Relativism or Relationism? A Mannheimian Interpretation of Fleck’s Claims About Relativism

Abstract

The paper explores the defence by the early sociologist of science Ludwik Fleck against the charge of relativism. It is shown that there are crucial and hitherto unnoticed similarities between Fleck’s strategy and the attempt by his contemporary Karl Mannheim to distinguish between an incoherent relativism and a consistent relationism. Both authors seek to revise epistemology fundamentally by reinterpreting the concept of objectivity in two ways: as inner- and inter-style objectivity. The argument for the latter concept shows the genuine political background and intent of Fleck’s sociology of science and its ambition to relieve the cultural struggles of his time.

1 Relman and Absman

Here is what I take to be the typical structure of one of the oldest debates in philosophy: someone, let’s call him “Relman”, claims for example one or more of the following: “What exists is always dependent on who sees it.”, “We should not say that truths are found, we should say that they are made”,¹ “Truth is not absolute and thinkable in terms of corresponding to or mirroring the ready-made world.”, “We make worlds by making versions of the world.”,² “It is impossible to understand those who have radically different concepts and world-views.”, “After a change of paradigm the scientist works in a different world.”³ or something quite similar. Another person, lets call him “Absman”, retorts something like the following: “Relman’s relativistic position is self-refuting. Once Relman claimed, what he has claimed, he either has to believe in what he has claimed absolutely or only relatively. If he does so absolutely, he contradicts his own claim; and if he does so relatively, we do not need to bother at all.” Although Relman now has some more ways of retorting, it is not untypical that he will answer in the following way: “Absman is completely right to claim that relativism is self-refuting. But I am not a relativist at all. What I wanted to claim is that….”, and at least at this point—if not from the very beginning of this little over-simplified story—we get the impression that Absman and Relman are talking at cross-purposes.

Now, of course, in its brevity this story is not adequate and, of course, at probably every step of this purported dialogue Relman or Absman could have taken another route, but I think a fair case can be made that in the history of the debate about relativism, we will find authors whose names we can substitute for our impersonal Relman and Absman—just try “Richard Rorty” for “Relman” and “Thomas Nagel”⁴ for “Absman”.⁵

In any case, in this paper I am just interested in what Relman has to say and I will discuss two Relmen and their answer to the charge of relativism. My first Relman will be Ludwik Fleck, whose work was rediscovered in the 1970s and, so far, has been much discussed both as an important source of influence on Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and as a pioneer of relativist and constructivist ideas in the philosophy of science.⁶ My second Relman will be Karl Mannheim, one of the founders and leading figures of early sociology of knowledge. The question I will try to answer is: what does Ludwik Fleck mean when he insists that he is not a relativist? And my proposed answer will be: he meant almost the same as his contemporary Karl Mannheim in claiming that he is not a relativist but a relationist. The fact that I am just considering the position of my Relmen Fleck and Mannheim has the consequence that I will not try to assess in any way the coherence or tenability of such a relationist position. In fact, I would probably side with Absman. However, in this paper I will not argue for my own position but try to understand more fully the position of my Relmen Fleck and Mannheim. My modest aim is to clarify charitably what Fleck probably thought, not what he perhaps should have thought.

The idea of looking at Mannheim’s contributions to the sociology of knowledge in order to understand more fully what Fleck thought is not new. Concerning the similarities and the differences of the ideas of both thinkers usually the debate revolves around two issues: the concept of “thought-style (Denkstil)” and the treatment of the natural sciences. With respect to the first issue many authors take note of the fact that the word Denkstil was introduced by Mannheim in the year 1925⁷; the first use of the term by Fleck is to be found in his Some Specific Features in the Medical Way of Thinking ⁸ that was published two years later.⁹ Since, however, Fleck never mentions Mannheim in any of his texts¹⁰ the question of whether Fleck knew Mannheim’s work is open to debate: whereas Schütz thinks that “Fleck must have known at least one of Mannheim’s publications”¹¹ and also Pels believes that “it is almost inconceivable that he could have missed Mannheim’s contributions”,¹² Schnelle more cautiously claims that Mannheim’s works appear to have been unknown to Fleck.¹³ In what follows I will take stand neither in the debate about whether Fleck borrowed the term Denkstil knowingly from Mannheim’s texts nor in the debate about the differences and similarities of what is meant by this term in the work of both thinkers.¹⁴ My analysis of the clear similarities in Fleck’s and Mannheim’s strategies to avoid the pitfalls of relativism, however, supports the conviction of Pels and Schütz: regarding these similarities it is in fact almost inconceivable that Fleck did not know Mannheim’s works.

Concerning the question of Mannheim’s treatment of the natural sciences it is often noted that Mannheim—in obvious contrast to Fleck—hesitates to examine the natural sciences and mathematics by sociological means.¹⁵ Especially the proponents of the so called “Strong Programme” in the sociology of scientific knowledge, notably David Bloor, emphasise what they call “Mannheim’s failure of nerve” in the treatment of the knowledge of the natural sciences.¹⁶ Now although I think that Mannheim’s treatment of the natural sciences is much more complicated than is often thought by the proponents of the “Strong Programme”,¹⁷ I do not want to contest the claim that Mannheim excluded the natural sciences from his analysis in this paper¹⁸. What I want to do is to point out a third issue worthy of discussion in the debate about the similarities and differences between Mannheim and Fleck: the issue of their very similar strategies to avoid the pitfalls of relativism.¹⁹

One implicit consequence of my analysis will be a critique of the recent, at least European, tendency to highlight Fleck’s work on the question of relativism and to reject Mannheim’s attempt to establish relationism: if my analysis of the crucial similarities is correct, the strategies of both thinkers will, at least in their essentials, succeed or fail together. In this sense, this paper can be read, against the “Strong Programme”,²⁰ as a rehabilitation of Mannheim’s account in the sociology of knowledge.²¹

2 Relationism: What I Am Not Going to Talk About

Before I start to investigate what Fleck and Mannheim have to say about relativism it is necessary to, at this point, make some terminological remarks about the term “relationism”.

In the context of the philosophy of science this term—or the term “relationalism”—is usually used to denote a specific view concerning the ontological status of space and time—especially in connection with the positions of Leibniz, Reichenbach and Mach. A relationist in this sense claims that space and time must be thought of as a family of spatial and temporal relations holding among the material constituents of the universe and denies that we should consider “space itself” as an additional constituent over and above the world’s material contents. Although I think that it would be a very interesting enterprise to investigate the similarities and differences between “relationism” in this sense and the use of the term coined by Karl Mannheim in the social sciences, relationism concerning space and time will play no role in this paper.²²

In the context of debates in sociology concerning the question of relativism, the term “relationism”, though most often connected to the work of Mannheim, is also used by some authors to refer to the positions of Ernst Cassirer and Georg Simmel.²³ It is very likely that Mannheim’s decision to use the term “relationism” is deeply influenced by the thoughts of these authors since he attended their seminars in Berlin during a two-year research trip as a student.²⁴ And in recent debates about epistemic relativism the label “epistemic relationism” is used by e.g. Paul Boghossian to denote a necessary, but not sufficient condition of the epistemic relativist’s view.²⁵ However, I neither want to talk about the possible genesis of the term “relationism” nor about its use in contemporary debates about relativism but try to understand more fully what Mannheim means by this term. I do so by looking into his own work in order to make a comparison with Fleck.

3 My Relmen: Mannheim and Fleck

In order to sustain my thesis about the astonishing similarities between Mannheim’s and Fleck’s treatment of the issue of relativism, it is first of all necessary to show that both authors fit into my oversimplified Relmanian schema of, on the one hand, claiming something that sounds very relativist and, on the other hand, denying to advocate relativism. Here are two quotes from Mannheim that clearly suggest a relativist reading of his position:

[T]he utopian pattern of correctness, the idea of truth, arises out of the concrete modes of obtaining knowledge prevailing at a given time. The concept of truth has not remained constant through all time, but has been involved in the process of historical change. […] We see, therefore, […] that the concept of truth itself is dependent on the already existing types of knowledge. (Mannheim 1946, 262).

If we examine the history of knowledge and thought with such questions in mind […] then we shall find at each moment not only antagonistic groups combating each other, but at the same time a battle of opposed ‘world postulates’ (Weltwollungen). In the historical process, it is not only interests that combat interests, but ‘worlds’ fight against ‘worlds’. (Mannheim 1952b, 185; improved translation).

I think the claims about the concept of truth being dependent on existing types of knowledge and about the opposing ‘worlds’ of different groups—and there are many more of this kind in Mannheim’s works²⁶—obviously indicate a relativist interpretation of Mannheim’s thought. The same can be said about some of Fleck’s claims:

Today we know that the real cause of difficulty here was the absolute meaning of the concepts ‘up’ and ‘down’ – a problem that dissolves under a relativist interpretation. The same difficulty arises even today if such concepts as existence, reality, and truth etc. are used in an absolute sense. (Fleck 1979, 28; improved translation).

The theory of knowledge which is the science of thought-styles, of their historic and sociological development considers that truth is the up-to-date stage of changes of thought-style. […] The thought-style creates reality, not in a different way from other products of culture and, at the same time, itself undergoes certain harmonious changes. (Fleck 1986b, 111f.; improved translation).

Most probably it has been these claims—and many others more to be found in Fleck’s writings²⁷—that lead to the prominent interpretation of Fleck proposing a relativist and social-constructivist theory of science.²⁸ This interpretation, however, is immediately confronted with a problem, because Fleck himself explicitly denies that he is a relativist. For example, in his Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact he maintains that

Truth is not ‘relative’ and certainly not ‘subjective’ in the popular sense of the word. (Fleck 1979, 100).

And in an answer to the polish logician Izydora Dambska he—commenting on the content and value of his theory of thought-styles—claims that

These are neither sophisms nor relative truths. I am not claiming that the alchemistic gold was the real gold in our sense. (Fleck [1937] 2007, 471; my translation).

Finally in the rejoinder to the criticism of Tadeusz Bilikiewicz, Fleck clearly insists that

No cognitive relativism results from the theory of thought-styles. (Fleck 1990a, 268).

On the one hand, these comments on his own theory confirm my thesis that Fleck belongs to the Relmanian tradition concerning the question of relativism, which claims something that sounds very relativist and at the same time opposes a relativist interpretation of its own work. On the other hand, they surely call for an explanation. How is it possible to propose a relativist interpretation of truth²⁹ and to deny simultaneously that truth is relative—without holding a totally incoherent theory of knowledge and science? In what follows I will try to reconstruct a Fleckian answer to this problem from his own writings. Since in Fleck’s own work there are at best hints to such an answer, I will take a look at his contemporary Karl Mannheim who was confronted with the same problem as Fleck concerning the question of relativism. Mannheim tried to solve the lurking incoherence by distinguishing between a self-refuting relativism and his own position that he labelled “relationism”. It will turn out that Mannheim’s description of his purported relationist solution is not just similar to but in its basic idea nearly the same as Fleck’s treatment of the issue.

4 Relativism and Relationism I: The ‘Old, Static Epistemologies’ Versus a ‘New, Dynamic Epistemology’

From the very beginning of his examination of the so-called ‘existential determination of knowledge’ (Seinsgebundenheit des Wissens) Mannheim was aware that his theory will provoke the reproach to be relativist.³⁰ He was, however, sure that the necessity of a sociological treatment of the phenomenon of knowledge itself does not necessarily call for such a relativist interpretation.³¹ He writes:

Viewed from the angle of this second approach there are two separate and distinct solutions to the problem of what constitutes reliable knowledge – the one solution may be termed relationism, and the other relativism. Relativism is a product of the modern historical-sociological procedure which is based on the recognition that all historical thinking is bound up with the concrete position in life of the thinker (Standortgebundenheit des Denkers). But relativism combines this historical-sociological insight with an older theory of knowledge which was as yet unaware of the interplay between conditions of existence and modes of thought, and which modelled its knowledge after static prototypes such as might be exemplified by the proposition 2×2=4. [R]elativism, then, owes its existence to the discrepancy between this newly-won insight into the actual processes of thought and a theory of knowledge which had not yet taken account of this new insight. (Mannheim 1946, 70).

Mannheim’s aim in this passage is to invalidate the absolutist’s argument from self-refutation of relativism by following the general Relmanian strategy presented at the beginning of this paper: i.e. accepting that relativism is self-refuting but denying to propose a relativism of this kind. In the passage above Mannheim maintains that the difference between a self-refuting relativism and a purportedly acceptable relationism lies in what kind of epistemology you are going to choose.³² The sociological investigation of the existing dependencies between the social circumstances in which thinkers live and the thoughts of these thinkers only leads to relativism if we combine this investigation with an epistemology that still holds on to the ideal of absolute, unchanging truths and knowledge. Once, however, our sociological investigation has shattered this ideal and we have reached a radically new epistemology with historically and socially variable conceptions of truth and knowledge, the threat of relativism vanishes according to Mannheim into the acceptable idea of relationism.³³ Therefore the investigation of the ‘existential determination’ of knowledge “requires the revision of the epistemology belonging to it by setting up the thesis of the inherently relational structure of human knowledge”.³⁴ The epistemology of relationism then accepts “that certain (qualitative) truths cannot even be grasped, or formulated, except as being existentially relative (seinsrelativ)”.³⁵ To summarize the idea in Mannheim’s words:

Relationism, as we use it, states that every assertion essentially can only be relationally formulated. It becomes relativism only when it is linked with the older static ideal of eternal, desubjectified unperspectivistic truths, and when it is judged by this alien ideal of absolute truth. (Mannheim 1946, 270; improved translation).³⁶

According to Mannheim, such a new, dynamic epistemology³⁷ does not result in abandoning objectivity; on the new conception, objectivity merely gets a new and different meaning. There are two things that can be meant by objectivity on the dynamic conception of truth and knowledge. At this point in my paper I will just refer to the first of these meanings and postpone my discussion of the second. According to Mannheim

there is first of all the fact that in so far as two people are immersed in the same system, in the same aspectual structure (Aspektstruktur), they can, on the basis of the identity of the given conceptual and categorical apparatus and through the possibility of an unequivocal discussion thereby created, arrive at clear results, and be in a position to eradicate as an error everything that deviates from these. (Mannheim 1946, 270; improved translation).

So within a certain system, in which the participants share the same Aspektstruktur—that, according to Mannheim, “signifies the manner in which one views an object, what one perceives in it, and how one construes it in his thinking”³⁸—and the same concepts, it is possible to distinguish clearly between truth and error. The consequence of the acceptance of the new, dynamic epistemology is that objectivity does not mean ‘absolute objectivity’ but ‘objectivity in a certain thought-style’.

Now let’s have a look at how Fleck argues against the charge that his theory of thought-styles leads to relativism. After denying that truth is ‘relative’ in his Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact he goes on by claiming that truth

is always, or almost always, completely determined within a thought style. One can never say that the same thought is true for A and false for B. If A and B belong to the same thought collective, the thought will be either true or false for both. But if they belong to different thought collectives, it will just not be the same thought! It either must be unclear to, or is understood differently by, one of them. Truth is not a convention, but rather (1) in historical perspective, an event in the history of thought, (2) in its contemporary context, stylized thought constraint. (Fleck 1979, 100; improved translation).³⁹

The idea in this passage—that is repeated almost literally in Fleck’s rejoinder to Bilikiewicz⁴⁰—is nearly the same as Mannheim’s: Within a thought-style, in which we share the same concepts with the same meaning, it is possible to distinguish clearly between truth and error—viewed from the perspective of another thought-style however, it is possible that we do not even grasp such truths.⁴¹ It is the thought-constraint (Denkzwang) set by a thought-style that determines what is regarded as true within the respective thought-collective,⁴² in fact—as is clearly indicated by the quote from Fleck’s Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact—‘truth’ is identified with the thought-constraint generated by a certain thought-style.⁴³ ‘Truth’ in this sense gets a new meaning for Fleck in that it does not mean ‘absolute truth’ but ‘truth within a certain thought-style’.

Of course, this argument for the possibility of inner-style truth hinges on and—at the same time—is an expression of Fleck’s demand for a radically new theory of knowledge that recognises the social dependence and the historical development of thinking.⁴⁴ As can be seen in many places of his work, Fleck assumes that his new theory of knowledge stands in fundamental opposition to what he calls ‘the classical theories of knowledge’⁴⁵ in that it uses different conceptions of ‘truth’, ‘cognition’, perception’ and ‘knowledge’.⁴⁶ Since the old, classical epistemologies with their individualist outlook cannot fully account for and in fact stand in opposition to the actual practice of scientists,⁴⁷ an adequate—i.e. a sociological ⁴⁸—investigation of the phenomena of knowledge and thinking requires a revised theory of knowledge with more flexible, epistemological concepts.⁴⁹ From the standpoint of this new theory of knowledge

Scientific truth will turn out from something stiff and stationary into dynamic, developing, creative human truth. (Fleck 1986e, 157)

It is in this sense that the Mannheimian relationist strategy to avoid the pitfalls of relativism applies to the Fleckian argument for the non-relativity of truth. The idea of truth as a “stylized thought constraint”⁵⁰ is only acceptable if you have already adopted a non-classical theory of knowledge with dynamic epistemological concepts. If you adhere to—what Mannheim and Fleck call—a static conception of truth, the Fleckian argument will simply be a restatement of the relativity of truth and not an argument that is supposed to show that “no cognitive relativism results from the theory of thought-styles”.⁵¹ However, with the background of an already dynamic concept of truth, such a dynamic objectivity and dynamic truth is fixed within a certain thought-style. It is exactly the establishment of such dynamic epistemological concepts that lies at the centre of Mannheim’s relationist epistemology and also at the centre of Fleck’s new epistemology of thought-styles.⁵²

5 Relativism and Relationism II: Absolute Versus Synthesised Truth and Objectivity

We have just seen that both Mannheim and Fleck want to emphasise that their regard for the social aspects of knowledge does not result in abandoning but in reinterpreting the concepts of truth and objectivity. Now besides Mannheim’s attempt to understand objectivity in terms of inner-style objectivity, he gives us a second explanation of what objectivity could mean in the context of his relationist epistemology:

[And] there is the fact that when two people stand in different aspectual structures (Aspektstrukturen), “objectivity” is attainable only in a more roundabout fashion. In such a case, what has been correctly but differently perceived in the two aspectual structures must be understood in the light of the differences in structure of these varied modes of perception. An effort must be made to find a formula for the translatability of the results of one into those of the other and for the convertibility (Umrechenbarkeit) of these varying perspectivistic views. Once such a formula for the control of conversion (Umrechnungskontrolle) has been worked out, it is easily possible to separate the necessary differences of the two views from the arbitrarily conceived and mistaken elements, which here too should be considered as errors. (Mannheim 1946, 270; improved translation)

According to Mannheim there is not only the possibility of attaining inner- but also inter-style objectivity. Such an inter-style objectivity will be possible if we can translate between the different thought-styles and Weltanschauungen.⁵³ Especially those who have grown up in multicultural contexts or switched from one social circumstance to another are said to have such a possibility of translating between the different thought-styles.⁵⁴ In this sense—although the results are still necessarily dependent on the respective thought-styles and therefore are not valid absolutely—we can arrive at an inter-style objectivity in the form of a synthesis of the truths of different thought-styles. It was Mannheim’s hope that by the acceptance of his new dynamic theory of knowledge and on the basis of thus enabled sociological research of the phenomenon of knowledge, we could already be seen as on the way to a synthesis of the hitherto endlessly competing thought-styles.

The sociology of knowledge recognises the inevitable nature of the element of Weltanschauung as to a certain extent a structural determinant of a particular area of thought: so-called ‘existentially determined thinking’ (seinsgebundenes Denken). But the cautious character of this attitude even goes as far as to make an attempt at mastering this existentiality (Seinsverbundenheit) by taking it into consideration as a determinant stemming from irrationality and Weltanschauung and to raise it to consciousness in a specific act of knowing. […] The dynamic relationism for which I stand has nothing whatever to do with nihilism. It has grown out of tendencies of seeking to overcome, as far as this is possible at all, the narrow-mindedness and encapsulation of standpoints. It is, in the first place, a method of seeking, which expressly does not despair of the solubility of the crisis of our existence and thought […]. On the contrary, in the interest of the self-enlargement that today is already possible, it invites every position for once to call itself in question and to suspend the self-hypostatization that is a habit of thought self-evident to everybody. (Mannheim 1971, 266f.; improved translation)⁵⁵

Mannheim’s idea here is that once we are conscious of the essential social relatedness of thought and knowledge, we have taken the first step towards overcoming our social determination. However, this is only the first step to a synthesis of the truths of different thought-styles. The second step consists in a comparison of the different thought-styles that will be possible as soon as we have accepted the social relatedness of our thinking and as soon as we try to translate the socially determined results of another thought-style into our own.⁵⁶ What is needed, however, in order to carry out such a comparative project is, in Mannheim’s words, “to find a point, so to speak, farther back”.⁵⁷ And it is Mannheim’s conviction that with his new sociology of knowledge we are on the best way to reach such a point. In fact for Mannheim

It seems […] that the sociology of knowledge itself provides just such a viewpoint ‘farther back’ from which theoretical philosophical differences which cannot be reconciled on the level of manifest content, can be seen through in all their partiality and therewith made amenable to a synthesis. (Mannheim 1952c, 224)

In Mannheim’s sense the sociology of knowledge itself will—by the acceptance of the essential social relatedness and particularity of thought and knowledge—create a special group that is the bearer of the envisaged synthesis: a group Mannheim calls “socially free-floating intellectuals (sozial freischwebende Intelligenz)”.⁵⁸ These intellectuals are in Mannheim’s words “a relatively classless stratum which is not too firmly situated in the social order”.⁵⁹ Mannheim’s own description of this stratum makes it possible to describe more fully his hoped-for ‘viewpoint farther back’ and the envisaged synthesis: the free-floating intellectuals do not stand above all classes but are an aggregation between them.⁶⁰ After reminding us that he never thought of the free-floating intellectuals as “an entirely unattached group free of class liaisons”⁶¹ he claims that

my claim was merely that certain types of intellectuals have a maximum opportunity to test and employ the socially available vistas and to experience their inconsistencies. (Mannheim 1956a, 106)

It is in this sense that Mannheim might have tried to answer the charge of Ernest Nagel that by introducing formulas of translation and conversion, his hoped-for ‘viewpoint farther back’ and his concept of ‘relational objectivity’ Mannheim undermines his own thesis of the essential social relatedness of every standpoint.⁶² In Mannheim’s actually reflexive ⁶³ view, the envisaged synthesis is not absolute since the free-floating intellectuals are still bound by their thought-styles. It is a dynamic synthesis that must be reformulated from time to time.⁶⁴ However, for Mannheim the synthesis is advantageous since it integrates the different, struggling and partial viewpoints by a comparative method that becomes possible by accepting the essentially social determination of every point of view. It is supposed to be a real synthesis. ⁶⁵ That in turn means that within the group of free-floating intellectuals there must be a ‘genuine discussion’ in which “no argument from authority and no dogmatic assertion based upon mere intuition is admitted”.⁶⁶ This last point is crucial for Mannheim’s understanding of the role the free-floating intellectuals are supposed to play in society: it was Mannheim’s optimistic conviction that the free-floating intellectuals by their examination of the social determination and their achieving a synthesis of different thought-styles and Weltanschauungen would find a basis to end the political struggles that were prevalent at the time of his work in Germany before the Second World War. He explicitly speaks of the mission the free-floating intellectuals are supposed to fulfil.⁶⁷

From this it is clear that Mannheim argues for the acceptance of his new sociological theory of thought not just on epistemic but also on pragmatic, normative grounds. It is not just a question of the adequacy but also a question of the consequences of the adoption of an epistemology that in Mannheim’s view is decisive for its adoption. The normative and political goal of a sociology of knowledge that enables the intellectuals to find relational, inter-style objectivity in a synthesis is according to Mannheim to enhance tolerance, charity, sympathy and—possibly—mutual acceptance of the struggling different thought-styles and Weltanschauungen. The comparative method of the sociology of knowledge that is supposed to lead to a synthesis and to relational objectivity in this sense can be called a “democratic method”.⁶⁸

Now, can we find such a Mannheimian inter-style, relational objectivity in Fleck’s thought, too? Did Fleck believe in the possibility of attaining “objectivity in a more round-about fashion”,⁶⁹ in the possibility of coming to a synthesis of different viewpoints by a comparative method provided by the sociology of knowledge and in the possibility of enhancing tolerance, charity and other democratic ideals by a sociological investigation? Although the emphasis in Fleck’s work appears to lie on the insuperability of different points of view—based mainly on Fleck’s strong thesis of the impossibility of translation and understanding between different thought-styles⁷⁰—my answer is: Yes.⁷¹

As we have seen Fleck as well as Mannheim argue for a social theory of knowledge that—by proposing different epistemological concepts—aims at accepting the essential social character of knowledge and thought. At many points of his work Fleck, however, also speaks of a comparative epistemology.⁷² In fact, this comparative aspect of his theory seems to be a very important one, since the original title of the manuscript of his Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact was The analysis of a scientific fact. Attempt of a comparative epistemology (Die Analyse einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache. Versuch einer vergleichenden Erkenntnistheorie).⁷³ One of the most crucial effects of the comparative aspect in Fleck’s epistemology is that according to Fleck his epistemology is no longer speculative or metaphysical, but scientific.⁷⁴ This becomes clear when we take into account the fact that Fleck—at least most of the time—no longer speaks of a theory of knowledge or thought when he describes his own epistemological approach but explicitly demands a new science of knowledge or a scientific epistemology.⁷⁵ According to Fleck the tasks of such a comparative, science of knowledge are

to find out how conceptions and hazy ideas pass from one thought style to another, how they emerge as spontaneously generated pre-ideas, and how they are preserved as enduring, rigid structures owing to a kind of harmony of illusions. (Fleck 1979, 28).

Moreover it will

[compare] thought-styles, [study] their historical genesis, their development, the social forces which produce and maintain them, the methods of introducing them into the thought-collective (Fleck 1986b, 98; improved translation).

For Fleck therefore the comparative science of thought primarily is the sociology of thought and knowledge; in fact, he even demands that

the first task is to study the sociology of thinking (Fleck 1986b, 98)

and that

sociology of thinking should be developed as a fundamental science equal in its value to mathematics (Fleck 1986e, 156).

Now can such a fundamental scientific, comparative sociology of thinking arrive at results that are ‘relationally’ objective in Mannheim’s sense? Does Fleck also hope that by the sociology of thinking we can come to synthesised truths? And are there any hints in his works that he regards the sociologists of knowledge as a kind of free-floating intellectuals with a mission to overcome the struggles of thought-styles and to enhance tolerance, charity and democracy?

Consider what Fleck has to say about a scientific, comparative sociology of thought: he explicitly believes in “independent laws of the sociology of knowledge”⁷⁶ and “general rules, common to all collectives”,⁷⁷ for example that “all stable thought-collectives, as carriers of organic thought-styles, possess an identical general inner structure, much as in its details this structure can assume various forms”.⁷⁸ And according to Fleck there are very general scientific rules that recommend—in fact require—the use of a comparative method in epistemology:

I consider the postulate “to maximize experience” the supreme law of scientific thinking. Thus, once the possibility of such comparative epistemology arises, it becomes a duty to carry it out (Fleck 1979, 51).

May not the time have come to take a less egocentric, more general point of view and to speak of comparative epistemology? A principle of thought that allows one to perceive more details and more compulsory connections, as the history of science teaches us, deserves to be preferred (Ibid., 22; improved translation).

Now Fleck believes that such a comparative epistemology that researches in accordance with such general scientific postulates notably can dissolve and overcome the thought-constraints of specific thought-styles. Whilst

the self-contained nature of the systems […] preserves the harmony of illusions and in effect cannot be dissolved by any means within the sphere of a specific thought-style (Fleck 1979, 37),

what is possible, however, is that

compulsion becomes dissolved only by comparative epistemological considerations and is explained as an intrinsic constraint imposed by thought style (Ibid., 80).

In summary—and again in Fleck’s own words –

The resistance [i.e. the fact] must be effective within the thought collective. It must be brought home to each member as both a thought constraint and a form to be directly experienced. In cognition this appears as the connection between phenomena which can never be dissolved within the collective. As ‘truth’ this linkage seems to be conditioned only by logic and content. Only an investigation in comparative epistemology, or a simple comparison after a change has occurred in the thought style, can make these inevitable connections accessible to scientific treatment (Fleck 1979, 101).

In Fleck’s thought in order to overcome and dissolve the constraints of specific thought-styles we have to choose—in Mannheim’s words this time—a more roundabout way⁷⁹: the dissolution is possible only by comparing different thought-styles. The sociology of thought as a scientific—and no longer speculative—epistemology can, according to Fleck, give us the means to transcend the constraints of thought-styles. The scientific character of the sociology of thought provides us—since as a science it has to follow the general postulates and principles of science like “maximizing experience”—with a viewpoint—to use Mannheim’s words again—“farther back”.⁸⁰ This ‚viewpoint farther back’ itself is supposed not to be absolute or independent of the influence of thought-styles, since it is the viewpoint of a scientific sociological and comparative investigation. If the sociology of thought can be a science itself and if Fleck’s analysis of scientific thinking is correct, then the results of the sociology of thought are—by means of reflexivity⁸¹—dependent on the respective thought-styles of the comparative sociologists, too.⁸² For Fleck, the results of a comparative science of thought therefore are not absolute, but synthesised truths. This interpretation fits perfectly well with a stunning passage in Fleck’s reply to Izydora Dambska:

It is impossible to examine views independently of the whole culture of a given society in a specific epoch. The starting point must be a community of people living together and such a method above all leads to a sociology of thinking that covers the most general opinions because it can be a comparative science. In the epoch we are approaching, the epoch of synthesis and of the vanishing of particularisms, it will be unavoidable. The specialisation and the differentiation within the society is growing and is going on to grow. It is out of question that the brutal attempts to bring the people into line cannot be lasting and permanent. Understanding is possible only on the basis of the comparative method: the common thought collective, free by criticism and general by tolerance, is created only in this way. (Fleck [1937] 2007, 471).⁸³

Fleck’s argumentation here is obviously normative and political: the sociology of thought is preferable since by its comparative, scientific method it is possible to create a more tolerant, common thought collective. He believes that we are at the beginning of an epoch of synthesis and that the only way to face this epoch in order to create a more democratic and tolerant society is his comparative method. This is because the envisaged ‘vanishing of particularisms’ is ambivalent⁸⁴: the different viewpoints can vanish—though only for a certain period of time—in a brutal way by bringing the people into line or—and that is of course what Fleck hoped for—by a comparative, scientific method that by examining the different viewpoints can lead to mutual understanding and a real synthesis of the particularisms in a common thought collective. Although Fleck is overtly optimistic about the succeeding power of his comparative science of knowledge—in fact, sometimes he appears to believe that the success of it is a somehow historical necessity⁸⁵—in this respect exploiting the knowledge of the social conditioning of thought for vicious aims can result in devastating political consequences.⁸⁶ The avoidance of these consequences is—to use Mannheim’s and most interestingly also Fleck’s own terms here—the political and cultural mission of the sociology of thought as a comparative science.⁸⁷ Fleck hopes that comparative, sociological investigations will enhance “tolerance towards strange styles”,⁸⁸ will overthrow “that evil doggedness with which fanatics of their own style fight the people of a different style”⁸⁹ and will “immunize us against an absolute submission to propaganda”.⁹⁰ That cultural and political mission, in fact, is the reason why Fleck promotes his comparative epistemology to be a science of knowledge: Fleck is convinced that—at least—“the true, living natural science”⁹¹ is thoroughly democratic and explicitly speaks of the “cultural mission” of science in general.⁹² In his most optimistic passages he even identifies natural science with

the art of shaping a democratic reality and being directed by it – thus being reshaped by it. It is an eternal, synthetic rather than analytic, never-ending labour – eternal because it resembles that of a river cutting down its own bed. (Fleck 1986a, 54).⁹³

As a science of thought-styles comparative epistemology for Fleck therefore is—in contrast to a speculative theory of knowledge—a never-ending endeavor to build a more democratic, tolerant society by synthesising different viewpoints and dissolve particularisms. He hoped that by the sociology of thought “we [would] avoid being pushed into dry ideological doctrine and [would] attain a science of cognition rich in details and capable of cultural growth”.⁹⁴ Fleck was convinced that his new science of knowledge can lead us to a mutual understanding and thereby to common, synthesised truths and objectivity. For Fleck this cultural role not only makes the comparative science of thought advantageous but even true:

The theory of thought styles liberates from many antiquated prejudices and unveils huge areas worth of investigation. It is in this significance for their liberating and heuristic role that it is, I believe, true. (Fleck [1937] 2007, 472; my translation).

To sum up: I think that many passages in Fleck’s writings point to an interpretation along the lines of Mannheimian relational, inter-style objectivity and truth. Fleck’s comparative method in the sociology of thought is supposed to provide us with truths in a more roundabout fashion. These truths are supposed to be not absolute but synthesised truths since the scientific character of Fleck’s comparative epistemology requires synthetic investigations. The sociology of thought itself—in Mannheim’s terms—provides us with a ‘viewpoint farther back’ and—in Fleck’s terms—is true. Such a special status of the sociology of thought is justified not merely by epistemological considerations but mainly on the basis of normative and political consequences it is supposed to have. And the mission of the sociologist of knowledge is to dissolve the one-sidedness and the constraints of particular thought-styles and thereby to enhance tolerance, solidarity, charity, sympathy and mutual understanding by his comparative studies and a real, genuine discussion with other scientists. Such a ‘genuine discussion’ explicitly was the aim of Fleck’s work:

What can be more enjoyable for a scientist than the discussion of things that are his concern? What can be more fruitful for science than the exposition of a problem in the light of different standpoints? […] Perhaps other specialists, humanists, naturalists, and philosophers would also like to take part in this discussion. This way, the aim of my work will be attained. (Fleck 1990a, 267).

6 Outlook on Absman’s Reaction to Relationism

The question I tried to answer in this paper was: what does Fleck mean when he is claiming that he is not a relativist? And my answer to this question that I argued for by looking at Fleck’s texts was: he means nearly the same as Mannheim in claiming that he is a relationist. An implicit consequence of this answer is a critique of attempts to see a tout court difference between a Mannheimian and a Fleckian answer to the absolutist: there are crucial differences between both authors, but the differences are minor with respect to the question of relativism.

The methodological consequence of asking this question and providing an answer to it in the way I did was that my task was mainly interpretative: I tried to spell out that the Relmanian strategy of Mannheim strongly resembles the Relmanian strategy of Fleck. At the end of this paper I would like to have a short look at the Absmanian reaction to the relationist strategy: I will do this by posing some questions Absman might ask. In fact many of these questions have already been asked by some of Mannheim’s contemporaries. By posing them in this context I hope that those interested in Fleck and in the issue of relativism will become aware of a mostly forgotten debate. As Simonds says concerning the question of Mannheim’s relationism: “The most important critiques were published in the early thirties by Ernst Grünwald and Alexander von Schelting. Since that time, one writer after another has been content to recapitulate their arguments, often without acknowledgement and typically without the subtlety of the original formulation.”⁹⁵ These questions of course are not supposed to be the last words on the issue:

• (1) The first question is: Is there really any genuine difference between a self-refuting relativism and a supposedly coherent relationism if in relationism inner-style truth is always dependent on and relative to a specific thought-style? Isn’t that just a new, fresh name for a very old idea?⁹⁶

• (2) The second question is: Is it really—as Mannheim and Fleck occasionally suggest—a necessary condition of firstly an adequate investigation of the social aspects of knowledge and secondly enhancing tolerance in a society, to change our concepts of truth and knowledge? Even if—for the sake of argument—we grant that it might be more likely to achieve these goals by such a change, why should it be impossible to achieve them on the basis of a supposed ‘old, static epistemology’?

• (3) The third question is: What exactly are the consequences and the task of sociology and comparative investigations provided by it? Sometimes it seems as if Fleck and Mannheim merely think that comparative studies could enhance tolerance and other democratic features, sometimes it sounds as if they claim that those features will follow somehow automatically from comparative investigations. Unfortunately, Mannheim and Fleck hesitate to spell out exactly what the criteria for a ‘genuine discussion’ and ‘the envisaged synthesis’ are supposed to be and what role the sociology of knowledge can play in concrete situations of genuine conflict. Is it not more plausible to suppose that the primary task of sociology of knowledge is to provide us with some stunning and new findings, but that the question whether these findings will have normative consequences cannot be answered by providing these findings alone?

• (4) The fourth question is: How is it possible to undertake the enterprise of comparing thought-styles if at the same time Mannheim and Fleck argue for a more or less strong thesis of the semantic incommensurability of thought-styles? As Mannheim makes clear we need “to find a formula for the translatability of the results of one into those of the other”⁹⁷ in order to come to the envisaged dynamic synthesis of thought-styles. Does that mean that we have to restrict Mannheim’s and Fleck’s thesis of the untranslatibility of different thought-styles so that it will be possible to find such a formula in every case or does it mean that there will exist thought-styles that by the very fact of their untranslatability cannot become the object of comparative investigations?⁹⁸

I will not try to reconstruct possible answers to these questions here but simply want to point out that the problems implicit in these questions are still asked and still dwelling in the actual debate about relativism. A closer look at the Relmanian strategy of relationism in Mannheim and Fleck and on the Absmanian objections raised against it can therefore prove fruitful also in the actual debate. From the discussion in this paper, however, it is clear that it is not a good strategy to renounce Mannheim’s and embrace Fleck’s answer.