Inspiration without footnotes: Fleckian sources of Kuhn's philosophy of science

Abstract

In the 1930s, as a result of philosophical reflection on the nature of scientific knowledge, logical empiricism and Popper's falsificationism emerged. Philosophers almost completely overlooked Ludwik Fleck's book Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache (1935), which fell into total oblivion after World War II. In 1949, Thomas S. Kuhn read it and was greatly impressed. In 1962, shortly after Fleck's death, he published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the most influential book in the philosophy of science of the 20th century. Using different terminology and illustrating his reflections with examples from the history of physics (while Fleck referred to the history of medicine), Kuhn outlined a picture of the nature of scientific knowledge and the mechanisms of its development strikingly similar to Fleck's. Although he mentioned Fleck's book in passing in the Preface, he never referred to its ideas in The Structure or in his subsequent works. Since the late 1970s, Fleck's book has begun to be translated into other languages and commented upon. It cannot be proven that Kuhn's philosophy of science is a plagiarism. However, it is worth celebrating that Fleck's philosophy and sociology of science are gradually gaining their rightful place in the marketplace of ideas, albeit with a decades-long delay.