Abstract:
A sociology of knowledge of a specific kind, namely that emerging from
observations on the work of scientific thought collectives, is what Thomas Kuhn
acknowledges as Ludwik Fleck’s (Denkstile und Tatsachen. Gesammelte Schriften
und Zeugnisse, Suhrkamp, Berlin, 1936) influence on his own Structure of Scientific
Revolutions (1962). Yet the relationship between thought and collective that turns
out to be one of the central problematics in Fleck’s thought, remains troubling to
Kuhn. The reservations expressed by Kuhn go to the core of Fleck’s conceptualization
of the structures, roles, scientific achievements, illusions, and errors of thought
collectives, as well as to the sociology of knowledge with which he is credited, but
which remains a theoretical blindspot. I would here like to take a closer look at this
problematic, with a view to specifying the nature and the dynamic of a ‘sociology of
knowledge’ that a leading thought would engender in a scientific collective, in its
refractions between internal and external conditions of knowledge formation,
operationalized under conditions of scientific work in Nazi concentration camps, as
they were retrospectively recounted by Fleck (Cognition and fact: material on
Ludwik Fleck, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1946).
