A Post-Grad’s Journey Towards Domestication

Every week in my class at Rowan University, Writing for Electronic Communities, one or two students present the week’s reading and post five discussion questions.

Well, I think my questions got a little out of hand. I hate people like me! Seriously, I don’t know what happened. One thought led to another and before I knew it, I was trying to wrap my head around these philisophical ideas that once seemed so simple in science class when my teacher taught us, “You cannot prove something is true. You can only prove what is not true and when all of those are proven false, then the last remaining idea is true.” Or something like that.

1. On page 27, to help promote thought style in a progressive direction, Fleck address what we do wrong: “(1) A contradiction to the system appears unthinkable. (2) What does not fit into the system remains unseen; (3) alternatively, if it is noticed, either it is kept secret, or (4) laborious efforts are made to explain an exception in terms that do not contradict the system. (5) Despite the legitimate claims of contradictory views, one tends to see, describe, or even illustrate those circumstances which corroborate current views and thereby give them substance.”  

It seems that the solution to our thought process is to always assume that a formed belief is wrong. Can a member of the thought collective who contributed to developing the formed belief also be a member of the thought collective who assumes a formed belief is wrong in order to challenge it from a different angle? 

So why then, on page 85, does Fleck contradict this progressive idea when he writes, “[All really valuable experiments are] uncertain, incomplete, and unique. And when experiments become certain, precise, and reproducible at any time, they no longer are necessary for research purposes proper but function only for demonstration or ad hoc determinations,” and if no more experimenting is required, then how do we know that we have found a fact? Because it no longer needs to be researched? But it seems that Fleck said to never trust a fact as fact because it might only be fact today until we learn more about it tomorrow. 

2.   On page 39, Fleck philosophizes, “The statement ‘Schaudinn discerned Spirochaeta pallida as the causative agent of syphilis,’ is equivocal as it stands, because ‘syphilis as such’ does not exist…Torn from this context, ‘syphilis’ has no specific meaning, and ‘discerned’ by itself is no more explicit than ‘larger’ and ‘left’ in the examples above.”   

What is at all true if we are coming to every understanding anthropocentrically? Poor little syphilis doesn’t exist unless we are affected!  

3. For the writing student, active and passive are used to distinguish two different voices. The active voice uses a present subject to propel an action while the passive voice omits the subject as the doer of the action. But what is it that Fleck wants his readers to internalize about the active and passive? I ask you because every time he describes it, the concepts get lost in scientific terminology and I’m back at square one without a concrete idea of what he means. It seems like a very important concept to grasp from this text.  

Is passive to be understood (clever grammar, I know) as the unforeseen thought that develops as a result of the active? Is active (I can’t stop myself) the thought that develops from the unforeseen passive? What is going onnnnnn? 

4. Throughout this text, Fleck alludes to the idea of the marginal man who is part of the mutual development of the “thought collective.” I found this idea fascinating, as we touched on it with Wenger’s Communities of Practice last week, but nothing seems solidified.  Thaddeus J. Trenn remarks on this idea in his preface when he illustrates a tension between esoteric experts and the exoteric wide society with the marginal man, you guessed it, in the margins, ready to “create something new from the conflict” (xiii). Then Fleck finally tackles it, calling this system “teamwork,” that is “comparable to a soccer match, a conversation, or the playing of an orchestra” (99). In a soccer match, there are many players on the field not directly engaged with the ball; in a conversation, only one person can speak at a time; in an orchestra, not all instruments play at the same time. What seems to cover the span of these examples is that none can be accomplished on their own, and others must sit out and observe (wait their turn, perhaps) before making their own impression.  

So, what is it that the marginal man contributes? If he is uninformed, can he still contribute to the thought collective that we assume he is part of? Can he be silent yet still be a participant in his thought collective or learning community?  

5. Is it worth translating a text if the translation becomes interpretative? What gets lost going from German to English? Integrity? Usability? Understanding? At the very least, accessibility to a deeper, intended level of comprehension? And then, if the text is in fact interpretative, as it loses meaning from German to English with the series of ‘thought’ and “collective” words (Denkstil, Denkkollektiv, kollektiven Denkstil, kollektive Erfahrung, kollektive Gedanken, kollektive Vorstellungen, kollektiven Denklinien, kollektive Gebilde), then what is the merit of the translated text in English? Does this do a disservice to readers?