Ludwik Fleck’s philosophical writings:

some editions and translations compared

Translation of Science – Science of Translation (International workshop at Ludwik Fleck Zentrum)24.01.2014, Zuerich

Pawel JarnickiPawel.jarnicki@projekt-nauka.com

Aims of this presentation

• History of editions of philosophical writings of Ludwik Fleck

• Reviews and glossaries – reaction to the state of the art.

• To give some illustrative examples

Ludwik Fleck and his legacy

• Ludwik Fleck (1896-1961) Polish-Jewish microbiologist;

• his mother tongue was Polish but he lived in Austrian Partition – he spoke German

• Complete bibliography – nearly 200 positions

• Most of them – microbiological papers• Over a dozen - philosophical (theoretical) texts

Theoretical texts of Ludwik Fleck

• One book and two papers in German

• Around 10 papers in Polish• One paper in English

• Half of his theoretical legacy is in German and another half in Polish

Reception and editions• Fleck’s legacy was re-discovered gradually – some translations had been made before all texts were „discovered”

• Specific problems of editions of this bilingual legacy

• Although history of reception is quite complicated (and fascinating) I will focus on the history of editions

Just one curiosity• This is famous Reichenbach’s footnote (1938) which brought Thomas Kuhn to Fleck’s book. Then Kuhn mentioned Fleck’s book (in another footnote) in the Preface to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Two footnotes began the worldwide reception of Fleck’s philosophy

Editions in English• 1979 - book from German (Genesis and

Development of a Scientific Fact)• 1981 – 1 paper from German ("The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy”)

• 1986 - 5 papers from Polish, 1 from German, 1 paper in English (in: Cognition and Fact)

• 1990 – 2 papers from Polish (The Polish School of Philosophy of Medicine)

Editions in German• 1980 - reedition of the book from 1935 (Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache)

• 1983 - 5 papers from Polish, 1 from English, 1 German (in: Erfahrung und Tatsache)

• 2008 – 2 papers from Polish (in: Ludwik Flecks vergleichende Erkenntnistheorie)

• 2011 - 4 papers from Polish, 2 German (in: Denkstile und Tatsache)

Editions in Polish• 1986 - book from German and 3 Polish papers (Powstanie i rozwój faktu naukowego)

• 2006 – 6 Polish papers, 2 from German, 1 from English (in: Psychosocjologia poznania naukowego)

• 2007 – 1 Polish paper, new translations of 2 German and 1 of English paper (in: Style myślowe i fakty)

philological analysis - desideratum

• Different translators = different decisions

• Although there are so many editions only American edition of the book has idex of terms (but the translation is of bad quality)

• Lack of critical edition with indexes – studies on Fleck does not stand on firm ground

• Sine qua non for critical edition is philological analysis of this bilingual legacy

Reviews of translations1.Th. Schnelle (1981), [Review of L. Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact], Theory & Society 10 (5), p. xv.

2.R. S. Cohen, Th. Schnelle, „Introduction”, in: Cognition and Fact - Materials on Ludwik Fleck, Eidem (eds.), Dordrecht 1986, p. xxvii.

In both there are the same remarks but in the latter there is also glossary

Schnelle’s remarks on American translation

• In the book 'soziales Gedächtnis' has been translated as 'society‘

• „'Bedingtheit' is better translated as 'conditionality' or 'conditionedness' rather than 'dependence' (1979:9, although later on the expression 'conditioning' is also used).”

• „Similarly 'Koppelungen' are 'linkages' (or 'couplings') rather than 'associations' or 'connections'.”

Let’s follow Schnelle’s remarks:‘Bedingtheit’ (1)

In the text of his book Fleck uses:• ‘soziales Gedächtnis’ only one time; Polish translation is correct

• ‘Bedingtheit’ 7 times and it is translated into English 4 times as ‘dependence’ and 3 times as ‘conditioning’; into Polish 6 times as ‘uwarunkowanie’ and one time as ‘zależność’

‘Bedingtheit’ (2)I’ve found:• 11 uses of ‘uwarunkowanie’ in Polish texts;

• it was translated into German as ‘Bedingheit’ 6 times, 2 times as ‘Bedingung’ and 3 times as forms of verb or adjective (‘bedingen’, ‘bedingt’);

• it was translated into English 10 times as ‘conditioning’ and one time as… ‘context’

‘Bedingtheit’ (3)But as ‘Bedingtheit’ were also translated:

• English ‘dependence’ (one time),• Polish ‘zdeterminowanie’ (literally: ‘determinedness’) – which was translated into English as ‘determinism’;

• as ‘Unbedingtheit’ from Polish ‘bezwzględność’ (nonrelativity) – which was translated into English as ‘completeness’

‘Bedingtheit’ (4)• There are also two uses of ‘Bedingtheit’ in German papers and

• plenty of uses of forms from verb ‘bedingen’ and ‘warunkować’ and adjectives ‘bedingt’ and ‘uwarunkowany’ which are translated especially into English much less consistently

• Inconsistency is probably worse that choice of not the best equivalent – inconsistency of translator becomes in the target language inconsistency of the author

‘Koppelung’ (1)I’ve found:24 uses of ‘Koppelung’ in Fleck’s book – seems even more important than ‘Bedingtheit’

• into English: 7 ‘association’, 5 ‘connection’, 1 ‘interconnection’, 5 ‘linkage’, 4 ‘link’, 1 ‘matching’ – ‘coupling’ = 0

• into Polish: 12 ‘powiązanie’, 3 ‘związek’, 4 ‘asocjacja’, 2 ‘relacja’, 1 ‘ograniczenie’, 1 ‘sprzężenie’ - only the last one is fully correct

‘Koppelung’ (2)• In all of the Polish texts there are only two uses of ‘sprzężenie’ and they are translated into German as ‘Koppelung’

• But there are 5 uses of forms from verb ‘sprząc’ (‘koppeln’, ‘to couple’), correctly translated into German, and in English 2 as ‘conjugated’ ond 1 as ‘corrleated’

• So - in English there are 8 and in Polish 6 „equivalents” of ‘Koppelung’

GlossariesGlossaries are a kind of review of

translation1. R. S. Cohen, Th. Schnelle (1986),

„Introduction”, in: Cognition and Fact - Materials on Ludwik Fleck, Eidem (eds.), Dordrecht.

2. K. Mutter, E. O. Graf (after 2005), „Flecksicon”, www.ludwik-fleck-kreis.org

3. J. Kołtan (2008), „Kommentar zur deutschen Übersetzung von Ludwik Flecks 'Das Problem einer Theorie des Erkennens' und der anschließenden Debate zwischen Ludwik Fleck und Izydora Dąmbska”, in: Ludwik Flecks vergleichende Erkenntnistheorie. Die Debate in „Przegląd Filozoficzny” 1936-1937, B. Griesecke, E. O. Graf (eds.), Berlin. 2008

glossary of Cohen & Schnelle

• It gives nearly 40 „expressions used by Fleck” in German, Polish and English

• It is rather normative than descriptive – it was probably prepared as a tool for translators of texts published in Cognition and Fact to make the translations coherent

• Disadvantage - it lacks remarks and justifications

Glossary of Graf & Mutter

• It gives over a hundred of Fleck’s expressions in German, French and English

• It is rather descriptive than normative – it is based on three editions of the book

glossary of Kołtan• It gives 15 expressions – derivatives from ‘thought’ in German and Polish

• It is normative and descriptive and of good quality – it gives some comments and justifications but it lacks for example ‘Denkgebilde’ or ‘Denkzwang’ because

• it is based on only one Polish paper of Fleck translated into German

Glossaries – examples (1)

• ‘Bedingtheit’ – ‘uwarunkowanie’ – ‘conditionality-conditionednes’ in Cohen & Schnelle is not taken into account in Graf & Mutter glossary

• in Cohen & Schnelle: ‘Koppelung’ – ‘sprzężenie’ – ‘coupling-linkage’; in Graf & Mutter (not under ‘K’): ‘Aktive Koppelung’ – ‘active association’ and ‘Passive Koppelung’ – ‘passive association’ and ‘zwangsläufige Koppelungen’ – ‘inevitable connections’

Glossaries – examples (2)

• ‘Beharrungstendenz’ in Graf & Mutter is ‘tenacity’ in spite of earlier suggestion of Cohen & Shnelle to translate it as ‘tendency to persist’ (by the way even though they made such a suggestion one of the subtitles of their Introduction to Cognition and Fact is The tenacity of Systems of Opinion)

• There are 7 uses of ‘Beharrungstendenz’ (usually it’s attributive is ‘Meinungsystem’) in the book; into English 6 ‘tenacity’, 1 ‘entrenchment’; into Polish 3 ‘tendencja zachowawcza’, 2 ‘trwałość’, 1 ‘uporczywość’ and 1 ‘uporczywe trwanie’

Glossaries• All these glossaries are important but different in character – they are separate (and not coherent) ventures

• All the inconsistencies that I pointed at show that it is really hard to comprehend this problems and implement such a knowledge

• Thanks to computers we can search through all texts of Ludwik Fleck very quickly and compare uses of certain expressions and their translations

• Nevertheless not only achievements of translatology are important. Also traditional tools of textual criticism are very important what I will show tomorrow

Thank you for your attention

Tomorrow at 9.00 I will say more about The first and the last

philosophical texts of Ludwik Fleck