Cancer models from the sewers
A recent video YouTube of worm masses living in a NC sewer make a commentary to medical theory. What really compels me is the pattern of behavior. These worms, asserted to be Tuberficidae, are normally soil-dwelling; but being in the sewer, without an intuitive habitat, they mass together – they treat each other as the most home-like element. It may be a ‘bigger picture’ model of tumors and other growths - they are tissues / etc that are displaced, with volition to thrive, they act together to survive in a relatively-alien environment. They amass together because they are more home-like than the raw stratum of their environment - and they lack the motility to go to their right place. Their predicament is created by excess, spilling over into places that are ill-equipped to carry such things to their right place. No environment being completely alien, these worms feed on something in the crevasses, just as body tumors find veins and other other fluid channels upon which to survive. Forward must come models for returning things to their home.
§Parasites, Miasmas, and Untangled Collectivism
- Collective Moods
Members of a thought collective naturally possess a certain bond, some feeling of group solidarity, of being a “comrade”, “coreligionist”, “countryman”, or “colleague”. It is accompanied by the feeling of hostility or contempt to a “stranger”, who worships other gods, is guided by other values, or uses unfamiliar words etc.
The force which maintains the collective and unites its members is derived from the community of the collective mood. This mood produces the readiness for an identically directed perception, evaluation and use of what is perceived, i.e. a common thought-style (1936, V).
These are collective moods which induce members of collectives both to sacrifice themselves for others and to burn dissenters at stakes. They make scientists work for public enlightenment, and at the same time they arouse the feeling of disdain for astrologists or alchemists.
Fleck stresses that there is no thinking which is free from emotions: “There is only agreement or difference between feelings, and the uniform agreement in the emotions of a society is, in its content, called freedom from emotions” (1935a, II.4). Emotions have a social character; they are already hidden in a language employed by a collective. Technical terms not only denote something determined by their definitions, but they also encompass “a certain specific power, being not only a name but also a slogan”, they have “a specific thought-charm”. This is why once the members of an esoteric circle master technical terminology there appears a sense of mission, and joining such a circle itself has “the value of the sacrament of initiation” (1936, V).
If the position of an elite is stronger than the position of the masses, the elite isolates itself and demands obedience from the masses. Such collectives develop dogmatic styles of thinking in which a test of correctness is usually located in some distant past in a more or less mythical master or savior. Collective life acquires a ceremonial character and access to the esoteric circle is well-guarded. Conservatism reigns: there is no place for fundamentally new ideas, and one can only better or worse realize the revealed principles. This is characteristic of most religious collectives.
If the position of the masses is stronger than that of an elite—like in scientific collectives—the elite endeavors after trust and appreciation of the masses, pledging its commitment to serve common good. This collective has a democratic character: the test of correctness is “the recognition by everybody”. Everybody is encouraged to learn, and everybody who meets intellectual standards can become a member of the esoteric circle. “This obligation is also expressed in the democratically equal regard for anybody that acquires knowledge. All research workers, as a matter of principle, are regarded as possessing equal rights” (1935a, IV.5). In principle every man—not only an elite with special privileges—should be able to verify whether a statement is true, to repeat an experiment conducted by somebody else etc.
Here an unsolvable problem arises. General education, necessary for joining a scientific collective, is acquired in schools before maturing, and if this is not achieved an individual is practically doomed to remain outside the scientific collective. In science no transfers from the uneducated general public to the body of general specialists occur. However, a democratic respect for an (imagined) “anybody” grants scientific thought styles an impersonal character which in turn leads to the objectivization of collectively created thought structures. Objective truth expressed clearly and precisely becomes an ideal. Of course, this ideal is to be realized in some distant (maybe even infinite) future. However, even if a researcher herself is removed from the results of her work, a cult of scientific heroes and geniuses devoted to scientific service develops.
Part of a collective mood arises at the point of contact between esoteric and exoteric circles. On the one hand, members of exoteric circles usually trust professionals and they admire them. On the other hand esoteric circles act under pressure of expectations of the masses. When a certain domain lacks support from outside, it does not have significant achievements. Fleck here uses an analogy of sand carried by the wind. A rock sometimes hits its target and sometimes it does not, whereas sand carried by the wind unavoidably accumulates in hollows (1935a, III). So when some social pressure makes enough researchers work long enough on a certain issue and obtain sufficient material support, they finally arrive at more or less satisfying results. A condition of success is not the alleged truth of employed theories but the systematicity of research.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fleck/
Inquiries cannot be conducted by an isolated researcher, for she would chase her tail endlessly by repeating old formulas. As we have mentioned before, the constitution of a research collective is necessary and it happens when an appropriate mood arises—a mood which unites people and makes them work. In the case of research that was analyzed by Fleck, i.e., the research which led to the discovery of Wassermann’s reaction, the source of an appropriate mood was social pressure—a common demand for effective means for curing syphilis which was considered as an embarrassing and reputation-damaging disease. (Fleck brought forward a controversial claim that the absence of any analogous success in the struggle with tuberculosis was related to a common approach to tuberculosis as “romantic”, which in turn resulted with insufficient social pressure to overcome it.) This made the German government join the process of organizing research teams in that area; an additional reason was to make achievements of German scientists outmatch achievements of other nations. “The mood gave a driving power, and the proto-idea—the direction” (1934).
The work of the research scientist means that in the complex confusion and chaos which he faces, he must distinguish that which obeys his will from that which arises spontaneously and opposes it. This is the firm ground that he, as representative of the thought collective, continuously seeks (1935a, IV.2).
The next aspect of social nature of cognition is the phenomenon that members of a thought collective mutually reinforce themselves in the conviction that their thought style is true. Members of religious communities under group pressure do not consider their faith as one of many, but as the definite truth; they do not consider the principles of conduct which their faith imposes on them as the principles of one of many ways of living, but as those grasping of the essence of morality etc. Also scientists are convinced that their thought style is at least partially true today, and with time, when they work together, it will get closer and closer to being true. Yet, one may say, the conviction as to the truth of a thought style can break down under the pressure of facts that contradict it, and also as a result of confrontation with those who think differently. The remarks given above quite clearly show that this is not the case. Nonetheless let us summarize Fleck’s views on those matters. A thought style is included already in meanings of words, and those meanings are considered by members of the collective not as something formed by people but as “objective”. Thus, opposing a system is unthinkable: someone who opposes it is considered to be the one who does not understand meanings of the words used (1935a, IV.5; 1936, VI).
Scientific instruments which embody some results of a thought style, “direct our thinking automatically on to the tracks of that style” (1936, VI).
Forming our cognitive activity, our perception and thinking, “[c]ognition modifies the knower so as to adapt him harmoniously to his acquired knowledge” (1935a, IV.2). Since everybody sees the world in a way imposed by one’s thought style, in every step one notices facts corresponding with that style and does not notice what does not fit active assumptions of it. Even if facts incoherent with a given thought style are noticed, one ignores them as unimportant. For example, for several decades physicists knew that Mercury had not moved as it should according to Newton’s mechanics, but they failed to mention this fact to the general public. Only today one precisely describes those facts because they confirm a new thought style: the general theory of relativity (1935a, II.3).
Cognitive problems we choose to solve do not come from a neutral reservoir of problems which existed prior to the development of sciences, but we choose those which are born on the ground of a thought style imposed on us—and they are usually successfully solved within its confines. And we do not work with problems which are born within other styles—our collective considers them not worthy of attention or even senseless (1935a, IV.3).
When anomalies can be no longer ignored, one attempts to show that they are not incompatible with one’s thought style (1935a, II.3). (Today we would say one adds to the system various ad hoc hypotheses.) Sometimes in old texts we find descriptions of results of experiments which we, as the users of another thought style, consider illusions. It happens that somebody sees something what corresponds with prevailing views and other members of a collective confirm his experiences (1935a, II.3).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8007326/ PubMed Central (PMC)PubMed Central (PMC)
“Difficulties in Differentiating Coronaviruses from Subcellular Structures in Human Tissues by Electron Microscopy”
