Once a statement is published it constitutes part of the social forces which form concepts and create habits of thought. Together with all other statements it determines ‘what cannot be thought of in any other way’. Even if a particular statement is contested, we grow up with its uncertainty which, circulating in society, reinforces its social effect. It becomes a self-evident reality which, in turn, conditions our further acts of cognition. There emerges a closed, harmonious system within which the logical origin of individual elements can no longer be traced.

Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact