Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact - Softcover

Fleck, Ludwik; Kuhn, Thomas S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226253252 ISBN 13: 9780226253251

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1981

Synopsis

Originally published in German in 1935, this monograph anticipated solutions to problems of scientific progress, the truth of scientific fact and the role of error in science now associated with the work of Thomas Kuhn and others. Arguing that every scientific concept and theory—including his own—is culturally conditioned, Fleck was appreciably ahead of his time. And as Kuhn observes in his foreword, "Though much has occurred since its publication, it remains a brilliant and largely unexploited resource."

"To many scientists just as to many historians and philosophers of science facts are things that simply are the case: they are discovered through properly passive observation of natural reality. To such views Fleck replies that facts are invented, not discovered. Moreover, the appearance of scientific facts as discovered things is itself a social construction, a made thing. A work of transparent brilliance, one of the most significant contributions toward a thoroughly sociological account of scientific knowledge."—Steven Shapin, Science

About this title

About the Author

Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-96) was the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His books include The Essential Tension; Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity, 1894-1912; and The Copernican Revolution.

From the Back Cover

'To many scientists, just as to many historians and philosophers of science...facts are things that simply are the case; they are discovered through properly passive observation of natural reality. To such views Fleck replies that facts are invented, not discovered. Moreover, the appearance of scientific facts as discovered things is itself a social construction: a made thing...A work of transparent brilliance: one of the most significant contributions toward a thoroughly sociological account of scientific knowledge.'

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1981
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226253252
• ISBN 13: 9780226253251
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232
• Editor: Trenn Thaddeus J., Merton Robert K.