LAUSR

owing to which Fleck is made to appear as a representative of an irrationalist conception of science. The point is rather this. Fleck used for his point of orientation a concept of rationality of the sort expressed in an analytical theory of science that at the time was just being brought into being. That is why he felt compelled to characterize as irrational structures of experience that lead one beyond that particular concept of rationality. He says, for instance: “The necessity of being experienced [Erfahrenheit] introduces into knowledge an irrational element, which cannot be logically justified. Introduction to a field of knowledge is a kind of initiation that is performed by others. It opens the door. But it is individual experience, which can only be acquired personally, that yields the capacity for active and independent cognition” (pp. 95–96 [pp. 125–126]). If, in contrast, one does not confine one’s concept of rationality to elements that can be legitimated by logic, then such aspects of the historical development of systems of knowledge can surely be represented as fully rational and as adequate to the empirically given. Fleck offers important hints that address the challenge of formulating such a concept of historically developing rationality. For Fleck, a fact is definitely not just a purely social or cognitive product; rather, it arises “at first [as] a signal of resistance in the chaotic initial thinking, then a definite thought constraint, and finally a form to be directly perceived” (p. 95 [p. 124]). To bring about a scientific thought style means, in Fleck’s view, to adapt it to resistance from the outside and to maximize what he calls “passive connections [Kopplungen].” The objective of modern science, he asserts, is to attain “a maximum of information [Kenntnisse], the greatest possible number of mutual relations between individual elements,” so as to approximate in this manner “the ideal of objective truth” (pp. 95, 144 [p. 189]). The “being experienced [Erfahrenheit]” required to master a scientific domain is, therefore, not at all irrational—unless one understands rationality quite narrowly in the sense of being capable of formal-logical legitimation. In 1960, shortly before he passed away, Fleck summed up his thoughts on the social, historical, and epistemic structures of scientific knowledge one final time in a manuscript that remained unpublished for more than twenty years. He found his insight into the social nature of science and its development confirmed by the developments of his time. “In the present day,” he wrote, “in the era of team cooperation, of articles published by several coauthors, of so many journals, reviews, conferences, symposia, committees, governing bodies, societies and congresses, the communal nature of scientific knowledge becomes evident.” In view of the role of international large-scale cooperation at scientific experimental and measuring facilities, and of the significance of new information technologies for scientific communication and cooperation, Fleck’s analysis of the collective nature of the production of scientific knowledge is today more timely than ever.