The Polish-Jewish and Israeli doctor, researcher and influential thinker Ludwik Fleck was born on 11th July 1896. His dramatic and productive life is a microcosm of the turbulent European 20th century and could not therefore avoid controversy. His ideas have transformed and continue to transform our understanding of science.
Today the Ludwik Fleck Prize is awarded annually by the Society for Social Studies of Science "for an exemplary book in Science and Technology Studies that contributes to the global STS community, based on solid empirical or theoretical research, a creative methodology, and/or an innovative transnational perspective."
Education
Ludwik Fleck was born in Lemberg, today's Lviv, which was then the capital of Galicia, a region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Fleck graduated from a Polish secondary school in 1914 and completed his medical degree at Lviv's Jan Kazimierz University.
Fleck was married to Ernestina Waldman on 29th July 1923 and their son Ryszard was born on 17th December 1923.
He developed his specialisation in typhus working under the typhus specialist Rudolf Weigl at Jan Kazimierz University. His medical career was blossoming as the director of the bacteria laboratory at the local social security authority.
Polish National Democracy
By 1935 antisemitic elements in Polish National Democracy ("Endecja") were developing and in line with the persecution of people of Jewish descent Fleck was dismissed from his position at the social security authority. In 1937 he was excluded from the Polish State Doctors' Union (Związek Lekarzy Państwa Polskiego) for the same reason.
Lublin and beyond
After the war, Fleck returned to Lviv to find his city a part of the Soviet Union, so he moved with his family quickly to Lublin where several scientific positions were open due to the killing of Polish academics by the Nazis. He became the head of the Institute of Microbiology of the School of Medicine of Maria Sklodowska-Curie University (UMCS). In 1952, he moved to Warsaw to become the Director of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Mother and Child State Institute. In 1954 he was elected a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Lublin Seminar 2023
This year at the Maria Skłodowska-Curie University in Lublin on 24th June there was a conference held to celebrate the philosophy of science in Lublin, recognising the particular contribution of Ludwik Fleck: "Philosophy of Science, Epistemology and Axiology in Lublin: Ludwik Fleck, Narcyz Łubnicki, Leon Koj, Zdzisław Cackowski".
The conference was hosted by Professor Marek Hetmański of the Skłodowska-Curie University and the main paper on Ludwik Fleck was given by Professor Wojciech Sady of the University of Silesia in Katowice: "Prewar empirical research and the conception of science - their impact on the intellectual milieu of Lublin".
What goes around comes around
One of the controversies surrounding Ludwik Fleck concerns the use of his ideas by the later but more famous historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn famously, but famously inadequately, mentioned Fleck in the Preface to his groundbreaking work "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". This book, based on a study of scientific revolutions, caused one itself - a revolution in the perception of science. However, controversy continues till today whether Kuhn gave sufficient credit to Fleck.
In another context, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, where Professor Sady contributed the entry on Ludwik Fleck, Sady suggests that Fleck himself gave inadequate attribution to other thinkers who influenced his ideas.
"Research" in Auschwitz-Buchenwald
Fleck was deported with his wife Ernestina and son Ryszard to Lviv's Jewish ghetto following the German invasion. He was allowed to continue his research and obtained a vaccine from the urine of typhus patients.
Together with his family he was deported to Auschwitz on February 7, 1943 and was tasked by the Germans with diagnosing syphilis and typhus using serological tests. After December 1943 Fleck was given the specific task of preparing a typhus vaccine for the camp. Again there is controversy as to the exact nature of all his research steps. Some researchers have stated that Fleck worked consistently against the SS, producing a fake vaccine for them and a genuine vaccine for inmates:
Others, such as Eva Hedfors have been more critical of the scientific and ethical aspects of research in a Nazi camp. Professor Wojciech Sady suggested at the Lublin 2023 Seminar that we should be cautious in issuing moral judgments about those who had to live and work in the worst possible human conditions.
Later life
In 1957 Fleck left Poland to join his son in Israel. He continued to research, however his health declined and he died of a (second) heart attack in 1961.
Key ideas
Fleck developed the influential ideas of a Thought Collective, Thought Style, Incommensurability as well as the Exoteric and Esoteric components of a scientific community. (For more on these concepts, see the Stanford Encyclopedia entry by Professor Sady.) These concepts introduced into our understanding of science the realisation that science takes place in a community at a certain point in history, and they have led to the new disciplines of the history and sociology of science.
A simple example might be to ask: "Which is the greater scientific achievement: the atomic bomb or antibiotics?" Fleck's work suggests these are "incommensurable" areas, born out of different thought collectives. One development was crucial in World War II (and is related to historical-ethical assessments of the use of the atomic bomb), another in delivering us from the Plague. These are very different contexts with different values and different scientific and social assumptions.
Some thinkers such as Paul Feyerabend have developed Fleck's ideas in a more relativist direction, with the notorious slogan "Anything goes". Feyerabend thought there is so little we can put down as a universal "scientific method", that if we look at real scientific research we can only cry "Anything goes!" Science is one big improvisation.
Thomas Kuhn, under Fleck's influence, saw more structure in incommensurability. He distinguished "normal science" - which takes place within a "paradigm" when the scientific community is more or less agreed on the "background assumptions" - and "revolutionary science", when even core values may be put into question.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, UMCS 2023 Conference, The "Brama Grodzka - Teatr NN” Centre, Lublin, Twitter.
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