Ludwik Fleck's Roles in Society
A Case Study Using Joseph Ben-David's Paradigm for a Sociology of Knowledge
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7101713 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gad Freudenthal (0000-0003-1688-3031, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Institut d'histoire des sciences, 13 rue du Four, 75006 Paris, France, corresponding author), Ilana Löwy (0000-0001-6963-0578, Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM), Unité 158, Hopital Necker-Enfants Malades, 149 rue de Sèvres, 75743 Paris Cedex 15, France.) |
| Year | 1988 |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 625-651 |
| Publication date | 1988-11-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Studies of Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0306-3127 • E-ISSN: 1460-3659 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/030631288018004003 |
| OpenAlex | W2140663911 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 13 |
| References cited | 2 |
In his early writings, the late Joseph Ben-David put forward a model accounting for certain kinds of cases of the emergence of new disciplines. We argue that Ben-David's explanations fall squarely within the sociology of knowledge — and, in fact, have many points in common with explanations in the tradition of the `strong programme' in that discipline. Specifically, Ben-David's central theoretical concept — that of `role hybridization' — overlaps the notion of `multifunctionality' of theories. Ben-David's approach is superior to that of the `strong programme' in as much as, being hermeneutical and not causal, it avoids the dangers usually besetting the sociology of knowledge — notably relativism. In the second part of the paper we analyze the emergence of Ludwik Fleck's ideas and — using Ben-David's model — we relate them to the social context within which Fleck was working. We show that social conditions induced the outsider bacteriologist Fleck to adopt a strategy of role-hybridization. This strategy gave rise to `idea-hybridizations' which led to his original, multifunctional theory of scientific growth
Biology · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Relativism · Sociology · Sociology of knowledge · Sociology of scientific knowledge · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Critical Realism in Sociology · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Philosophy
Del campo al laboratorio
Message in a bottle from ‘the crisis of reality’
Siegel, Schaudinn, Fleck and the Etiology of Syphilis
Fleck and the social constitution of scientific objectivity
Introduction
Gymnastics – an Emerging National University Discipline – Johannes Lindhard's Struggle to Institutionalise Gymnastics as a Subject at the University of Copenhagen 1909–1940
Quantification in Science and Cognition Circa 1937 A Newly Discovered Text of Ludwik Fleck
On hybridizations, networks and new disciplines
Specificity in the era of Koch and Ehrlich
The Reading of Ludwik Fleck
Fleck the Public Health Expert
Science and Emotions
Ways and dynamics of reception of Ludwik Fleck's work in the social sciences
| Citations per year | 0.34 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1988 - 2016 (29) |
| Highly cited | No |