THE GENESIS OF FLECK'S IDEAS

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W.t.ADYSi:.AW MARKIEWICZ 
Lw6w AS CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL 
BACKGROUND OF THE GENESIS OF FLECK'S IDEAS 
In the name of both my Polish colleagues and myself, as the secretary of the 
First Division of the Polish Academy of Sciences of Social Sciences, I should 
like to take advantage of the honor granted me in presenting the opening 
talk to extend my most heartfelt thanks for the invitation to participate in 
this undertaking to the organizers of the Ludwik Fleck colloquium. 
I have purposely introduced myself as the director of Poland's largest 
research institute for social sciences. I find it simply peculiar to appear here 
as a guest instead of an organizer. We can all the more appreciate the courtesy 
of the German organizers, in particular of Professors Lothar Schafer and 
Thomas Schnelle, who allowed a representative of Polish science to open this 
conference. 
This is truly a phenomenon demanding its own sociological analysis, 
and probably one by political science as well: how could Ludwik Fleck's 
existence and the bountiful fruits of his research have been so quickly and 
thoroughly forgotten in his own country? After contacting Dr. Schnelle I 
consulted our specialists - doctors, biologists, philosophers and sociologists 
- for information about Ludwik Fleck, and everywhere I found total or 
practically total ignorance. A certain consolation can be found in the fact 
that Prof. Zdzistaw Cackowski, present here, and his co-workers in Lublin are 
involved - for the first time since 1979 - with this figure: this fact, however, 
is to be seen as an exception which confums the rule. I should only like to 
point out here that the collection 'Szkoly w nauce' (Schools in Science), 
published a few months ago by the Committee for Scientific Research of the 
Polish Academy of Science, whose area of concern is closely connected to 
Fleck's ideas concerning thought-style and thought-collective, makes no 
mention whatsoever of this scientist. Not a single one of his works appears 
in the bibliography. It gives one pause that our sociologists of science and 
researchers were not tempted to study Fleck by Thomas S. Kuhn, whose 
Structure of Scientific Revolutions was translated into Polish in 1968, and 
who is well-known among our scientists. 
One could make a good case for the idea that the explanation of our 
country's lack of interest in Fleck's research lies in many of Fleck's ideas 
or methodological principles - e.g., those concerning the historical aspects 
223 
R. S. Cohen and T. Schnelle (eds.), Cognition and Fact - Materials on Ludwik Fleck, 223-229. 
© 1986 by D. Reidel Publishing Company. 
224 W.f:ADYS.tAW MARKIEWICZ 
of the development of science, the psychological aspects of research, in par-
ticular those on the genesis of specific information-'climates' and emotionally 
stimulating or repressive encounters, and finally the sociological problematic 
of the diffusion of scientific knowledge in various milieus. 
Before saying anything about the city of Lwow as the cultural and intellec-
tual background of Fleck's ideas on the sociology of science and the theory 
of research, I would like to say that this task is tremendously complicated 
and practically unrealizable. In light of his statements on/act (die Tatsache), 
one must draw the conclusion that giving a comprehensive and precise recon-
struction of the cultural and intellectual atmosphere of a particular milieu 
- in our case concerning one of the largest cities in Poland - provides a 
researcher with insurmountable difficulties. 
The only attempt at a sort of monograph of the city in our scientific litera-
ture is found in Florian Znaniecki's Miasto w swiadomosci jego obywateli (The 
City in the Consciousness of its Citizens). This description is based on so-called 
personal documents, in particular on statements by the inhabitants of Poznan. 
The in.'ufficiencies of this method are well-known: a determination of the 
cultural climate of a city on the basis of its citizens' feelings - even when 
these are of a representative section of the population - appears quite risky. 
On the city of Lwow we do not even have a monograph of this sort. 
The right to work out the influence of a certain milieu on a scientist's 
world of ideas is usually reserved for historians of science; they present science 
in the broadest framework of the cultural phenomena of the time in question. 
Researchers generally agree that 
the picture of scientific issues based on historical analyses is not sufficient even when the 
documentation appears complete. The reason for this is to be sought in the fact that the 
documents - so-called source material - are not 'photographs' depicting the objective 
state of affairs and socio-political and cultural influences. The greatest doubt by far, 
however, is raised by the fact that the documents relevant for a historian of science 
reflect only to a slight degree the climate of small social groups, the informal structure 
of scientific organizations and many of the influences relevant to the activity of research. 
(Czeslaw N. Nosal) 
Accordingly, the historical aspects of science's development must be 
supplemented by other sources of information and models of thought. Both 
methodologists of research and psychologists contribute to these supplements 
insofar as they concern themselves with the mechanisms of working up 
information in the process of creative thinking and with the decisions and 
organization of the creative personality. In summary: a satisfactory answer to 
the question of the cultural and intellectual background's influence on Fleck's