Five Questions on Ludwik Fleck
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?
Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact by Ludwik Fleck
N.B.: The book was originally published auf Deutsch (in German) in 1935 and more than 40 years later, translated into and published in English.
If you are unfamiliar with this text, I’m not surprised. In fact, neither would Thomas S. Kuhn be, for in his foreword he writes, “My purpose in calling for a translation was not simply to make Fleck’s work accessible to an English-speaking audience but rather to provide it with an audience at all. In twenty-six years I have encountered only two people who had read the book independent of my intervention.” Not a good foot to start on, Mr. Kuhn.
At first, my biggest complaint with Ludwick Fleck’s Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact for Writing for Electronic Communities (WEC) was that it was written for an informed audience, which we are not. Then I asked myself, “Would Dr. Bill Wolff seriously have us read something as far off base as a 1935 German book on syphilis if there wasn’t something deeper going on?”
The conclusion I arrived at, or am still arriving at as I give it more thought, is that there is something abstract going on here that is greater than any one thought or one person can provide. And this is what links us to Fleck’s god awful reading for 2008. What is important to understand here is that the topic of syphilis is simply a guiding agent leading us towards understanding how knowledge is acquired and how fact is accepted as fact. Because we probably know little about biochemistry (is that even what this is?) and syphilis, we are expected to come to the text as writing students, students of a community, and do little more than skim over the technical stuff to reach an understanding of the thought collective.
This also brings up Etienne Wenger’s Communities of Practice and the role that a community plays in developing mainstream ideas. Fleck’s “thought collective” (as I understand it in English—perhaps I’ve completely lost the true meaning of Denkkollektive and shouldn’t even be saying “thought collective” but I wouldn’t know because I’m not fluent in German) seems to have been one of, I assume, many precursors to Wenger’s “learning community,” where both assimilate ideas over a period of time.
To grasp these ideas, think of knowledge as evolution. We were once apes, walking on all fours, hairy, naked, and ‘uncivilized.’ But one mutant gene compounded with another and another led us to become humans who communicate and are no longer able to digest raw meat. Had our evolutionary track taken a detour (perhaps it did already), we may not be here today, or maybe we’d be barking instead of speaking, who knows. The same is true for how thoughts develop and how we come across facts as fact.
It seems to me that the purpose of reading Fleck for WEC is to become critical surveyors of information attained in cyber world.
My head hurts just thinking about it.
Learning Communities and Etienne Wenger
The first half of this title, “Learning Communities,” is more than just a good idea and the second half of this title, “Etienne Wenger,” is more than just a silly name. Learning communities are valid modes of education and Etienne Wenger is the author of Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity.
The reason I know that learning communities are valid modes of education is not because Wenger’s book brainwashed me into thinking so. I know because I experienced it first hand, for four years, in my undergraduate education at Wagner College, Staten Island. Let me take you through some points that Wenger makes and then take you through the elements of my own experience.
Communities of Practice is very much a guide line in how to develop a learning community and because of this guide mentality, it hits on general, yet imperative, points.
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The past, the present, and the future all play a role in the progression of a learning community. This is because the community is diverse and its members bring something unique to the table (from their pasts) to discuss in the moment (present) and acquire further knowledge (in the present) to use down the road (in the future).
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The learning community is not a regurgitation of knowledge but an acquiring and creating of new knowledge. In order to obtain this heightened level of understanding, the group must interact and with interaction comes edification.
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…and on the personal level, which is placed before the two points above (in my opinion, out of order):
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“mutuality of engagement–the ability to engage with other members and respond in kind to their actions, and thus the ablility to establish relationships in which this mututaliy is the basis for an identity of participation.”-p.137
- “accountability to the enterprise–the ability to understand the enterprise of a community of practice deeply enough to take some responsibility for it and contribute to its pursuit and to its ongoing negotiation by the community.” -p.137
- “negotiability of the repertoire–the ability to make use of the repertoire of the practice to engage in it. This requires enough participation (personal or vicarious) in the history of a practice to recognize it in the lements of its repertoire. Then it requires the ability–both the capability and the legitimacy–to make this history newly meaningful.” -p.137
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Ok ok, so you’re probably thinking “No way, this sounds way too socialistic for me.” It might be. But it might not be. And if it is, maybe that’s okay. Maybe socialism in terms of learning is okay. We do that when we go to college–to even out the playing field. We become members of one specific society and reap the benefits of an institution whether we pay tuition in full, in part with the aid of scholarship, or are gifted a ‘full ride.’
So we accept that the learning community is socialistic. Let’s see why that works, and if you don’t mind, I will cite examples from Wagner College:
Fall semester freshman year, everyone is enrolled in a learning community of about 25 students. My learning community was titled “Spaceship Earth” in which we interlaced environmental biology and literature to study the effects of pollution, global warming, etc. For approximately 15 weeks we were taught in the classroom, gained hands-on experience in the lab, and took one field trip every friday. Here is truncated list of places we visited:
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Waste treatment facility in Elizabeth, NJ
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Washington D.C. (meetings/interviews with Senators and environmental special interest groups)
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NJDEP (New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection)
Through these various activities, we bonded with our classmates in our ‘community.’ Some of this bonding came from studying together (traditional), some from the hours-long bus rides on which we ventured (non-traditional). This plays right into an important aspect of Wenger’s promotion of the learning community: becoming a community is not all about completing regurgitated assignments, but becoming a fused, super-tight group where every member plays his or her role, where some must be great and others less in order to function most efficiently.
(N.B.: the Wagner College curriculum builds in three separate learning communities, encompassing three of eight semesters, including the freshman learning community above, an intermediate learning community taken any time between freshman and senior year learning communities, and the senior learning community taken senior year and focused on the student’s major.)
The Art of Daytime Television
Daytime TV plays a crucial role in molding the domestic-wannbe and consoling the domestic-hasbeen. There are tons of shows to choose from, but in order to benefit from the vast array of choices, the domestic-wannabe should choose wisely.
First, the talk show
The talk show places the viewer in a social conversation that she is otherwise not tuned into because she is sitting at home. This conversation can range from relationship woes to celebrity gossip to interviews with authors, actors, and performers. Some good options include Tyra,The View, Dr. Phil, Oprah, but your best bet is Ellen. She is in the forefront of daytime talk shows and hosts some of the best guests in the “biz.”
Second, the cooking show
If you are going to domesticate yourself, watching at least one cooking show per day is crucial. While you may not end up liking the recipe, it will expand your knowledge of cooking ingredients, prep, and maybe spark an idea for something different. The food network is an excellent resource for you and you can tune into a specific program to cater to your tastebuds. For example, you like Italian? Then you can’t miss Everyday Italian with Giada De Laurentiis. Or, perhaps American Southern cooking is more your speed? Try Paula’s Home Cooking. You can watch by time preference, as in 30 Minute Meals, or money preference, as in $40 a Day.
No matter how you cook it, the food network’s got something up its sleeve for you.
Third, the reality show
The three best channels for a great daytime reality show are TLC, Discovery Health, and Style Network. If you watched both of these channels every day, you still wouldn’t see every birth and every wedding that TV has to offer.
Wedding
Don’t waste your time on any other wedding show besides Whose Wedding is it Anyway? This is an hour-long program that follows wedding planners and their brides and grooms. It’s chock full of drama and absolutely fabulous.
Style
If you want to watch a style-makeover show and not shed a tear (you might cry if you watch 10 Years Younger!), try What Not to Wear. In this hour-long program, individuals are put on the chopping block by their families and coworkers because their wardrobes are either outdated or trashy. They have to throw everything away and purchase a *FREE* $5,000 wardrobe in two days…and get hair and makeup done by Nick Arrojo and Carmindy. Amazing.
Births
Bringing Home Baby is where it’s at when it comes to newborn. This program is just a half-hour long, but compacts the first 36 hours of baby’s life, as well as backtracking to 4 weeks before the delivery and a few weeks or months after. The in medias res format is classic and holds your interest the entire time. Gotta love a new baby!
Fourth, the soap opera
The soap opera viewer is passionate about the one that she watches, but this is quite comical because most are exactly the same. What is special about the soap opera is that it is has been on for decades unlike any other fictional show, and it can break all barriers of common sense, including ressurecting the dead (not in a creepy way!) and fastfowarding time (like if they need a child to become a teenager overnight). The characters stay although the actors playing them can change. It’s fascinating, really.
The three channels that air classic “soaps” are CBS, NBC, and ABC. I will promote non other than the show I was raised on and continue to watch to this day, Days of Our Lives. And if you don’t think you know it, I’m sure that you will as soon as you see the opening credit.
Fifth, Martha Stewart
There’s no way around it. Whether the Martha Stewart Show airs in the morning or afternoon where you are, you must watch Martha. She will help you cook better, craft better, be more creative, and plan better. She’s the guru of domestication.
God Bless Martha Stewart
So we’re in class tonight–Writing for Electronic Communities at Rowan University–and naturally, facebook came up in coversation as we discussed McLuhan’s theory of group interactioninevitably leading to violence.
Well, my professor, Dr. Bill Wolff, showed us this fantastic parody of an eHarmony commercial with a facebook twist:
As we watched this I cracked up because of how true it is!! It took all of my self-control to not embarass myself as knowing some “ladies” who had a less-than-lady-like conversation that ended up getting posted on Overheard in New York.
*BEFORE YOU READ ON, PLEASE NOTE THERE IS VULGAR LANGUAGE AND CONTENT QUOTED. THE FOLLOWING DOES NOT REFLECT ANY VIEWS OR BELIEFS OF WORDPRESS MEMBER DOMESTICNEWBIE*
The post is from 11-24-2007 and is titled “In the Sprit of True Sisterhood, I Accept Your Reproach. Ass Whore”:
“Sorostitute #1: Remember that freshman I hooked up with? He friended me on Facebook!
Sorostitute #2: Oh, that’s coo– Wait a minute. Isn’t that a little backwards?
Sorostitute #3: Uh, yeah. Here’s how that should have gone: you meet him, he friends you on Facebook, and then you let him fuck you in the ass.
–Wagner College”
Evidently they were sitting in the dining hall discussing this, and the idea of facebook friending actually came into consideration of whether it should come before or after sex.
Facebook came on the scene just years ago–to Wagner in the spring of 2005–and look how fully integrated it is into college life. Amazing!!!
McLuhan, Baron, Porter
My graduate course at Rowan University, Writing for Eletronic Communities, required that we read pieces of Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Me: Lectures and Inverviews. As I read, I couldn’t help but notice the progressive technological conversation between McLuhan (1959-1979), Dennis Baron (From Pencils to Pixels–chapter 1 “The Stages of Literacy Technologies”) and Jim Porter (“Why technology matters to writing: A cyberwriter’s tale).
In each of these three discussions, the idea of technology and its uses are considered and then taken a step further, trying to answer the question, “How will our lives change as we interact with new technology?” For Baron and Porter, the concept of writing technologies holds precedent, but overlapping Baron and McLuhan, the greater concept of communication technologies is considered.
It makes me want to consider the Amazon reader that many are coming to accept, the Kindle. It is an electronic device that allows a person to read digitalized copies of textbooks as well as books from the mass market. At first, I thought this idea was awful, that I wouldn’t want to sit there staring at a screen when I could hold a book right there in my hands. But, after reading the viewpoint of McLuhan, I can’t help but wonder if this is going to be the new shape that books take on. Everyone says books will be around forever, but that their shape/appearance will probably change–that the book must adapt itself to our ever-growing technological universe….wow.
The Art of Valentine’s Day
A few days ago, my friend IM’d me and said that he was nervous about Valentine’s Day. He’s been dating his girlfriend for less than a year, long distance, and thought he had VDay all figured out…that is until one of his friends said his gift wasn’t creative enough. Here’s what he did:
1. Had a bouquet of roses sent to his girlfriend’s workplace
2. Bought her a box of chocolates, DUH!! 🙂
3. Made her a Build-a-Bear in scrubs because she is studying to be a nurse
I told him this was adorable and more than enough, that his friend who told him he wasn’t creative must have had something stuck up her bum. Then I thought, “Should we even celebrate this holiday to begin with?”
And then I decided, yes. So what if it’s a Hallmark holiday? Christmas is for Jesus, birthdays are for age, and Hallmark realized that men needed to show their significant others how much they really love them. I think the holiday is brilliant.
Today I woke up to a box of chocolates (so what if everyone does it? it’s my favorite food!!!) and a dozen roses (so what if everyone gets them? they’re my favorite flower!!!). To wake up to these items means that my boyfriend’s extremely male brain had forethought. I love him to pieces.
Here’s my pretty roses…every day should be Valentine’s Day!!!
The Art of Laughing Together, Part I
Instead of storytelling your ears off (your eyes off? hmm…), I’d rather, this time, share with you some of the things that make us laugh the hardest. At the beginning of our relationship, my boyfriend thought I had no sense of humor because stand-ups like Rodney Dangerfield didn’t make me laugh. But as time went on, we found things that amused us both. Here’s some, courtesy of YouTube!!
Happy fact: “It is estimated that a healthy laughing session can be equal to several minutes on the rowing machine or the exercise bike. Besides using your diaphragm, abdominal, respiratory, facial, leg and back muscles, your blood pressure is lowered, and your heart rate increases as well. Ever laugh so much that it hurts? Now you know why. You are actually exercising!” (Laughing to Live Longer)
Usability Project
Last class, we started discussing our usability project of the rowan.edu website. My group is working on the Future Students page.
But what is interesting is that I gained some valuable information from another class (Core II taught by Diane Penrod) from the 3rd edition of Academic Writing by Janet Giltrow. This is a concept we will work with later in the usability project, but that I think deserves to be brought up now, regardless:
“4.3.1 Catching the reader in the act: the think-aloud protocol
The think-aloud protocol asks subjects to report the ideas that are going through their heads as they perform a task, like writing an essay or reading one. Think-aloud reports are like eyewitness testimony of events that researches can’t witness themselves…
The think-aloud protocol resembles forms of usability testing of documents. Imn the process of composing manuals, instructions, information bulletins, and other genres, technical writers sometimes test their documents’ efficiency by having them read out loud–by people who might purchase software, for example, or citizens who might seek information about a government program, or car ownders who might need to know about a vehicle recall. As they read aloud, the subjects report their understanding, and their difficulties. In light of these reports, and informed about where other readers are liekly to have trouble, writers then revise (or not–there have been some studies on when and whether technical writers actually do revise after usability testing). The think-aloud protocol is thus both an instrument of research and a tool for professional writers.” (167-168)
It came up during our initial discussion of the usability project whether or not our groups would document oral remarks or not. After reading Giltrow, I’m sold–think-aloud protocol seems like an excellent benefit in research.
disclaimer: I know this should have been a block quote but I cannot format the blog to allow this. Please forgive my format!
The Art of Not Poisoning Your Loved Ones
What started off as a fabulous idea, ended in disaster. In just four hours with under 30 dollars, I managed to make a poisonous concoction that was supposed to become Gumbo Ya Ya.
Yesterday was Fat Tuesday, a.k.a. Mardi Gras. Since I don’t have class on Tuesdays, I decided it would be nice to celebrate Fat Tuesday with a festive New Orleans dish. Originally, I wanted to lean more Creole and make a yummy gumbo, then thought Cajun sounded great and I could make a spicy jambalaya, but decided on what I thought would be a nice compromise–a Cajun gumbo.
Really, the only difference between Creole and Cajun gumbos is that the Creole uses tomatoes and the Cajun leaves tomatoes out. I figured, “Why buy one more ingredient,” and went shopping to make a Cajun chicken and sausage gumbo–Gumbo Ya Ya.
As I was making the roux (traditionally, with oil and flour–didn’t know I could use butter!) which is really just a super fatty sauce, I realized that the bottom of our nicest pan was starting to chip. Then I realized there was black stuff mixing around in my roux that I had to stir constantly for 15-25 minutes. Because of the money I had invested and the fact I’d been working on this now for about an hour, I rationalized that the dark stuff was just leftover chicken burn from when I fried the legs and thighs in the pan just minutes before.
I left my boyfriend starving for dinner until 8pm, though I held him over with leftover lasagna while I munched on FAT FREE potato chips (amazing!!!). By the time eight o’clock rolled around, this amazing gumbo I was making had taken on a life of its own. It kept bubbling over the sides of the pot, spilling oil all over my stovetop; it left me with a destroyed plastic spatula that didn’t withstand 20 minutes of hot oil (duhh).
Then I finally served it. The black stuff went away so it must just have been the chicken. When I tasted my new dish for the first time, I thought I was eating the ocean. Seriously. It was soooooo salty–I’ve never tasted anything so salty in my life. Yes, I used low sodium chicken broth, but I may have used too much when I was seasoning the raw chicken pre-fry.
All night I felt terrible–terrible that I’d made such a mess, terrible that it didn’t have the impact I wanted, terrible that my boyfriend couldn’t grasp that I made gumbo and not jambalaya.
The next day (today) when I went to do the dishes (I refuse to put pots and pans in the dishwasher) I realized that I had in fact totally destroyed our nice pan. The pieces I thought had come up while I was whisking the roux did in fact come up and were swimming in my belly (and Sean’s belly). I dropped the pan into the trash.
So not only were our taste buds assaulted, did at least six chickens die in vain (12 legs, 6 thighs), did I throw almost thirty bucks down the disposal, but right now I have chemicals swirling inside of me doing who knows what for who knows how long. Probably until the day I die.
A Post-Grad's Journey Towards Domestication 