The socio-logic of knowledge-in-formation between discovery and error : some considerations from 'normal science' under exceptional conditions

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).