A friend sent me this link and quote, with his comment about Fleck:
This guy Ludwik Fleck was an MD virologist. Really interesting fellow and life. He was put in concentration camp by Nazis and told to make vaccine against cholera to give to soldiers. He made the vaccine, vaccinated his fellow inmates and gave barrels of neutralized (useless) vaccine to the Germans. Lived to emigrate to Israel. Notice how they call him a Polish-Jewish scientist.; would be like calling me a German-Jewish or Polish-Jewish scientist. I think he was a fore-runner to Thomas Kuhn.
The quote below is from Ludwik Fleck -
"When people begin to exchange ideas, a thought collective arises, bonded by a specific mood, and as a result of a series of understandings and misunderstandings a peculiar thought style is developed. When a thought style becomes sufficiently sophisticated, the collective divides itself into an esoteric circle (professionals) and an exoteric circle (laymen). A thought style consists of the active elements, which shape ways in which members of the collective see and think about the world, and of the passive elements, the sum of which is perceived as an “objective reality”. What we call “facts”, are social constructs: only what is true to culture is true to nature. Thought styles are often incommensurable: what is a fact to the members of a thought collective A sometimes does not exist to the members of a thought collective B, and a thought that is significant and true to the members of A may sometimes be false or meaningless for members of B."
