section_path: Philosophy and discourse/Sociology of knowledge/Thought collectives
section_name: Thought collectives
paragraph_text: Thought collectives
  
  A perhaps accessible lead into what is claimed is Fleck's thought, echoed in Kuhn's concept of normal science. According to Fleck, scientists' work is based on a thought-style, that cannot be rationally reconstructed. It gets instilled through the experience of learning, and science is then advanced based on a tradition of shared assumptions held by what he called thought collectives. Fleck also claims this phenomenon to be largely invisible to members of the group.
  
  Comparably, following the field research in an academic scientific laboratory by Latour and Woolgar, Karin Knorr Cetina has conducted a comparative study of two scientific fields (namely high energy physics and molecular biology) to conclude that the epistemic practices and reasonings within both scientific communities are different enough to introduce the concept of " epistemic cultures ", in contradiction with the idea that a so-called "scientific method" is unique and a unifying concept.