Ludwik Fleck belongs to the historians of science whose innovative work has been well received only after their death. The publication of his most important book, The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, published in German in 1935, remained generally unknown during his lifetime. After Thomas Kuhn and the constructivist turn in science studies, however, Fleck was acknowledged in the late 1970s as an important forerunner in the development of historical epistemology. His theoretical affinity to relativistic epistemology and social constructivism was particularly influential in the German history and philosophy of science, but through the translations of his texts into English, French, Italian, and Spanish he is now …
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Citation: Surman, Jan. "Ludwik Fleck". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 March 2012 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12664, accessed 22 November 2024.]