sufficient, even taken together, to account for the radical departure from conventional thinking about the nature of scientific knowledge that his approach to epistemology represented. The parallels to Wittgenstein can be extended even further. In Wittgenstein’s case it was becoming clear at the time of the rediscovery of Fleck that we found no predecessors because we did not know where to look. The assumption that Wittgenstein was an analytical philosopher prevented scholars (with a few notable exceptions) from posing fundamental questions about the origins of his views. In short, even if we looked to literary and religious precursors, we simply did not bother to look for philosophical predecessors elsewhere than in the traditions of analytical thought. The same has been true of Fleck. We have hardly looked beyond academic philosophy of science in our efforts to understand how he could have arrived at his radical, iconoclastic views about knowledge. Thus the conjecture that I want to advance here, namely that we should look to Spengler in search of a more profound understanding of Fleck, will surely seem shocking to many philosophers and historians of science. Just as we were shocked with the publication of Culture and Value (Vermischte Bemerkungen) in 1977 to discover that Wittgenstein considered himself to have been profoundly influenced by Oswald Spengler,3 the thought that a hard-nosed, no-nonsense practicing scientist like Fleck could have been influenced by a historicist metaphysician seems implausible or even outright absurd. However, just as subsequent research on the part of scholars like Rudolf Haller4 and Rafael Faber,5 to mention but two, has continually yielded insights into Wittgenstein’s development on the basis of a Spenglerian influence, the same could well be true of Fleck. 179 M. C. Galavotti (ed.), Cambridge and Vienna: Frank P. Ramsey and the Vienna Circle, 179–188. © 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
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Indeed, in the course of my own researches into the connections between Wittgenstein and Spengler6 it occurred to me that there were certain parallels between Fleck’s intriguing notion of “thought style” and Spengler’s views about styles of knowing (der Stil des Erkennens, for example, the typical Baroque way of “looking at” and “seeing” pictures7) that might cast light upon Fleck’s development (not to mention the numerous parallels to Wittgenstein’s mature philosophy that we find in Fleck). Again, nobody ever thought of looking for a precursor or even parallels to Fleck outside of the circles of positivist and postpositivist (Popper, Kuhn etc.) philosophy of science; yet the parallels are there. Although I am aware that there are both general problems with the notion of influence8 and with attributing an influence upon Fleck to Spengler (see below), which cannot be ignored, I think there is, nevertheless, something to be gained by doing so. In that spirit I propose to offer a brief account of Fleck’s notion of Denkstil, then to consider what he might have taken over from Spengler and finally to consider briefly one alternative to a Spenglerian account of the origins of the concept of thought style. The place to start is with a brief recapitulation of the main lines in Fleck’s characterization of thought style. Fleck defines Denkstil as a readiness for directed perception of form that has been instilled into the practicing scientist in the course of his/her education to the point that the selective character of scientific observation cannot ever be explicitly recognized by the practicing scientist.9 More than any of his predecessors, Fleck emphasizes that the very precision, which scientific perception demands, requires that scientists be rigorously trained to see only certain complex aspects of what they observe while systematically ignoring others. Fleck’s view of scientific perception as selective vision as well as his seemingly unorthodox position with regard to what we have been accustomed to regard as problems of verification (or falsification) it entails is, on his own account, determined by his perspective as an immunologist. Even more than biological science itself his relation to medical research dictates the perspective he brings to the philosophical consideration of scientific knowledge. Here he speaks best for himself: A scientist looks for typical, normal phenomena, while a medical man studies precisely the atypical, abnormal, morbid phenomena. And it is evident that he finds on this road a great wealth and range of individuality of these phenomena which form a great number, without distinctly delimited units, abounding in transitional and limiting conditions. There exist no strict boundary between what is healthy and what is diseased, and one never finds exactly the same clinical picture again. But this extremely rich wealth of forever different variants is to be mastered [bezwungen] mentally, for such is the cognitive task of medicine.10
No small part of the radicality of Fleck’s account of scientific knowledge thus turns upon his realization that perception in medicine is inextricably linked to an intricate process of forming judgments. Making this sort of discerning perception possible is the goal of medical education, which is here taken to be especially
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illuminating with respect to the epistemology of science generally as the text cited clearly indicates. Precise discernment of what is normal in a complex set of specimens is possible because the researcher’s capacity to observe has been “stylized”. Fleck describes the thought style that emerges from rigorous scientific training as the Zwang (force, coercion, compulsion, control, restraint, obligation, pressure, but perhaps best here constraint; cf. ohne Zwang unconstrained) to such direct perception in a situation where said constraint is not forced but a matter of self-evident procedure (57, cf. 142). Scientific education must produce a scientist, who “sees” crucial differences quickly, clearly and easily in a situation where there are innumerable variants, i.e., where the question of what follows the rule and what constitutes an exception is always open. For example, Fleck describes a situation arising in the course of his experimentation with streptococcus where his team was confronted with 102 different specimens all varying in length and coloration. To the untrained eye, chaos, but to the trained eye, as Fleck argues, it was clear that there were 100 similar large yellowish, transparent specimens and two smaller, lighter more opaque ones. (119) The point is that the perceptions of trained scientists are so “stylized” as to observe only those differences which they have been trained to recognize as making a difference. This “stylization” forms their attitude to their work as well. Thus thought style is a Stimmung (mood or frame of mind) with respect to both the Gestalt that is perceived on the part of the scientific observer and the sort of experiential response that such a perception elicits. (130) Stimmung thus refers to a disposition and a constraint to perceive in a highly specific, selective way but also a disposition and a constraint to respond to a given perception in a disciplined way in word and deed. Thus a thought style has technical, behavioural and literary aspects. It determines our scientific needs and expectations as well as how we talk about them. Thought style forms the very framework for our investigations in ways that researchers themselves are not and cannot be aware of. It is, for those under its constraint, beyond criticism. The latter point tends to be one that sticks in the throats of philosophers of science raised on, say, Popper, who see the scientific enterprise as everywhere and always critical. However, those very philosophers of science who are sceptical with respect to Fleck’s claims here tend to overlook the fact that socialization in a scientific discipline means learning to incorporate, literally and figuratively, any number of methodological, and therefore scientific, presuppositions into our thinking – and acting – as scientists. This has tended to be overlooked, especially by those philosophers who have identified science with theory at the expense of ignoring scientific practice. Like scientific observations, the feelings they occasion are anything but impartial. This explains why Fleck found the notion of reducing scientific observation to so-called protocol sentences completely abstruse. (118) In short, the Stimmung that surrounds scientific observation is part and parcel of scientific knowledge and not something superadded to it.11 Be that as it may, thought styles develop in three stages. They originate out of vague and unclear everyday notions which Fleck terms Urideen or Präideen,
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which die hard, even under the pressure of becoming “stylized”. (36-9) The first stage or station is a matter of seeing something unclearly and inadequately. Then those observations are subject to what Fleck terms “concept-forming, style-transforming” (123-4) developments on the basis of skill and experience. He also insists that this development is “irrational” without explaining what he takes that to mean. Finally, there emerges an ability for developed, reproducible Gestaltseeing in conformity with an established pattern. Thus a fact originates as follows: first, as a curious, perhaps annoying, signal of resistance in the chaotic, initial stages of thinking, then as a certain anomalous constraint to thinking, and finally as an immediately recognizable form” (124). The result of the transformation is that something that was scarcely perceptible is now instantly recognized as obviously significant. In effect, a community of scholars has trained itself to see something that only it can see. Such seeing is in fact a case of “seeing as”, to speak with Wittgenstein. However, it cannot be recognized as such within the community of scientists trained to see that way; for, it is the only way that they can see at all. Such training equips the initiated with a set of spectacles that cannot be removed at will as it were. The constraint involved is not a matter of brute force because it is a self-constraint, like the conditioning exercise of an athlete or the musician’s practicing, which is voluntary and enables people to do things that they otherwise could not. Thus Fleck will speak about such “stylized” thinking as a “harmony of illusions” within a community, which is nothing other than the “inner harmony of the thought style” (114). However, unlike athletic discipline, the constraint involved becomes increasingly obscure to those who are subject to it, who cannot imagine the world in any other way and thus must react dogmatically without intention when their view of things (literally) is challenged. The very “stylizing” that makes precise, i.e., critical observation possible systematically obscures its own genesis by imposing a certain absolute, “necessary”, self-evident form on scientific perception, which makes its own relativity to established models of explanation unrecognizable (another parallel with Wittgenstein can easily be drawn here). However, it is a fact about science, indeed, the crucial philosophical fact about science, namely that it has a history: thought styles change. Because they change, it is possible – and necessary – to compare them. The first result of this comparison is to see something that is anything but obvious to the practicing scientist, namely that there are indeed different ways of perceiving (and representing what we perceive), which are relative to the development of the community of investigators in the field, i.e., what Fleck terms their “thought collectives”. The latter are defined by the way that they collectively perceive, reason and express themselves. However, the very discipline that enables members of the thought collective to perceive and think critically obscures their inability to see beyond the limits of the thought style. (122) Indeed, Fleck goes so far as to insist that the education of scientists is a matter of the constitution of a “closed system of opinion” (40) that offers constant
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resistance to anything view, which comes into conflict with it. Thus when he asserts that science is “stylized” thought Fleck maintains that: 1. what contradicts the system is unthinkable; 2. what fails to fit into the system goes unseen; 3. or is ignored, even if scientists are aware of it; 4. or is explained in a roundabout way that does not contradict the system; 5. and they proceed to observe, describe and illustrate what corresponds to the system even in the face of contradictory opinion. (40) This is what Fleck understands when he claims that science is a “harmony of illusions”. In the face of such a “tendency to tenacity” (Beharrungstendenz, cf. 40-53) at the core of scientific practice, the only mode of liberation for scientists is philosophical reflection in the form of a comparative epistemology (106, cf. Ch. 4 passim), which studies thoughts styles historically and sociologically, with a view to demonstrating how different conceptions of knowledge emerge from different thought styles or scientific paradigms, to employ the terminology that we have becomes accustomed to after Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – a work that leans heavily upon Fleck’s insights, as we can appreciate now.12 In short, the crucial epistemological features of thought styles only become apparent when they are contrasted with each other or when their transformations are examined closely. How does this echo notions that we find in Spengler’s Untergang des Abendlandes? What is there in Spengler that might in the least illuminate Fleck’s ideas about thought styles? Spengler’s problems are on the face of it very different from Fleck’s but appearances can be deceiving. The simplest answer is that Spengler is one of the few philosophers to grant the notion of style epistemological pride of place in his exposition of crucial concepts for understanding cultural differences: “Knowing something about nature (eine Naturerkenntnis) is a function of cognition of a determinate style…. a natural necessity accordingly possesses the style of the pertinent mind (des zugehörigen Geistes – 502)”. Indeed, Spengler is one of the few for whom establishing such differences – and their consequences – is a central aim of philosophy (Book I, Ch 1, § 3, 79-81, et passim). In the first instance Spengler wants to disabuse us of the notion that culture is one thing that develops in a linear progressive manner (from the Renaissance, at least) as all “enlightened” liberals believed up to 1914 (21ff.). Instead of the model of European development that classifies the European heritage into its ancient, medieval and modern periods, more or less ignoring the rest of the world, Spengler distinguishes eight cultures that are in various stages of development from birth to growth and the attainment of maturity and on to aging and dying (259) – Spengler will speak of his task as one of writing cultural biography (36). It is crucial for Spengler that these cultures can only be studied comparatively (36 et passim).
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Cultures are defined in the basis of their style. Each culture is the collective result of socialization within the context of a particular habitat (to employ terms that are not Spengler’s – indeed, the quaintness of Spengler’s mode of expression continually tempts one to the dangerous, but necessary, practice of modern paraphrase). The process of becoming accustomed to the peculiarities of its proper landscape imprints a modus vivendi, incorporating an unreflective concept of its experience of the extension of space, upon the people who dwell there. That concrete response to its living space confers a basic sense of form (eine Formensprache) the thinking of its inhabitants. This is what Spengler terms a style of cognition. Spengler refers to the primary factor in determining a culture’s style its Ur-Symbol (226ff.). A culture’s ideals of natural order are derived from it. The Ur-Symbol is thus the key to understanding the practical metaphysics of that culture, asserts Spengler in a way that we have since been accustomed to from, say, the likes of linguists such as Benjamin Lee Whorf and Edward Sapir. However, the key to understanding Spengler’s notion of form is, as Spengler himself insists, to be found in Goethe, whose disciple he claims to be. Thus, quoting Goethe, Spengler insists, “Form is something in motion, something coming-tobe, something passing away, The doctrine of form is a doctrine of metamorphosis. The doctrine of metamorphosis is the key to all of nature’s symbols” (130-1). Form is thus decidedly dynamic for Spengler. The unity of a culture is thus explained on the basis of a shared picture of how things are that imbues all aspects of its life. For the Egyptians this primal symbol was the path or way (242ff.), for the ancient Greeks the individual body (228ff.), for the Magian or Semitic (Spengler typically refers to them as “Arabic”) cultures the world cave (847f.), for the modern occident infinite space (227f), for Russian culture the plain (259). Such root-metaphors13 derived from the way space is perceived in a particular environment thus literally confer a certain direction or orientation upon it inhabitants. (225ff.) That these distinctions bear upon our understanding of science, is a point that is easily overlooked in the Untergang des Abendlandes. Nevertheless, they most certainly have a central bearing upon how we should understand it. A few texts will make that clear: What we call statics, chemistry, dynamics, historical designations withouth any deeper meaning for today’s science, are the three physical systems of the Apollonian [Greek], Magian [Semitic] and Faustian [modern Western] soul, each grown to maturity in its culture, each restricted in its validity to one culture. Corresponding to them in mathematics are Euclidean geometry, algebra, and the calculus, and in art, the statue, the arabesque, and the fugue: If one wants to distinguish these three kinds of physics – for which every other culture again could have to and would have to add another – according to their respective conceptions of the problem of motion, one would have a set of mechanically ordered states, a set of hidden forces, and a set of processes. (492) …[modern western] science exists only in the living thoughts of large generations of scholars, and books are nothing, if they are not living and efficacious in people, who have
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mastered them. Scientific results are but elements of an intellectual [geistiger] tradition. (548)
Such texts are evidence that Spengler intended his analysis to clarify certain basic features about the culturally embedded nature of scientific activity. However, to return to his analysis of the genesis of styles of thought: the primal symbol from which the originate is not something abstract but something that as it were organically grows out of life in a specific environment. It is a sub conscious or pre-conscious mythical picture of how we have experienced nature that is incorporated in our ways of seeing, our gestures, our sense of melody and rhythm, our metaphors, our paintings and our architecture (382-3). The UrSymbol expresses what is basic to the habitus or “soul” of a culture in Spengler’s terms (cf. 382ff). Its characteristics are not clearly definable in logical terms because grasping a culture’s Ur-Symbol is a matter of seeing analogies. (4ff) It is the fundamental source of form and representation in a culture, which lends the culture what Spengler terms its “style” of cognition (Stil des Erkennens). That sense of style is what permits the historian to grasp the how a culture can be a dynamic unity-in-diversity. Thus Spengler insists that understanding style, i.e. a culture’s “language of forms” (Formensprache), is a matter of sensibility to an indeterminate feeling (ein unbestimmtes Gefühl) or mood (Stimmung), which pervades a culture’s ethos or mores. However, participation in the cultural myth that the Ur-Symbol determines prevents the participant from being aware of his own cultural style. (Thus the only way to come to understand how such myths function is through an historical and comparative study of cultural styles. Thus Spengler’s project is to show us on the basis of comparisons of analogies how the “souls” of the eight cultures he identifies become stylized. The comparisons in questions are studies in cultural physiognomy. The “face” that we learn to recognize is what is typical of the culture. We learn to recognize the “face” of one culture as we compare and contrast it with others. Moreover, the style of the culture permeates it entirely, even including its mathematics, which, Spengler insists, is more of an art than a science. However, Spengler distinguishes two aspects of culture, which are polar opposites and thus tend to confuse the superficial observer: its coming to be and its passing away. The later he terms the transition from “culture” to “civilization” (43ff.). This theme is crucial to rounding out our discussion; for it is, in effect an account of the relation between practice and theory. With a pathos that is not always easy for a contemporary reader to swallow, Spengler describes civilization as the “destiny” (Schicksal, 43) of every culture, i.e., an integral component of its life-cycle. It refers to what happens when a culture, which has hitherto been spontaneous and unreflective, grows to self-consciousness. Increasingly, Gesellschaft replaces Gemeinschaft (660ff). They city replaces the rural household as the center of social life. Words replace deeds; indeed, speaking (sprechen) becomes language (Sprache) as the drive to make itself explicit presses the
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culture to abstraction (248) with the result that education must be formalized by the introduction of the school (718). Style, which had previously a quality of action, becomes externalized in decorative ornament (353; cf. 702 et passim). The treatise replaces the saga: “Ornament ist – das Buch,” 740). Exchange, which was previously an personal interaction between two individuals, stamped by their particularity, becomes mediated by money and thus objectified. (46; cf., 670ff.) Thought, hitherto based upon analogy, becomes formalized in logic and the search for causal explanations. (4, cf. 153ff.) Specialists of all kinds arise to fulfil the priestly function literally and figuratively. In short, life becomes overlaid with ideology as culture begins to decline. (743) In effect, the culture seeks to protect itself from decline by inventing a symbolic order, which is impervious to decline but, in fact, a manifestation of it. The last stages of a culture’s development, then, it envelops itself in a brittle shell of formalisms as it expires – a highly dramatic picture, to say the least. The challenge to the philosopher is to capture all this comparatively. What, then, could Fleck have taken from Spengler, who says virtually nothing about the practice of science, which might have helped him to develop his notion of scientific “thought style”? Let us try to bring the elements of this discussion together by explicitly adumbrating them. First, the notion that what defines a community (culture) is a style of thinking, of which that community is not itself explicitly aware, is common to Fleck and Spengler. Second, the idea that stylized thinking is sensitivity to dynamic form and therefore a species of analogical rather than subsumptive thinking is common to both of them. Third, for both of them said sensitivity to dynamic form is inextricably link to feelings and a specific mood that form a frame of reference for thinking. Fourth, they agree that stylization derives from a relation to a certain Ur-Idee in ways that are less than obvious to everyone involved. Fifth, both insist that the resulting habitus that stylized thinking is also essentially linked to a certain set of aesthetic values: just as Spengler links the mathematics to the architecture of a culture, Fleck links the development of theories to modes of scientific illustration. Sixth, styles of thinking, like cultures, have a way of petrifying into a “harmony of illusions” in their resistance to change, so strong are their tendencies to tenacity. Finally, both Spengler (especially in connection with the notion of Menschenkenntnis) and Fleck are committed to the idea that the most basic form of knowing is what Michael Polanyi terms “tacit knowing”,14 a kind of practical knowledge that cannot be directly put into words but can be studied historically and comparatively. Briefly, for all their differences, both advocate a comparative epistemology on the basis of the stylized nature of knowledge. My claim is that all of these factors taken together provide evidence for considering that Fleck was influenced by Spengler. What counts against that view? The strongest objection stems from the fact that that Spengler is never mentioned by Fleck, who is not at all adverse to citing his sources. Fleck certainly could have cited Spengler if he wanted to but he does not. This clearly makes the kinds of claims I have been advancing problematic.
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There is no denying that it is possible that the similarities between them are purely co-incidental. Yet, an epistemology that centers upon style is something so unusual that the claim that Fleck learned from Spengler cannot be simple rejected out of hand. It is worth considering alternatives to a Spenglerian account of the origins of the notion of thought style. At the very least the contrast will help to highlight aspects of Fleck’s thought that we have perhaps overlooked. Where might Fleck have stumbled upon the idea, if not the term? We have already mentioned the crucial name: Goethe. In the Untergang des Abendlandes Spengler insists that all he is doing is applying the method that Goethe used to explain the morphology of plants to history. In fact, Fleck may well have got his method directly from Goethe’s notion of a graded, dynamic series15 bypassing Spengler entirely. Another possibility is that he may have encountered it in the writings on a commentator upon Goethe’s scientific writings such as Rudolf Steiner. This cannot be ruled out of court; it may be well worth our while to investigate that possibility. However, until further evidence compels us to alter our views, there is good reason to believe that Fleck came under the influence of Spengler (without in any way being compelled to ignore other possible sources of stimulation) in developing his revolutionary notion of thought style: philosophers of science interested in Fleck’s fascinating ideas neglect Spengler at their peril. N OTES 1. 2.
3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
“…Wittgenstein’s new philosophy [after 1933] is…entirely outside any philosophical tradition and without literary sources of influence”, G.H. von Wright, “Biographical Sketch” in Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: A Memoir ( London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 15. See, for example, Jerzy Giedymin, “Polish Philosophy in the Inter-War Period and Ludwik Fleck’s Theory of Thought Styles and Thought Collectives”; Boguslaw Wolniewicz, “Ludwik Fleck and Polish Philosophy”; Wladislaw Markiewicz, “Lvów as a Cultural and Intellectual Background of the Genesis of Flack’s Ideas”, Cognition and Fact: Materials on Ludwik Fleck, eds. Robert S. Cohen and Thomas Schnelle (“Boston Studies in Philosophy of Science”, Vol. 87; Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1986), 179- 230. I cite this book in parentheses in the text for convenience. G. H. von Wright, “Wittgenstein in Relation to His Times”, Wittgenstein and His Times, ed. Brian McGuinness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 116. Rudolf Haller, “War Wittgenstein von Spengler beeinflusst?” Fragen zu Wittgenstein und Aufsätze zur österreichischen Philosophie, (“Studien zur österreichischen Philosophie”, Bd. 10, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1986), 155-69. Rafael Ferber, “Wittgenstein und Spengler”, Archiv für die Geschichte der Philosophie Bd. 73, 2 (1991), 188-207. I have presented this in a lecture entitled “How Did Spengler Influence Wittgenstein?” at Roma Tre University in December 2003. See also Allan Janik Assembling Reminders (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France; forthcoming [in French]), Ch. 9, “The Morphological Turn”. Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes: Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte (Münuch: DTV, 1972), 401. I refer to Spengler hereafter in the text in parentheses. I have discussed this matter in “Wie hat Schopenhauer Wittgenstein beeinflusst?” Schopenhauer Jahrbuch 73 (1992), 75-6.
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See Thomas S. Kuhn, Foreword, Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, Trans. Fred Bradley and Thaddeus J. Trenn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), ix. Ludwik Fleck, “Some Specific Features of the Medical Way of Thinking”, Cognition and Fact, 39 (see n. 2). A certain similarity of usage between Fleck, Spengler and Martin Heidegger, in whose Sein und Zeit the notion of Stimmung is inextricably linked to our perceptions of the world, should be noted here. Whether the notion of Stimmung involved in Fleck’s concept of Denkstil owes anything to Heidegger’s usage in Sein und Zeit, (14 Aufl.;Tübingen: Max Niemayer, 1977) § 29; 134-40, is an interesting question; for there seems to be significant parallels in the ways that both Fleck and Heidegger, as well as Spengler, link the formation practical judgment to an ethos. See Thomas Kuhn’s Foreword to Fleck, n. 9. By the time Prof. Kuhn wrote this he was not particularly clear himself about the “influences” upon his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962) as it became clear to me in conversation with him in 1985. His graciousness in such matters precluded dissimulation. See Stephen Pepper, World Hypotheses (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1942). See Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964). See Ronald H. Bray, “Form and Cause in Goethe’s Morphology”, in Frederick Amrine, Francis J. Zucker and Harvey Wheeler (eds.) Goethe and the Sciences: A Re-appraisal (“Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science” Vol. 97; Dordrecht: Reidel, 1987), 257-300.
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