Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 39 (2008) 375–383

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Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci.

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Ways of seeing: Ludwik Fleck and Polish debates on the perception of reality,1890–1947

Ilana LöwyCermes, CNRS UMR 8169—EHESS—Inserm U750, 7 rue Guy Môquet, 94801 Villejuif Cedex, France

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords:Ludwik Fleck

Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy)Leon ChwistekPolandPerceptionAvant-garde art

0039-3681/$ - see front matter � 2008 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2008.06.009

E-mail address: lowy@vjf.cnrs.fr1 The 1935 edition of Fleck’s book is still in the Wid

This article argues that Ludwik Fleck’s understanding of scientific observation as a social and cultural pro-cess stemmed not only from his practical experience as a bacteriologist and serologist, but also from aconfrontation with ideas developed by other Polish thinkers. It discusses ideas of three such thinkers:the ophthalmologist and philosopher of medicine Zygmunt Kramsztyk, the mathematician and painterLeon Chwistek, and the playwright, painter and photographer Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy).Kramsztyk was interested in the way the observer’s preconceived idea shaped observations throughselection of specific visual elements and the rejection of others. Chwistek developed a theory of ‘multiplerealities’ which proposed several divergent and equally valid patterns of grasping reality. In his plays,photographs, drawings and paintings Witkiewicz experimented restlessly with destabilization and trans-formation of the notion of a stable external reality. It links, then, debates on ‘reality’ in Poland between1900 and 1939 to intersections of ideas derived from modern physics, psychology of perception, andavant-garde art.

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1. Ludwik Fleck: images and facts

Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961) was rediscovered thanks to an imagein his book. In his preface to the English translation of Genesis anddevelopment of a scientific fact (Fleck, 1979), Thomas Kuhn ex-plained that he discovered the existence of Fleck’s quasi-forgottenmonograph, while reading Hans Reichenbach’s Experience and pre-diction, a book that reproduced two illustrations from Genesis anddevelopment of a scientific fact (Kuhn, 1979). Reichenbach’s viewof reality was, Kuhn added, the very opposite of Fleck’s one, andhe borrowed the images of human skeletons published in Genesisand development to make a very different point. Nevertheless, Kuhnwas intrigued by the title of Fleck’s monograph and looked it up inthe Harvard Library.1 In the preface to the second edition of hisStructure of scientific revolutions, Kuhn named Fleck as one of thethinkers that had inspired his book, thereby attracting attention toFleck’s study (Kuhn, 1970). One of the subjects developed by Fleckthat might have interested Kuhn was the influence of observers’ pre-

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conceived concepts of scientific observation, a notion that was cen-tral to Kuhn’s own understanding of change in science. While in1962, when Kuhn published the first edition of Structure, this wasa new concept, by the 1980s, when philosophers, historians and soci-ologists of science rediscovered Fleck, the claim that scientific obser-vations are theory laden had become a near-truism. This might havebeen one of the reasons why in the 1980s some researchers sug-gested that Fleck’s book was mainly of historical interest (Harwood,1986; Shapin, 1986).

Scholars who write on Fleck from the 1990s on are usuallyaware of the originality and importance of his contributions toepistemology (Golinski, 1990; Young, 1995; Löwy, 2004). One ofthe major strengths of Fleck’s work is the detailed description ofthe dense material, social and cognitive matrix in which scientistsobserve natural phenomena and produce scientific facts. Isolatedresearchers may at first be bewildered by the chaos and disorderof their observations and may have great difficulty in separatingfact and artefact. The shared conceptual framework of their

376 I. Löwy / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 39 (2008) 375–383

scientific communities and the techniques and methods elaboratedby these communities provide them with cognitive and materialtools that enable them to distinguish signal from noise (Fleck,1929; 1979, pp. 94–95). Phenomena studied by scientists, Fleck ex-plains, are always observed and interpreted through the prism ofthe thought style of a given community of practitioners. Observa-tions—and facts—are produced collectively (‘les faits sont faits’),and newly generated knowledge is stabilized and diffused throughnetworks of social interaction.2

The ‘strangeness’ of old medical texts and the images thataccompany these texts, illustrate the role of thought styles as‘lenses’ through which we perceive external reality.3 Fleck stressedthat contemporary medical illustrations are no less affected by cul-tural variables than those made hundreds of years ago. We fail, how-ever, to see them in this way because we share the thought style ofmodern science with those who produced them. This is a thoughtstyle characterized by a striving to create impersonal, objectiveknowledge, and our participation in it along with the producers ofthese illustrations effectively masks the fact that this striving forimpersonal objectivity is itself the result of contingent historicaldevelopment (ibid., p. 144).

Fleck’s examples of the influence of pre-existing ideas and thesocialization of researchers on scientific observations often involvea shift in the ‘reading’ of visual evidence. We are inclined to believe‘the evidence of our eyes’, but an unmediated reading of visual evi-dence is a contradiction in terms. This is true for every observation,but even more so for scientific observations, which are stronglydependent on a corpus of accepted knowledge. Thus, for example,in his book Fleck reproduced an anatomical illustration that showsthe similarities between male and female reproductive organs.These images reflect the pre-nineteenth-century view of the sexesthat stressed similarities rather then differences. A woman wasperceived as a weaker, underdeveloped and thus inferior variantof the accomplished human being—a man. By consequence, anato-mists who dissected cadavers literally saw female sex organs as amirror image of male ones. Medical teachings and broad culturalbeliefs shaped perception and created ‘scientific facts’ that wereimmediately grasped by all the people who shared the same‘thought style’. The tendency to ‘see’ through a filter of beliefsand convictions shared by one’s ‘thought collective’, Fleck stressed,is a central trait of every single scientific observation: twentieth-century anatomical drawings are no less cultural products thanthose of the Renaissance (ibid., pp. 137–145).

In this article, I argue that Fleck’s understanding of scientificobservation as a social and cultural process stemmed not only fromhis practical experience as a bacteriologist and serologist, but alsofrom a confrontation with ideas developed by other Polish think-ers. Two elements in Fleck’s biography stand out as potentialsources of his interest in the indeterminacy of visual evidence:his work as the head of the laboratory of skin and venereal diseasesin the city hospital of Lvov (a position he occupied after he failed toobtain a full time research job), and his unorthodox view on thevariability of bacterial species. Fleck’s direct contact with derma-tologists and syphilographs might have sensitised him to the roleof ‘selective perception’ in making a differential diagnosis. Suchselective perception is acquired through long training, a processthat entails the loss of the ability to see the observed items ‘other-wise’. Dermatologists, he noted, are attuned to tiny variations intheir patients’ skin, but less sensitive to their mental state, while

2 The affirmation ‘les faits sont faits’ is Bachelard’s. I owe the quotation to Hans-Jörg Rh3 Michel Foucault makes a similar argument in La naissance de la clinique (Foucault, 1964 On the central role of atlases in shaping scientific observation, see Daston & Galison (5 Ludwik Fleck, intervention at a meeting of the Philosophical and Psychological Society

1945–1947 (Lublin, 1948), pp. 49–50; quoted in Cackowski (1986), pp. 16–17.

psychiatrists are sensitive to small changes in their patients’ mood,but are not interested in their skin. Microbiologists learn to recog-nize ‘typical forms’ of pathogenic bacteria immediately, while laypersons who look at a microscopic preparation of these bacteriado not have a clue what to look for.

At the same time, Fleck’s conviction that bacteria are pleiomor-phic and have complicated life cycles—a view that was rejected bythe majority of bacteriologists—might have led him to reflectionson the role of standardization of experimental conditions in theproduction of the objects studied by scientists. Bacteriologists arenot interested in bacteria ‘in nature’, those that grow on decayingorganic matter or multiply in a living organism. They observe onlypure strains of bacteria cultivated in the laboratory under strictlycontrolled conditions. Bacterial colonies are grown on standard-ized media, at controlled temperature, for a prescribed length oftime. Bacteria cultivated under these conditions are fixed andstained (that is, killed) mounted on slides and then observed andclassified. ‘Typical’ strains of micro organisms, such as they appearin microbiology atlases, have no existence outside the artificialworld of the laboratory inhabited by a peculiar tribe—the ‘thoughtcollective’ of trained bacteriologists (ibid., p. 93).4

One of Fleck’s post-War War II contributions to epistemology, aconference at the Lublin Society of Philosophy and Psychology(February, 1947), was focused on the claim that all scientific cogni-tion is rooted in a capacity for selective perception (Fleck, 1947a).Such selective perception—mediated through the ‘thought style’ ofa given scientific specialty—enables the scientists to make sense oftheir sensory impressions, to distinguish discrete entities amongthese impressions, and to perceive these entities as endowed withan autonomous existence. The essence of scientific observation is,‘the creation of forms out of chaos and the organization of theseforms in agreement with a specific thought style’. The history ofobservation of bacterial cilia illustrates the claim that it is notsufficient for an entity ‘to be there’ in order to be perceived byscientists as a distinct—and interesting—object. Selective percep-tion, Fleck concludes, is a precondition for the genesis of scientificfacts, and plays a central role in the stabilization of scientificknowledge.5

Fleck’s interest in selective observation and interpretation of vi-sual evidence was rooted in his experience at the bench. Fleck’sreflexive stance was unusual, however, as scientists are seldom in-clined to analyse their own practices. Two Polish thinkers mighthave provided Fleck with conceptual tools that enabled him toquestion the production of scientific facts: the physician and phi-losopher of medicine Zygmunt Kramsztyk (1848–1920), and themathematician, philosopher and painter Leon Chwistek (1894–1944). Fleck does not quote Kramsztyk, Chwistek, or any other Pol-ish thinker of his time. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume thathe was familiar with their work.

Kramsztyk was one of the leading thinkers of the Polish Schoolof Philosophy of Medicine, and Fleck studied history of medicinewith the main propagator of the ideas of this school, WladyslawSzumowski. In the 1920s, Fleck was an active member the Lvovbranch of the Polish Society for the History and Philosophy of Med-icine, and he published his first epistemological study in the Soci-ety’s journal Archives of Philosophy and History of Medicine. For themost part, members of this Society viewed themselves as directfollowers of the Polish School of Philosophy of Medicine, and as aresult Kramsztyk’s writings were often mentioned in the Archives

einberger.3).

2007).in Lublin, 19 February 1947, in Reports of the Philosophical and Psychological Society,

I. Löwy / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 39 (2008) 375–383 377

(Löwy, 1990).6 In the 1930s, Leon Chwistek held the chair of logic atLvov University. According to Chwistek’s biographer, Karol Eistrei-cher, Chwistek was personally acquainted with Fleck and discussednew developments in the sciences with him (Schnelle,1986a, p.18). The two could have met through Chwistek’s brother in law,the mathematician Hugo Steinhaus, who collaborated with Fleck(the two published a together study on the statistical distributionof leucocytes in the blood).7 Chwistek was the only known Polishphilosopher who wrote a detailed and sympathetic review of Fleck’sbook (Chwistek, 1936).

Kramsztyk’s reflections on medical observation were elaboratedin the framework of the practice-oriented reflection of PolishSchool of Philosophy of Medicine, while his medical specialty, oph-thalmology, favoured an interest in visual perception. 8 Chwistek’sideas on reality and its visual representations, crystallized in his the-ory of ‘multiple realities’, combined his philosophical training, hisinterest in the psychology of sensorial perception, and his activityas a an avant-garde painter and a theoretician of modern art. OtherPolish avant-garde artists active in the 1910s and 1920s also ques-tioned the notion of ‘reality’, among them Chwistek’s childhoodfriend, the playwright and painter Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz(1885–1939). Fleck’s ideas on the role of visual evidence in shapingperceived reality were elaborated in the context of intense debateson this topic in early twentieth-century Poland. Fleck was a highlyoriginal thinker, but he was not isolated from the ‘thought style’ ofhis time and place.

2. Zygmunt Kramsztyk: ophthalmology and patterns ofperception

Zygmunt Kramsztyk specialized in ophthalmology in Poland,and later in Vienna and in Berlin. He had a successful private prac-tice in Warsaw and was co-owner and co-publisher of the mainPolish medical publication, The Medical Journal (Gazeta Lekarska).In parallel, he developed an interest in theoretical reflections onmedicine. He published numerous articles on this subject in thePolish medical press, and between 1897 and 1907 owned and edi-ted the journal Medical Critique (Krytyka Lekarska), a forum for thecritical examination of medical knowledge and practices, and themain site for the crystallization of the thought of the Polish Schoolof Philosophy of Medicine (Krakowiecka, 1970; Löwy 1990).

Kramsztyk aspired to understand the nature of medical activity,and was especially interested in scientific and medical observa-tions. This interest was probably related to his medical specialtyof ophthalmology. In the mid nineteenth century, ophthalmologistselaborated increasingly sophisticated tests aimed at measuring thefield of vision and visual acuity, and then employed these tests tostudy different social groups. One of their working hypotheseswas that race influences vision. A related hypothesis, developedby Cesare Lombroso, postulated the existence of differences be-tween the vision of law-abiding citizens and criminals. Lombrosomaintained that criminals represent a more primitive type of hu-man being and possess many ‘atavistic’ traits. Accordingly, he ap-plied standardized anatomical measures and routine physiologicaltests to demonstrate the biological affinity between a criminal of-fender and a savage (Pick, 1989). Lomboroso was especially inter-ested in sensory acuity, and claimed that his studies hadconsistently displayed the presence of anomalies of the visual fieldin female criminals, notably recidivists and ‘born prostitutes’. These

6 Prof. Waldyslaw Kunicki-Goldfinger, who worked with Fleck in the1950s, recalled (in7 Fleck’s list of publications lists two papers on this subject, written together with Steinh

of the war, but Fleck did publish a paper with Steinhaus after the war (Fleck, 1947b).8 Fleck was a student of one of the propagators of the ideas of this school, Wladyslaw

Medicine that viewed itself as continuing the tradition of the Polish School (Löwy, 1990).

women, Lombroso argued, literally do not see the world in the sameway honest women do (Lombroso & Ferrero, 1958).

More prosaically, studies of vision revealed important varia-tions in the populations under examination, and such variationswere attributed to physiological conditions. Thus, some specialistspostulated a direct link between the female reproductive systemand vision. Menstruating women, they affirmed, were less sensi-tive to white, green, red, yellow, and blue, and had a strong ten-dency to confuse green and yellow. Modifications of the visualfield during menstruation were accentuated in hysterical subjects.The latter observation led to the hypothesis that notable changes invision during the menses were in fact manifestations of underlyinghysterical problems, which were simply aggravated by menstrua-tion. Such problems peaked during the menopause, seen as a per-iod of intensification of hysterical symptoms (Berger & Loewy,1905). Neurotic, hyper-sensitive subjects also displayed modifica-tions in their visual field. Vision reflected the personality of the pa-tient, meaning the combination of ‘constitution’ (that is, hereditarytendencies) and acquired character traits (Ramsay, 1909). The pa-tient’s familial and personal history directly affected what s/hewas able to see.

Studies on links between personality, ‘predisposition’ and visionmight have stimulated Kramsztyk’s reflections on the role of sub-jectivity in the perception of external phenomena. Observations,Kramsztyk explained, depend on the observer’s knowledge andaims. Even an everyday observation is a highly selective process:

walking through the woods, a botanist will focus his attentionon moss and mushrooms, a forester will estimate the diameterand height of trees, and possible profits that could be obtainedfrom them, a painter will take an interest in form, colours, lightand shadow, a hunter will search for game, and a child will onlylook for berries. (Kramsztyk, 1899a, p. 111)

Scientific observations depend even more on the goal of a givenstudy and on the observers’ preconceived ideas (ibid., pp. 115–116). Thus, the ‘simple clinical facts’ observed by doctors arestrongly affected by their pre-existing views:

Last year, two scholars, Bitzos and Abadie, published two newbut entirely different theories of glaucoma in Archives d’Ophtal-mologie. Today, every theory of glaucoma must also cover iri-dectomy, and must explain why this operation removes thesymptoms of the disease. One of the theories claimed that iri-dectomy can be effective due to the cutting of the iris plexusnerve, while the other conditioned the positive effect on theremoval of the major part of the secretory area. Consequently,one author affirmed that iridectomy will be successful onlywhen it has covered the middle part of the iris, in which theplexus nerve is present, and that a positive effect would beobtained even if we limited our action to cutting through theiris. This was presented as an unquestionable clinical fact. Forthe other author, the observation that iridectomy is conditionedby the total area affected, and that it is more effective thegreater the section of the iris that is removed, whether at theinfra iris region or in the circumferential area, is a clinical fact.At least one of the authors must be wrong, although both ofthem express their opinions in perfectly good faith. Howeveriridectomy has been performed so frequently and for so manyyears, that in all probability all its variants and effects arealready well known. It may be concluded that clinical facts

a conversation with IL) that Fleck warmly recommended Kramsztyk’s book to him.aus, both from 1939. These papers were not published, probably because the outbreak

Szumowski, then a member of the Polish Society of the History and Philosophy of

378 I. Löwy / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 39 (2008) 375–383

are difficult to interpret, they can be easily misinterpreted,and they are perceived by us through the prism of theories.(Kramsztyk, 1899b, p. 70)

There is no such a thing as a truly objective clinical observation,Kramsztyk explained, because:

the observer’s mind is not a blank sheet, but contains many gen-eral ideas and many pieces of information that are uncon-sciously transferred to the observed facts. The observer, whoviews nature with his ‘mind’s eye’ notices above all those phe-nomena which are consistent with his previous knowledge andoverlooks all the others. He may even observe non-existentphenomena if they are necessary to confirm his views. (Kra-msztyk, 1906a, p. 157)

Drawings in atlases of pathology illustrate the central role playedby pre-existing knowledge in shaping perception. Such drawingsare usually presented as a faithful record of a doctor’s visualimpressions. In fact, however, they always incorporate the obser-ver’s presuppositions about the observed phenomena. The two,Kramsztyk explained, cannot be dissociated. Preconceived ideasled to the selection of certain specific visual elements and therejection of others. Illustrations in atlases of pathology are alwaysshaped by physicians’ views of a given disease at the time the pic-ture is drawn, and they tend to become quickly outdated for pre-cisely this reason. Occasionally, one can even accurately deducethe publication date of an atlas from the way it depicts a givenpathology (Kramsztyk, 1899c). Medical observations, Kramsztykconcluded, are always situated: ‘the physician’s attention is usuallydirected towards the phenomena that he has been trained to see,those with which he is familiar, and those which are the most fre-quent’(Kramsztyk, 1906b). While Kramsztyk did not question theexistence of a single physical reality, he convincingly argued thatin practice is it almost impossible to avoid discordant observationsof this reality. The next generation of Polish thinkers, influenced bynew developments in physics, would question the very notion of‘reality’.

3. Leon Chwistek: multiple realities in daily life, in science andin art

Leon Chwistek was a true polymath. He was physically andintellectually a ‘larger than life’ character (he was very tall, and—especially in his later years—very heavy), with a strong sense ofself-worth and an aspiration to excel in many domains. Chwistekis known in the West mainly through his contributions to formallogic and through his debate with Bertrand Russell. In Poland, heis celebrated in parallel as an avant-garde artist, a theoretician ofart, and a philosopher, as well as being considered a picturesquefigure of Krakow’s intellectual milieu in the 1920s (Eistrecher,1971).9 He is also known for his theory of ‘multiple realities’ thatcombined his interest in modern physics, logics, visual perceptionand aesthetics. This theory, widely discussed in Poland in the1920s and 1930s, might have influenced Fleck’s proposal that astatement can be judged as true or false only within the frameworkof a given thought style (Schnelle, 1986b).

Chwistek grew up in the mountain resort of Zakopane, nearKrakow, where his father, a doctor, owned and directed ahydrotherapy establishment. In the late nineteenth century, Zako-pane became an important centre of Polish intellectual and artisticlife.10 The painter and art critic, Stanislaw Witkiewicz was among

9 Estreicher was Chwistek’s student, and then colleague and friend; his biography of Ch10 Zakopane was ‘discovered’ and made fashionable among Polish intellectuals and artis

(Löwy, 1990).11 Their posthumous fame is very different. Witkiewicz is well known in Poland, and his

the well known intellectuals who chose to live there, and his son,Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, became Chwistek’s close friend. Theirrelationship passed through many stages, and in the 1930s the twoended up being frères ennemis, with Chwistek being the intellectualWitkiewicz loved to hate. While both Chwistek and Witkiewicz sawthemselves as artists–philosophers, their achievements in theseareas were nevertheless asymmetrical. Chwistek innovated mainlythrough his theoretical writings, while Witkiewicz’s main contribu-tion was through his art.11

Chwistek studied physics, mathematics and philosophy at Kra-kow University. He specialized in mathematical logic, but, throughthe mediation of his physics teacher, Wlodzimierz Nathanson—thefirst Polish follower of Einstein’s theory—he also became interestedin modern physics (Flis, 1988, p. 114). At the same time, he devel-oped an interest in the psycho-physiology of perception. Chwis-tek’s thesis supervisor, the reverend Wladyslaw Pawlicki,introduced him to Wladyslaw Heinrich, professor of experimentalpsychology at Krakow University. From 1906 to 1908, Chwistekstudied the visual perception of forms in Heinrich’s laboratory.He then elaborated the ‘monk–eagle’ illusion, an earlier variant ofthe ‘duck–rabbit’ image popularised by Gestalt psychology. Exper-imental subjects were shown an enigmatic image—in this case aphotograph of a picturesque rock in the Tatra Mountains that couldbeen seen to have the form of either an eagle or a monk—and wereasked to identify the perceived forms. Chwistek investigated theconditions that favoured the perception of one of the forms, andthose that governed a shift from one to the other. This collabora-tion with Heinrich led to the publication of two scientific papers(Chwistek & Heinrich, 1906; Chwistek, 1909). Later, Chwistek ex-plained that the ‘psychological period of his life’ was at the originof his lifelong interest in the ways perception shapes reality (Eist-recher, 1971, pp. 53–60).

After finishing his thesis, Chwistek, was unable to find a univer-sity job, and worked as a mathematics teacher in a well knownKrakow high school. In 1909, following Nathanson’s recommenda-tion, he travelled to Goettingen in order to learn more about thetheory of relativity. In spring 1909, Chwistek attended Poincaré’slectures in Germany, and was greatly impressed by Poincaré’snominalism. This encounter, he reported to his friends, had a deci-sive influence on his reflections concerning the nature of physicalreality. Chwistek’s ‘conversion’ to nominalism was described inWitkiewicz’s semi-autobiographic play, ‘The 622 falls of Bungo’.One of the heroes of this play, the Baron Brummel—a thinly dis-guised portrait of Chwistek—visits Goettingen and then returnsto Poland profoundly disturbed by Poincarés theories (Pollakowna,1972).

In 1912, Chwistek obtained a scholarship to study mathematicsand physics in Paris. He dutifully attended the lectures in thesesubjects at the Sorbonne, but at the same time he became deeplyengaged with new developments in plastic arts, and enthusiasti-cally followed the rise of cubism (Eistrecher, 1971, pp. 97–102).Chwistek’s concept of a plurality of realities might have first oc-curred to him during his studies on the psychology of perception,but it was probably elaborated under the influence of the doubleshock of an encounter with Poincarés nominalism, and then withParisian avant-garde painting. During the First World War, Chwis-tek joined the Polish Legion, organized by Jozef Pilsudski within theAustrian army. He wrote the first draft of his ‘multiple realities’theory in 1916, while still with the Legion. Shortly afterwards,Chwistek developed a neurological disorder and was dischargedfrom the army. Back in Krakow, he spent the period 1917–1918

wistek is the main source of information on Chwistek’s life.ts by Tytus Chalubinski, the founder of the Polish School of Philosophy of Medicine

fame extends outside his country as well. Chwistek is known mainly to specialists.

I. Löwy / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 39 (2008) 375–383 379

working on a paper—‘Meaning and reality’—that presented thistheory.

Chwistek had shown the manuscript of ‘Meaning and reality’ tohis ex-mentor and collaborator Wladyslaw Heinrich. Heinrichstrongly disliked this work, and his open hostility to the theoryof ‘multiple realities’ led to a split with Chwistek. A first, short ver-sion of ‘Meaning and reality’ was published in 1918 in the avant-garde art magazine Maski (Chwistek, 1960a [1918]). In 1921,Chwistek made important changes in the text and renamed it ‘Plu-rality of realities’. In the new version, Chwistek linked his argu-ment with recent developments in mathematics, especially withBertrand Russell’s work. At the same time, he expanded the scopeof his reflections on the relevance of the theory of multiple realitiesto the understanding of new artistic trends.12 The latter develop-ment reflected Chwistek’s increasing engagement with the artisticmilieu of Krakow. Between 1917 and 1922, Chwistek produced a ser-ies of avant-garde painting, and, together with Zbigniew Pronaszko,became the leading theoretician of the Krakow-based group of ar-tists, the Formists. The Formists distanced themselves from theneo-romantic tradition of the Young Poland artistic movement thatwas dominant in Krakow in the early twentieth century. Inspiredby recent artistic trends such as cubism, expressionism and futurism,the Formists aspired to free painting from its previous constraints.Between 1918 and 1921, Witkiewicz, attracted by the Formists’ icon-oclastic stance, became one of the most important artists in thisgroup.

The theory of ‘multiple realities’ took a strong constructiviststance. Phenomena and forms, Chwistek proposed, are subject tolaws of visual oscillation and to conceptual transformation ofmeaning. The system of physical sciences does not dependent uponany unique concept of reality:

it consists of certain mental constructions conceived in such away as to enable us to grasp certain kind of phenomena . . .the original concept of reality seems to be undergoing funda-mental changes under the influence of the development ofphysics. (Chwistek, 1921, p. 20)

There are, he argued, four main realities: two realities of materialobjects, popular (or lay) reality and physical (or scientific) reality,and, in parallel, two realities of sensory impressions: psychologicalreality and visionary reality. The major trends in contemporary artreflected these four realities: primitive or popular art correspondedto popular reality; realism—with its analytical and scientific compo-nents—corresponded to physical reality; impressionism was relatedto sensory, psychological perception; finally futurism reflected theinner vision of the artist, and it included many possible approaches,some of which had not yet materialized (Chwistek 1921, 1924).

One of Chwistek’s main innovations was the claim that diver-gent ways of seeing are not hierarchical but equivalent: ‘there isno single art and no single pattern of scientific understanding ofreality’ (Chwistek, 1933, p. 4). Multiple realities can co-exist inthe same time and place, and different groups of people, or eventhe same person at different times, can have a different view ofreality. Nevertheless—and this is an important restriction—thesame object cannot be viewed simultaneously from the point ofview of more than one reality. The finding that the outline of a rockcan be read either as representing a monk or an eagle but not bothsimultaneously, convinced Chwistek that any specific way of see-ing reality needs always to be internally coherent.13 Each theoret-

12 A short version of the text was published as Chwistek (1921). Chwistek also producedChwistek, 1960b).

13 This view is akin to ideas promoted by Fleck (e. g. Fleck, 1979, pp. 108–111).14 Russell corresponded with Chwistek and was familiar with his work, while at that tim15 Letter of Russell to the Dean of Faculty of Mathematics, Lwow University, of 23 Decem16 His last known pictures, of 1939, express a different mood: they use dark colors to de

ical/scientific truth, he added, is relative, that is, is dependent on agiven system. We regard some truths—those that repeat themselvesin all the known systems—as absolute, but this is merely a result ofthe generalization of conventions. The truth of the lay experience isto some extent absolute because we do not doubt it, but it is in factgrounded in widely shared beliefs, many of which will not withstanda truly critical examination (Chwistek, 1922; Jakimowicz, 1985, p.42).

Chwistek continued to teach in high school, and in parallel pub-lished numerous studies in mathematics and logic. His attempts toobtain a habilitation at the Jagellonski University were hamperedby the open hostility of Heinrich (Pawlicki, his mentor, died duringthe war), by the cool reception of his ‘plurality of realities’ theoryby leading Polish philosophers, and by the public visibility of hisavant garde artistic activities, seen as incompatible with seriousacademic work. He was finally able to obtain habilitation in1928, mainly thanks to Nathanson’s strong support. During thecomplex negotiations that surrounded this habilitation, Chwistek’ssponsors promised that he would not seek a university position inKrakow. He applied therefore for the newly created chair of math-ematical logic in Lvov, where his competitor was the logicianAlfred Tarski. Chwistek won out, largely helped by Bertrand Rus-sell’s recommendation.14 In 1930 Chwistek moved to Lvov, wherehe remained until the occupation of the city by the German armyin 1941.15 His scientific reputation as an expert in logic was consol-idated by the publication of his best known study ‘The limits of sci-ence: An outline of the logic and methodology of the exact sciences’(Chwistek, 1935).

In the mid-1920s the Formist group disintegrated, leadingChwistek to become more committed to his mathematical and log-ical studies and less active as an artist. In the late 1920s he never-theless developed a new approach to painting—‘strefism’—basedon tensions between different zones of the painted surface, andproduced a series of quasi-realistic paintings characterized bybright colours and a cheerful mood.16 In the 1930s, Witkiewicz vir-ulently attacked Chwistek’s aesthetic theories in a series of articles inthe avant-garde magazine Zet. Witkiewicz criticized not only thearbitrary (for him) choice of four types of reality (Witkiewicz postu-lated the existence of a single reality with infinite manifestations),but also the realistic turn in Chwistek’s painting:

the beginnings of the development of formal art in our countryare now threatened by a mounting wave of barbaric, senselessrealism, the graveyard of all artistic creativity. This movementis sustained, perhaps against his will, by one of the first Polishformists and an excellent logician, Leon Chwistek. Chwistek’srecent evolution is a phenomenon that should be classified inthe category of ‘reality of dreams, imagination, and horrificnightmares. (Witkiewicz, 1974, p. 237)

Chwistek did not respond to Witkiewicz’s attacks. His biographerEstreicher believed that he remained silent because at this stagein his academic career Chwistek feared that his professional statusmay be threatened by a polemical exchange with the marginal andexcentric Witkiewicz (Eistrecher, 1971, pp. 246–248). It is also pos-sible that in the 1930s Chwistek did not see himself as firmly com-mitted to his theory of ‘multiple realities’. Paradoxically, whileWitkiewicz launched violent attacks against Chwistek’s theory ofmultiple realities, he effectively challenged the notion of a singlereality through his art.

a different version of the text, more focused on art (Chwistek, 1924, reproduced in

e he did not know Tarski’s studies well.ber 1929 (quoted in Eistrecher, 1971, p. 212).

pict subjects such as columns of tanks or prisoners in a concentration camp.

380 I. Löwy / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 39 (2008) 375–383

4. Stanislaw Ignacy Wtikiewicz: experiments, self-experiments,and doubles

Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885–1939) is viewed today asone of the leading Polish artists of the interwar era. He is occasion-ally represented as an ‘unrecognized genius’, neglected during hislifetime, and rediscovered later. Such an image is inaccurate, how-ever, as despite the fact that Witkiewicz did not enjoy any com-mercial success, he was able to find theatres to produce hisplays, he exhibited his paintings in well known galleries, publishedhis theoretical writings in respectable art magazines and philo-sophical journals, and was recognized as an original and highlyinventive artist.

Witkiewicz’s life was shaped by the fact that he was the onlyson of a famous father. He later adopted the pen name Witkacy(WITiewicz IgnACY), in order to distinguish himself from the elderWitkiewicz. The young Witkiewicz was a precocious, highly sensi-tive child, gifted in many directions, and often obsessive about de-tails. Schooled at home by his father and his friends, he wasencouraged to develop his curiosity. He acquired an interest inthe sciences early in life and a parallel interest in avant-garde pho-tography (by contrast, his earliest paintings were more conven-tional). Witkewicz started studying art at the Krakow School ofArt, but left early on, disappointed by the institution’s conserva-tism. He then set himself up as an independent artist, dividinghis time between writing, painting and photography. His closestfriend at that time was Bronislaw Malinowski, with whom heshared intellectual preoccupations, social activities, gossip, friendsand girlfriends. 17 The two probably also experimented with homo-erotic relationships.18 Malinowski left Poland in 1909 to studyanthropology at the London School of Economics, but he maintaineda close friendship with Witkiewicz.

In February 1914, Witkewicz’s life was shattered by the suicideof his fiancée, Jadwiga Janaszewska. In spite of his outward show oflight heartedness, Witkiewicz had a highly developed sense ofresponsibility, and did not take either life or art lightly. Blaminghimself for Janaszewska’s death, he in turn became suicidal. Mali-nowski believed that his friend might be helped by travel, and inthe spring of 1914 he invited Witkiewicz to become the photogra-pher on his forthcoming expedition to New Guinea. Malinowski’sand Witkiewicz’s travel to the tropics was a fiasco.19 Witkiewiczwas strongly impressed by the colours and sights of the tropics—asubject that permanently entered his art—but he remained depres-sive and continued to talk about suicide. He was also irritated byMalinowski’s newly acquired posture as a young, upcoming Britishscientist. Malinowski’s and Witkiewicz’s shared adventure endedin early September 1914, when the two had a violent row, probablyrelated to divergences in their attitudes to World War I. Witkiewicz,strongly affected by the beginning of a war in Europe, decided to re-turn to Poland immediately and join the army. Malinowski, by con-trast, did not view the war as a sufficient reason to curtail hisexpedition (Gerould, 2000; Young, 2004).

Back in Poland, Witkiewicz joined the Russian army.20 He wastrained in an officer’s school at St. Petersburg, and was then sentto the front, where he found, partly to his own surprise, that he

17 Malinowski, like Chwistek studied physics under Wladyslaw Nathanson and experime18 Malinowski (1992), esp. entries for 1908–1909. The English translation of Malinowski’s

also Young (1998), pp. 12–13.19 Witkiewicz and Malinowski sailed in June 1914 from Toulon to Ceylan, spent two week

the anthropology section of the British Society for the Advancement of Science participate20 Polish patriots usually chose to join Pilsudski’s Polish Legion within the Austrian arm

aspirations. Witkiewicz’s decision to join the Russian army might have been partly motiv21 Witkiewicz corresponded with Hans Cornelius about philosophical and personal matt22 However, the most often reproduced among these photographic portraits were probabl

broken negative and the Russian quintuple portrait in military uniform was in all probabilthese images for self-presentation.

was a good soldier (Jakimowicz, 1985, p. 27). Wounded in Witoniezin 1916, Witkiewicz was evacuated to St. Petersburg, where he fre-quented Russian avant-garde art circles. He witnessed the Russianrevolution firsthand, an experience that he found deeply disturbing(Jakimowicz, 1985, pp. 28–34). In his essay ‘New forms of art’,started in St. Petersburg in 1917 and finished in Warsaw the follow-ing year, he described the ‘horrible, painful, insane monstrosity thatis presented as the latest evolution of social progress’ (Lingwood,1989, p. 13). Having returned to Poland, Witkiewicz joined the Form-ist group, led by Chwistek, in 1918, which would be his only attemptto participate in a collective artistic venture. This was the time whenWitkiewicz elaborated his concept of ‘pure form’—an art freed fromall the existing artistic conventions, and as close as possible to anunmediated expression of the artist’s states of mind. Witkiewicz leftthe Formist group in 1921, and until his death in 1939 pursued ahighly individual, idiosyncratic trajectory, dominated by the themeof multiplicity of identities, incarnations, and artistic personae.

As an art theorist, Witkiewicz was influenced by the romanticand individualist ideas of the Young Poland movement and bythe work of the German philosopher Hans Cornelius. In his theoret-ical writing, he promoted the concept of the unity of realitygrounded in the psychological unity of each individual person (Ja-kimowicz, 2000, p. 43; Michalski, 2000).21 In his artistic activitiesand his private life, however, Witkiewicz deliberately cultivated asplit, multiple persona. He was at the same time daring and fearful,irresponsible and over-conscientious, chaotic and meticulously orga-nized, drenched in bathos and soaked in buffoonery. Witkiewicz hadtwo basic personalities—the citizen Sanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz(Stas to his friends), and the artist Witkacy, who himself enjoyedmultiple incarnations (Borowy, 1921). The theme of the double—orrather of doubles—and the parallel theme of fractured identity areconstant leitmotifs in his art: from multiple photographs to doubleportraits including either of two partners, or a single doubledindividual.22

It is worth noting that the Polish term for a double, ‘sobotwor’,has a different linguistic origin from the English and French ‘dou-ble’, the German ‘doppelgänger’, or the Russian ‘dvoı̈nik’. ‘Sobo/twor’ literarily means ‘self-creation’. Thus, one can hypothesizethat Witkiewicz’s doubles were not merely multiplications butimaginative re-creations of the self. Witkiewicz’s photographicself-portraits, especially those from the post-1918 era, presenteda multiplicity of ironic personages. At the same time, he also signedhis paintings and letters suing multiple names/ personalities: Vitk-acy, Vitcarius, Witikatius, Witkasiatko, Veetcahtzee, Whitcahcea,Ritter von Vytkevitsch, Won Witkacy, Chevalier de St. Vitecasse,St. Witkacy à la fourchette, Mahatma Witkarz, Witkacy the 1stMegalomaniac, Witkazez- Witkasinski de Campo Vasto, OnanslawSpermacy Wyfiutkiewicz, Witkacjusz Baldachensis, and manymore (Okolowicz, 2000, p. 193).

Another key aspect of Witkiewicz’s art was a permanent ques-tioning of the form and the content of art (Okolowicz, 2000). Thisquestioning took two principal forms: the use of drugs and hallu-cinogenic substances to modify his vision, and the founding of aspecial company, ‘W. I. Witkiewicz portrait firm’. Starting in theearly 1920s, Witkiewicz wrote mysterious numbers and signs on

ntal psychology under Wladyslaw Heinrich (Kubica, 1988).diaries (Malinowski, 1989) does not include all the entries for his years in Poland. See

s there , then traveled to Australia, where Malinowski, who was then the secretary ofd in a meeting of the society, and visited part of Australia (Gerould, 2000).y. Witkeiwicz’s father (who died in 1915) strongly supported Pilsudski’s nationalist

ated by an opposition to his father.ers, and the latter visited Witkiewicz in Zakopane in 1937.y ‘objets trouvés’. The oft reproduced self portrait on a broken glass might have been aity a studio portrait that employed a fashionable visual device. Witkiewicz then used

I. Löwy / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 39 (2008) 375–383 381

some of his paintings, thereby recording his physiological and psy-chological state at the time the painting was made (for example,abstention from smoking). In the late 1920s, Witkiewicz, whowas very sensitive to artificial stimulants, experimented systemat-ically with the effects of drugs such as cocaine, alcohol, and hallu-cinogens such as peyote and Merck’s mescaline, as well as differentmixtures of these substances (Jakimowicz, 1985, pp. 52–58). Wit-kiewicz’s experiments with vision were encouraged by the ‘War-saw Psycho-Physical Society’, and he even obtained drugs fromone of the society’s members, Dr. Theodor Bialnycki Birula (Jakimo-wicz, 1978, p. 31; Zakiewicz, 2000, p. 179). In studies made in col-laboration with the psychologist Stefan Szuman and published inthe Polish Psychological Quarterly, Witkiewicz carefully describeddrug-induced states, and produced paintings and drawings underthe influence of drugs (Szuman, 1930, quoted in Jakimowicz,1985, pp. 66–67; Zakiewicz, 2000, pp. 178–180). Witkiewicz’sdrawings and portraits from the years 1928–1932, usually containa long string of letters, a coded formula that described as accu-rately as possible the substances and other variables that mighthave affected his perception.23 His experiments with effects ofdrugs on visual perception can be seen simultaneously as a seriouseffort to understand a physiological phenomenon and as a parodyof a scientific approach (the long list of letters and signs on eachpaintings ironically imitate chemical language). They can be under-stood at the same time as an effort to enhance artistic creativity andan attempt to subvert the notion of artistic genius by linking it to theingestion of perception-changing substances.

‘W. I. Witkiewicz portrait firm’—an ironic embodiment of thefate of a work of art in the era of mass production—can similarlybe viewed as an effort to challenge the concept of ‘fine art’ (Jakimo-wicz, 1978, p. 13). The rules of the ‘W. I. Witkiewicz portrait firm’,first published in 1926 and republished, with slight modifications,in 1928 and 1932, enumerated types and sub-types of portraits:A—realistic and ‘prettified’ to fit standard taste; B—realistic andmore objective; B + b, on the verge of caricature; C—portraits exe-cuted under the influence of narcotics such as cocaine, seen byWitkiewicz as close to a ‘pure form’, D, the same , but without nar-cotics; E—a psychological portrait executed according to the intui-tion of the firm; and B + E a child’s portrait (Witkiewicz, 1980). The‘rules of the W. I. Witkiewicz portrait firm’ may be seen as an effortto bring to light the wide range of entities classified as ‘art’, as atentative to transform art into serial production and a commodity,a parody of art and of art criticism, or even as an ironic example ofartistic creativity. It may also be seen as an attempt to question the‘reality’ of an artistic representation and as a demonstration of theco-existence of ‘multiple realities’, in other words, as an illustrationof a concept vigorously opposed by Witkiewicz in his philosophicaland aesthetic writings.

Witkewicz’s theoretical writings, unlike his art, did not age well.His philosophical views were described, even by sympathetic read-ers, as essentially flawed because they uncritically combined het-erogeneous philosophical categories. The eclectic combination ofelements that worked so well in Witkiewicz’s art, was less success-ful when applied to philosophy and esthetics (Porembski, 1980).Nevertheless, Wikiewicz’s protégé, friend and admirer, the writerand the painter Bruno Schulz (1892–1942), took these theories asa starting point for his own reflections on the nature of physicaland artistic reality.24 Reacting to Witkiewicz’s text on realism in

23 He prefigured these experiments in his writings. Marceli Kizior-Buciewicz, the heroWitkiewicz’s lifetime) used drugs to produce a painting that transcended the limits of the

24 Bruno Schulz was mainly an autodidact. Born into a modest Jewish family, he spent allonly seven years younger than Witkiewicz, but achieved a certain (modest) celebrity oWitkiewicz played a central role in the discovery of Schulz, and then enthusiastically p(Witkiewicz, 1992) that Schulz was probably the greatest Polish writer, and, who knows, pesee Ficowski (1992).

art, Schulz affirmed that one of the salient traits of the present periodis ‘the bankruptcy of empirical, social and historical reality’ (Schulz,1998 [1935], p. 445). This bankruptcy was, according to Schulz, a re-cent development. The world had once been stable, ‘barely touchedon its surface by the ferment of scepticism’. It had changed as a con-sequence of treacherous developments in the sciences that destabi-lized the naive faith in atoms and in the matter:

the world was sieved through many sieves with very smallholes—Freud’s theories and psychoanalysis, the theory of rela-tivity and microphysics, quantum mechanics and non-Euclidiangeometry—and gradually lost its consistency. What filteredthrough these sieves was a world unlike the world, a gelatinousand formless fauna, a plankton with fluid, undulating contours.(Schulz, 1993, p. 41)

In an oft quoted letter to Witkiewicz on the origins of his art,Schulz discussed, among other things, his perception of reality:

the essence of the matter is nothing more than the use of a widerange of masks . . . With the dissolution of the physical view ofreality, only artistic creation can be the locus of any true under-standing of the world: art did not cut the umbilical cord thatlinks it to the whole. It pulsates with the blood of mystery,the vessels float into the surrounding night, and come backfilled with a dark fluid. (Schulz, 1975, p. 158)

5. Conclusion: images and realities

Images are intrinsically ambivalent entities. Even visual cluesthat appear to be read able in a direct manner, speech acts, mes-sages, buildings, clothes, processions or traffic signs, although oftentreated as non-mediated, are context-dependent. A red light means‘stop’ only in some places and some circumstances. This is eventruer for images that provide an indirect message that needs tobe decoded, as well as for those that produce effects that cannotbe fully translated into other means of expression (Stafford,1996). Thanks to their ability to relate to multiple frames of refer-ence at the same time and to provide an emotional impact, imagesmay be an especially efficient mean to convey a multiplicity ofmeanings and to express uncertainty and liminality. Fleck’s inter-est in images may be linked to this structural indeterminacy of vi-sual evidence.

One may argue that Fleck’s interest in the role of visual evidencein the sciences (and not, for example, in the role of formalization orquantification) was a direct consequence of his training in a scien-tific discipline—bacteriology—that assigns a great deal of impor-tance to the recognition of specific forms. However, as Fleck hasnoted, during the 1930s his scientific sub-specialty—serology—strived to achieve quantification and formalization (Löwy, 1988).He too followed this general trend in his own scientific investiga-tions. Thus, for example, his work with Chwistek’s brother inlaw, the mathematician Hugo Steinhaus was an attempt to elabo-rate a mathematical model of the distribution of leucocytes in thebloodstream. By contrast, when it came to his epistemologicalreflections, Fleck stressed the indeterminacy of scientific observa-tions. Chwistek, socialized in a mathematical–logical tradition, at-tempted to construct a theory that could account for severaldivergent perceptions of reality. He nevertheless postulated the

of his novel Single exit (probably written in the early 1920s, and never published inphysical and sensorial reality as we know it (Witkiewicz, 1968).

his life in the small Ukrainian city of Dobrohycz, near Lvov. Schulz, born in 1892, wasnly in 1934, with the publication of his first book, Cinnamon shops (Schulz, 1963).romoted his art. He even affirmed in a 1935 article ‘Bruno Schulz’s literary work’

rhaps even among the greatest writers in the world. On Schulz’s links with Witkiewicz,

382 I. Löwy / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 39 (2008) 375–383

methodological unity of science and the existence of a single scien-tific (or physical) reality. Drawing on his experience at the labora-tory bench, Fleck made the opposite assumption. The central placeof visual arguments in his works might have been driven by anaspiration to display the contingency, contextuality and intrinsicambiguity of scientists’ efforts to understand reality. Witkiewiczdeveloped a different way to question the existing concepts ofthe real/realistic: a reckless form of experimentation and self-experimentation that challenged and destabilized the notion ofexternal reality. His was a truly non-reducible approach thatescapes definition and explanation, including those provided bythe artist himself.

In a 1939 paper, Fleck proposed that the main difference be-tween the artistic and the scientific ‘thought styles’ was the densityof interactions between participants. Scientists who belong to thesame ‘thought collective’ share agreed-upon knowledge, trainingon instruments, techniques, experimental systems and patternsof validation of new knowledge. Communities of scientists arecharacterised by a very high density of social interactions. It isnot surprising, therefore, that scientists should produce a consen-sual, homogenized form of knowledge. By contrast, the collectiveof artists has a much lower social density. As a consequence, artistsenjoy a greater degree of individual freedom of creation (Fleck,1939, p. 173). Witkiewicz can be seen as representing the far endof this spectrum of artistic freedom. With the sole exception of ashort participation in activities of the Formist group, he was notassociated with any artistic trend. Unable—and probably unwill-ing—to achieve any commercial success, he escaped the pressuresof the art market as well. His only half-serious attempt to make aliving through his art—the founding of the ‘W. I. Witkiewicz por-trait firm’, was rapidly replaced by his interest in ‘pure form’.Although he started offering a service to clients, ‘model C’ (non-commercial) portraits quickly outnumbered the ‘model A’ (com-mercial) ones.

Witkiewicz’s art may be described as a permanent striving tomake things that cannot be represented visible. His art was de-scribed as chaotic, frenzied, excessive and prophetic. One can alsosee it as a conscious and deliberate use of hyperbole and exagger-ation in the service of a precise, well controlled artistic vision, andas a disciplined and systematic effort to transcend ordinary lan-guage and traditional visual representations.25 In the ‘Problem ofthe science of science’ Fleck explains that in order to grow, science‘should be directed between two fires: the hot, but dark fire ofromanticism, and the cold, but bright fire of scepticism’ (Fleck,1946, p. 327). Witkiewicz’s art was shaped by two such fires. Hestrived to push the use of different media and artistic forms as faras possible—including a systematic parody of these forms—in orderto find a way to engage with the ineffable. Reality, Witkewicz main-tained, cannot be understood in purely physical terms and needs tobe translated into psychological and emotional ones as well. In otherwords, it should be translated into entities that belong to the domainof the artist (Wiktiewicz, 1977). Bruno Schulz’s definition of art as‘an instrument that registers events in the depths where values areformed’ and as ‘a sound that probes the unnamed’ may be an aptdescription not only his own artistic endeavor, but also ofWitkiewicz’s.26

Fleck’s epistemology, while less overtly iconoclastic, may alsobe seen as an attempt to radically question the ways we perceiveand interpret external reality. The title of Fleck’s last publishedepistemological article: ‘To look, to see, to know’, sums up his view

25 Witkiewicz emphatically rejected Wittgenstein’s proposal that one should talk only a26 ‘sonda zapuszczonna w bezimimienne’. Schulz’s letter to Witkiewicz of 1935 (Schulz,27 It is not, however, totally impossible. In the 1930s, both Fleck and Witkiewicz publish28 Illustrations in Fleck’s book may also seem familiar because they were popularized by

(Laqueur, 1990) was based on similarities between male and female sexual organs display

of the central role of visual evidence in this process (Fleck, 1947b).There are no indications that Fleck was interested in Witkiewicz’sart (and testimonies of people who knew him personally lead oneto suppose that he was not), and it is even less probable that Wit-kiewicz was acquainted with Fleck’s writings.27 Nevertheless, insome sense at least, Fleck and Witkiewicz were engaged in similarenterprises. Both strived to unsettle the existing concept of reality,and to construct a different one, developing new, original conceptualor material tools that could enable this to happen. Both attempted tomodify the rules of the game in their respective domains, Witkiewiczthrough his notion of ‘pure form’ that could free artists from the con-straints of traditional painting, Fleck with his proposal to develop a‘comparative epistemology’ that would radically modify traditionalphilosophy and history of science. Finally, their efforts encountereda similar fate: initially viewed as incoherent, confused, and disorga-nized, with time they came to achieve a self-explanatory coherence.

Forty years after Witkiewicz’s death, the critic MieczyslawPorembski noted, we are finally able to grasp the internal logic ofan artistic quest that combined improvisation, provocation, carefulrecording of situationist games on photographs, repetition, distor-tion, psychedelic painting, and verbal description of impossible art-works (Porembski, 1980, p. 4). Those acquainted with recentdevelopments in plastic arts—from happenings, to video art andinstallations—can regard Witkiewicz’s pictures and photographsas a part of a familiar artistic universe. Similarly, scholars who havefollowed recent developments in philosophy, history or sociologyof science regard Fleck’s analyses of scientific observations andhis reflections on the indeterminacy of scientific illustrations aspart of a familiar intellectual world.28 When with time, culturalfacts, like scientific ones, become self-evident, we inevitably won-der: ‘but how could it be any different’ (Fleck, 1979, p. 86)?

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