Thought+Style+(Weiss)

=Thought Style=

Developed by Ludwik Fleck in //[|Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact]//, the concept of a "thought style" has deeply influenced theories about subjectivity, objectivity, facts, truth-making, and collective scientific processes in Science and Technology Studies. Sometimes contrasted with Thomas Kuhn's //[|The Structure of Scientific Revolutions]//, Fleck's framing of knowledge production as a more integrated, socially-influenced process tends to be favored by STS scholars. In //Genesis//, Fleck sought to answer the central question: "How, then, did this empirical fact originate and in what does it consist?" (Prologue, 1934)

Originally coined by Karl Mannheim in 1925 as //Denkstil//, Ludwik Fleck adopted the term as the seed for //Denkkollektiv// ("thought collective") and other related terms. Thaddeus J. Trenn opted to do a straight translation of the term for consistency and to respect Fleck's intent to distinguish "collective" from "community" (xvi). Nikolas Rose sees the term as embodying "a way of identifying difficulties, questioning arguments, identifying explanatory failures,” but also as defining “what //there is// to explain." (12) In “Ludwik Fleck on the social construction of medical knowledge,” Ilana Löwy noted that “[Fleck’s] works are read almost exclusively by philosophers and sociologists of science, not by sociologists or philosophers of medicine” despite Fleck's focus on the construction of syphilis as a fact in the medical community.

**Scientific Fact**
Fleck defines this several times to highlight the multi-faceted nature of what a "fact" means.

//"For the time being we can define a scientific fact as a thought-stylized conceptual relation which can be investigated from the point of view of history and from that of psychology, both individual and collective, but which cannot be substantively reconstructed in toto simply from these points of view." This expresses the inseparable relation between active and passive parts of knowledge as well as the phenomenon that the number of both these parts of knowledge increases with the number of facts."// (83)

A supplemented definition of //fact// is presented later, after Fleck presents his research on syphilis and the Wassermann reaction:

//"The factuality of the relation between syphilis and the Wassermann reaction consists in ust this kind of solution to the problem of minimizing thought caprice, under given conditions, while maximizing thought constraint. The fact thus represents a stylied signal of resistance in thinking. Because the thought style is carried by the thought collective, **this 'fact' can be designated in brief as the signal of resistance by the thought collective** [denkkollektives Widerstandsaviso]."// (98) (emphasis added)

A fact does not simply come into being fully formed. It starts as an initial "signal of resistance" and progresses into a definite thought constraint into a concept with a perceivable form by a particular //thought collective//. This has similarities to Barad's Agential Realism (Weiss) and performativity by Butler.

**Trinary Cognition**
In questioning the binary observer-observed relationship, Fleck paved the way for critique of this scientific, epistemological standard. Although feminist STS thinkers like Donna Haraway and Karen Barad have critiqued the clear distinction between observer and observed, this was still a significant contribution to the science of knowledge:

// "In comparative epistemology, cognition must not be construed as only a dual relationship between the knowing subject and the object to be known. The existing fund of knowledge must be a third partner in this relation as a base factor of all new knowledge." // (38)

Fleck’s recognition of cognition as a result of social activities is reflected in later scholarship on the topic:

// "Cognition is therefore not an individual process of any theoretical “particular consciousness.” Rather it is the result of a social activity, since the existing stock of knowledge exceeds the range available to any one individual." // (38)

**Thought Collective**
// "The communal “carrier” of the thought style is designated the thought collective. The concept of the thought collective, as we use it to investigate the social conditioning of thinking, is not to be understood as a fixed group or social class. It is functional, as it were rather than substantial, and may be compared to the concept of field of force in physics." // (102)

Fleck notes that a thought collective can arise whenever two or more people are exchanging thoughts, but the stability and persistence of such a collective can vary depending on how many people and over how long a period such activity is sustained. When a thought collective arises from within a large, established social group, it will be much more stable:

//"If a large group exists long enough, the thought style becomes fixed and formal in structure. Practical performance then dominates over creativ mood, which is reduced to a certain fixed level that id disciplined, uniform, and discreet. This is the situation in which contemporary science finds itself as a specific, thought-collective structure [denkkollektives Gebilde]."// (102)

Another aspect of thought collectives is that they both train and restrict the abilities of members to observe phenomena. As members become more specialized and practiced in seeing some types of information, they become less able to notice contradictory data:

//"Direct perception of form [Gestaltsehen] requires being experienced in the relevant field of thought. The ability directly to perceive meaning, form, and self-contained unity is acquired only after much experience, perhaps with preliminary training. At the same time of course, we lose the ability to see something that contradicts the form. But it is just this readiness for directed perception that is the main constituent of thought style. Visual perception of form therefore becomes a definite function of thought style."// (92)

A fact has three different relations to a thought collective (101):

1) Every fact must be in line with the intellectual interests of its thought collective, since resistance is possible only where there is striving toward a goal. Facts in aesthetics of in jurisprudence are thus rarely facts for science. 2) The resistance must be effective within the thought collective. It must be brought home to each member as both a thought constraint and a form to be directly experienced. 3) The fact must be expressed in the style of the thought collective.