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Fleck purports that a proto-idea lies at the basis of any thought-style, and provides persistent influence on the style and its facts over time. Fleck cites that modern atomic theory was developed step-by-step from Democritus’ atomist doctrine.[[CiteRef::Fleck (1979)]] Proto-ideas are initially generated (in the language of Fleck) as a spontaneous transposition of experience, in the form of analogies of a philosophical and spiritual nature.[[CiteRef::Sady (2016)]][[CiteRef::Fleck (1936)]] A proto-idea, says Fleck, becomes a subconscious guiding principle. Even if facts disintegrate the primitive assumptions of the proto-idea, it still conditions the pursuit of particular questions for the thought-collective.[[CiteRef::Fleck (1936)]]
Before a thought-style exists to explain a kind of phenomena, or before an individual is inducted into the appropriate thought-collective to understand the phenomena, said "inexperienced person, [...] cannot 'see' — he 'looks'. He perceives at first only a 'chaos'."[[Cognition CiteRef::Cohen and fact: materials on Ludwik FleckSchnelle (Eds.) (1986)]] This chaos can be transposed into the foundation of a thought-style, to be elaborated on. For instance, Fleck cites that modern atomic theory was developed step-by-step from Democritus’ atomist doctrine.[[CiteRef::Fleck (1979)]] From the proto-idea of the atomists, modern atomic theory is fixed in position to ask about the combination and separation of atoms, their motions, and effects — and little else. This is strictly because that these presumptions lie in the basis of the thought-style, presumptions including the idea that inseparable particles exist, and hold in perfect mathematical relations to each other, and account for all matter. These presumptions and inherent guiding principles and relations are, according to Fleck, inherited from the pre-Socratic thought-style.
Fleck notes that contemporary members of a thought-collective will marvel at this “wisdom” and presume that their predecessors had a particularly strong sense of intuition. Fleck asserts that the reality is that these vague proto-ideas still hold a grip on the present-day community and shape the permitted pursuit of ideas, and the observational connections made (rather, the knowledge available to be discovered), such that it naturally seems obvious to have arrived at these observations.[[CiteRef::Fleck (1979)]] Modern atomic theorists arrived at the idea of indivisible, indestructible, fundamental and universal particles, just as the early Atomists did, not because of clever intuition but because that these presumptions were pre-set.