The Way of Discovery
“ As much as Copernicus changed the former world view by making the earth revolve around the sun, Polanyi is changing it by making all knowledge revolve around the responsible person.”
Chapter 1
The Importance of Discovery
Knowing and Being
"Much of our world view has lost its coherence and its adequacy."
We have learned to live with ambiguity and we need a fresh understanding of our philosophical routes.
A Grasp of Our History
"He (Polanyi) began with an awareness that our century is not just another case in history of the cruelties of the struggles for power, but that it is the most destructive century, not even counting the lethal power of nuclear weapons, of any century in the modern era."
Polanyi wants to answer the question or know how, since 1914 the "most morally motivated and most liberally inquiring period in history could culminate in such destruction."
He thinks that, differently from other centuries and wars, what we are now losing is not humans or lands, but the foundations of our culture; our loss of faith in moral and humane goals, of mans spiritual existence.
"The main influence of science on modern man has not been through the advancement of technology. but through the effect of science in our world view."
A Dynamo-Coupling
In this modern period everything started out as either the creative development of natural science or the drive for social and moral progress. At the beginning it all went well, but later these became our downfall.
Dynamo-Coupling:
"The fussion of scientific objectivism with the intense moral passions produces a relentless drive for social amelioration that brooks no dissent or opposition." Example of this: Marxism and Nazifascism.
This all begins in the waning foundations of European culture: our viewpoint of knowledge changed and also our standard of truth.
“Most apparently destructive, with the obvious cost to human life, are political ideologies that invite the individual to surrender his or her self to an interpretation of all life while telling the individual that this interpretation is objectively true and the individual bears no responsibility for it. This truth, he is assured, is independent of all personal beliefs.”
“The capacity of individuals to pursue the truth and to share it grows from a community that accepts the obligation to seek and to submit to truth.”
But Polanyi thinks that “the human person is, by his or her evolutionary inheritance, an explorer.” People started believing that all personal feeling or motive was identifies with an external event, they believed in objective truth, that all truth is explicit and detached from those who uphold it. Polanyi believed that these people were wrong, and that we can’t separate the truth from ourselves, because in order to understand it we need ourselves, so it doesn’t make sense to detach the truth from the person.
“In the very nature of its scientific beliefs, society has undermined the moral restraints that should question and nurture life.”
“Our civilization is in a strange plight. It has launched itself upon a grand mission to find itself in self-doubt and disintegration. The goals that is has set itself are ones that continually demand change.”
“We need to find out how human values and scientific understanding can coexist without producing nihilistic consequences.”
A Central Dogma
Nowadays... “Science exercises the kind of authoritative sway that Christian religion once did.”
3 elements from antiquity that have helped form the modern scientific outlook:
Enlightenment:
“This was the hour when Western people started the enterprise that no man had undertaken before, to live by reason based on science.” Doubt of certain beliefs had become more popular and intense.
“The religious clashes, the new sense of individual freedom, and the conflict of biblical views with the new science raised doubt to a raising point.” Here the Enlightenment came in and ‘solved’ the problem (doubt) by accepting what was rationally, scientifically certain. Morals became science, and science became the new measurement.
“Polanyi lays bare the central dogma of the scientific outlook, the dogma that knowledge is based on what cannot be doubted and what can be empirically observed. The crucial question then becomes whether or not this objective ideal of knowledge is true in practice.”
The Example of Scientific Discovery
“Polanyi believes in and respects the methods of science but disagrees with the view that is projected about them.” He says that the model of objective ideal is impossible to follow in practice and that once we understand this, we can go on uniting human responsibility with our methods of knowing.
“One of the more common place facts of scientific life is that there is no sure way to making discoveries.” Objective creation does not apply to scientific discovery. Science now neglects and finds no importance in discoveries.
“Polanyi’s experience as a physical chemist had taught him that the strictness and rigor of scientific procedure were secondary to the role of creative imagination. Scientific work cannot be carried out by mere following of rules. At every step, there are questions of personal judgment that go beyond the rules. These are judgments that demand insight and understanding. Two scientists could have a perfectly identical understanding of scientific laws and theories, but one may make a great discovery and the other spend his or her life doing ordinary research which conforms to correct knowledge. The difference lies in the personal judgment of the scientists.” (This can relate to the way people choose and act on that choice and that we are determined by our environment in Human Action).
Nature of creative imagination:
Knowing and Being
"Much of our world view has lost its coherence and its adequacy."
We have learned to live with ambiguity and we need a fresh understanding of our philosophical routes.
A Grasp of Our History
"He (Polanyi) began with an awareness that our century is not just another case in history of the cruelties of the struggles for power, but that it is the most destructive century, not even counting the lethal power of nuclear weapons, of any century in the modern era."
Polanyi wants to answer the question or know how, since 1914 the "most morally motivated and most liberally inquiring period in history could culminate in such destruction."
He thinks that, differently from other centuries and wars, what we are now losing is not humans or lands, but the foundations of our culture; our loss of faith in moral and humane goals, of mans spiritual existence.
"The main influence of science on modern man has not been through the advancement of technology. but through the effect of science in our world view."
A Dynamo-Coupling
In this modern period everything started out as either the creative development of natural science or the drive for social and moral progress. At the beginning it all went well, but later these became our downfall.
Dynamo-Coupling:
"The fussion of scientific objectivism with the intense moral passions produces a relentless drive for social amelioration that brooks no dissent or opposition." Example of this: Marxism and Nazifascism.
This all begins in the waning foundations of European culture: our viewpoint of knowledge changed and also our standard of truth.
“Most apparently destructive, with the obvious cost to human life, are political ideologies that invite the individual to surrender his or her self to an interpretation of all life while telling the individual that this interpretation is objectively true and the individual bears no responsibility for it. This truth, he is assured, is independent of all personal beliefs.”
“The capacity of individuals to pursue the truth and to share it grows from a community that accepts the obligation to seek and to submit to truth.”
But Polanyi thinks that “the human person is, by his or her evolutionary inheritance, an explorer.” People started believing that all personal feeling or motive was identifies with an external event, they believed in objective truth, that all truth is explicit and detached from those who uphold it. Polanyi believed that these people were wrong, and that we can’t separate the truth from ourselves, because in order to understand it we need ourselves, so it doesn’t make sense to detach the truth from the person.
“In the very nature of its scientific beliefs, society has undermined the moral restraints that should question and nurture life.”
“Our civilization is in a strange plight. It has launched itself upon a grand mission to find itself in self-doubt and disintegration. The goals that is has set itself are ones that continually demand change.”
“We need to find out how human values and scientific understanding can coexist without producing nihilistic consequences.”
A Central Dogma
Nowadays... “Science exercises the kind of authoritative sway that Christian religion once did.”
3 elements from antiquity that have helped form the modern scientific outlook:
- Skepticism: certain knowledge is impossible in moral matters. Resignation towards right or wrong.
- Mechanism: beauty, honor and truth are secondary qualities, mere conventions that we cant know.
- Moral perfectionism: commitment to moral perfection according to an infinite god.
Enlightenment:
“This was the hour when Western people started the enterprise that no man had undertaken before, to live by reason based on science.” Doubt of certain beliefs had become more popular and intense.
“The religious clashes, the new sense of individual freedom, and the conflict of biblical views with the new science raised doubt to a raising point.” Here the Enlightenment came in and ‘solved’ the problem (doubt) by accepting what was rationally, scientifically certain. Morals became science, and science became the new measurement.
“Polanyi lays bare the central dogma of the scientific outlook, the dogma that knowledge is based on what cannot be doubted and what can be empirically observed. The crucial question then becomes whether or not this objective ideal of knowledge is true in practice.”
The Example of Scientific Discovery
“Polanyi believes in and respects the methods of science but disagrees with the view that is projected about them.” He says that the model of objective ideal is impossible to follow in practice and that once we understand this, we can go on uniting human responsibility with our methods of knowing.
“One of the more common place facts of scientific life is that there is no sure way to making discoveries.” Objective creation does not apply to scientific discovery. Science now neglects and finds no importance in discoveries.
“Polanyi’s experience as a physical chemist had taught him that the strictness and rigor of scientific procedure were secondary to the role of creative imagination. Scientific work cannot be carried out by mere following of rules. At every step, there are questions of personal judgment that go beyond the rules. These are judgments that demand insight and understanding. Two scientists could have a perfectly identical understanding of scientific laws and theories, but one may make a great discovery and the other spend his or her life doing ordinary research which conforms to correct knowledge. The difference lies in the personal judgment of the scientists.” (This can relate to the way people choose and act on that choice and that we are determined by our environment in Human Action).
Nature of creative imagination:
- Gestalt psychology:
knowledge is the integration of bits in our perception to form a whole.
- Polanyi added that the pattern we see in things comes from a person’s power to try to find order in reality.
Chapter 2
From Scientist to Philosopher
Induction to Science
“Far from teaching that science is practiced by a strict code of impartiality and openness the episode discloses the role of authority in the network of science.”
When Polanyi gives a lecture and his theory is said to be wrong, even by Einstein and years later this theory was proved right and still continues to be right. “It is an example of the necessary guidance of science adhered to current standards of scientific knowledge and by weight of opinion exercised by scientific leaders.”
“Discoveries are made by the efforts of persons who believe in their work, but the acceptance of discoveries also requires a readiness to believe within the scientific community.” Though this science might ignore important work but at the same time it saves itself from non-important work.
The Freedom of Science
“Science, and generally the independent search for truth is destroyed when political liberty falls.”
Induction to Science
“Far from teaching that science is practiced by a strict code of impartiality and openness the episode discloses the role of authority in the network of science.”
When Polanyi gives a lecture and his theory is said to be wrong, even by Einstein and years later this theory was proved right and still continues to be right. “It is an example of the necessary guidance of science adhered to current standards of scientific knowledge and by weight of opinion exercised by scientific leaders.”
“Discoveries are made by the efforts of persons who believe in their work, but the acceptance of discoveries also requires a readiness to believe within the scientific community.” Though this science might ignore important work but at the same time it saves itself from non-important work.
The Freedom of Science
“Science, and generally the independent search for truth is destroyed when political liberty falls.”
Centralized scientific planning:
“They contended that the primary function of science is to promote human welfare and that pure scientific research should be discontinued.” “They claimed that pure science is a fiction since all real science arises in answer to the needs of society.”
“To Polanyi the freedom of science controversy represented that same issues that were involved in the growing international struggle against the totalitarian regimes, resect for truth and thought.”
“Many thinkers, he observed (Polanyi), no longer believed in truth, and of the few who did, still fewer considered it right to tell the truth regardless of the consequences.”
“Power, and its weapon, propaganda, were becoming the determiners of human lives.” (Atlas Shrugged).
On the other hand:
“Self-government is made possible by a set of shared beliefs.” (This relates to the MPC).
Polanyi, in his first work in philosophy, in 1946, addresses the problems of the total human situation in the modern age; with its main issues being scientific knowledge and our application of it.
“Polanyi takes the way science establishes its results as decisive.” “The important thing about science is that it enables us to make contact with reality in a way that is continuously fruitful and interesting.” Science was focusing to mush on its results and making them decisive as mentioned in these quotes. This is not the best way to do science; all of science shouldn't take its results as decisive. If we do, it won’t help us find new things or correct old findings. An example of this is that if science was decisive Copernicus would’ve never discovered the heliocentric system; he would’ve taken the system before him as decisive and the only one. In science on is supposed to build on things that others have discovered.
“Science is a way of knowing that has opened up vast domains to us.”.
“Polanyi shows that we could never discover natural laws if the discovery of the laws depend entirely upon the application of exact rules of procedure.” Sometimes rules don't apply we have to adapt the rules to the different situations that present themselves. But for this we need creativity, to see when we have to apply them. Rules are not useful without the art of applying them.
Before attaining a natural law (or any law) 3 components are needed:
1) guessing right (hypotheses)
“A good hypothesis is a creative act and closer to art than rule-following.”
2) skill in looking at the unkown.
By knowing things, we intuit patterns of unknown ones.
3) standard of scientific validity.
“Polanyi develops a picture of science as a republic bound together by loyalty to a common tradition or conscience. It is this republic that is responsible for the transmission of their premises and their administration.”
“The publication is a means of checking, testing and accepting scientific reports.” (purpose of our documentation)
“A scientific discovery, to be valuable must be not only valid but interesting.”
“While science is seen as a network of only partly definable assumptions taught and held by its community, it is also upheld by certain basic premises of the society that develops it.”
Premises:
1) “The first premise is the belief in obtaining the truth by free discussion and free inquiry. Every scientist is a part of government of science and participates in the formulation of ongoing scientific understanding. There is no absolute central authority to arbitrate controversy. Issues are settled by debating them in the forum of scientific opinion.” (this is basically the MPC)
2) “A belief in the reality of the truth and in our obligation and capacity to discover it.”
Polanyi, with his theory of personal knowledge:
“He seeks to show that the personal coefficients of knowledge functioning through a structure of tacit activities are the most dominant and essential part.”
“Polanyi finds scientific judgment to depend essentially upon personal coefficients that are tacit and exercised as skills.”
“Success depends not only upon precision but also upon the knack and art of the user.”
“The structure of our knowing turns out to be a reflection of the structure of being.”
“They contended that the primary function of science is to promote human welfare and that pure scientific research should be discontinued.” “They claimed that pure science is a fiction since all real science arises in answer to the needs of society.”
“To Polanyi the freedom of science controversy represented that same issues that were involved in the growing international struggle against the totalitarian regimes, resect for truth and thought.”
“Many thinkers, he observed (Polanyi), no longer believed in truth, and of the few who did, still fewer considered it right to tell the truth regardless of the consequences.”
“Power, and its weapon, propaganda, were becoming the determiners of human lives.” (Atlas Shrugged).
On the other hand:
“Self-government is made possible by a set of shared beliefs.” (This relates to the MPC).
Polanyi, in his first work in philosophy, in 1946, addresses the problems of the total human situation in the modern age; with its main issues being scientific knowledge and our application of it.
“Polanyi takes the way science establishes its results as decisive.” “The important thing about science is that it enables us to make contact with reality in a way that is continuously fruitful and interesting.” Science was focusing to mush on its results and making them decisive as mentioned in these quotes. This is not the best way to do science; all of science shouldn't take its results as decisive. If we do, it won’t help us find new things or correct old findings. An example of this is that if science was decisive Copernicus would’ve never discovered the heliocentric system; he would’ve taken the system before him as decisive and the only one. In science on is supposed to build on things that others have discovered.
“Science is a way of knowing that has opened up vast domains to us.”.
“Polanyi shows that we could never discover natural laws if the discovery of the laws depend entirely upon the application of exact rules of procedure.” Sometimes rules don't apply we have to adapt the rules to the different situations that present themselves. But for this we need creativity, to see when we have to apply them. Rules are not useful without the art of applying them.
Before attaining a natural law (or any law) 3 components are needed:
1) guessing right (hypotheses)
“A good hypothesis is a creative act and closer to art than rule-following.”
2) skill in looking at the unkown.
By knowing things, we intuit patterns of unknown ones.
3) standard of scientific validity.
“Polanyi develops a picture of science as a republic bound together by loyalty to a common tradition or conscience. It is this republic that is responsible for the transmission of their premises and their administration.”
“The publication is a means of checking, testing and accepting scientific reports.” (purpose of our documentation)
“A scientific discovery, to be valuable must be not only valid but interesting.”
“While science is seen as a network of only partly definable assumptions taught and held by its community, it is also upheld by certain basic premises of the society that develops it.”
Premises:
1) “The first premise is the belief in obtaining the truth by free discussion and free inquiry. Every scientist is a part of government of science and participates in the formulation of ongoing scientific understanding. There is no absolute central authority to arbitrate controversy. Issues are settled by debating them in the forum of scientific opinion.” (this is basically the MPC)
2) “A belief in the reality of the truth and in our obligation and capacity to discover it.”
Polanyi, with his theory of personal knowledge:
“He seeks to show that the personal coefficients of knowledge functioning through a structure of tacit activities are the most dominant and essential part.”
“Polanyi finds scientific judgment to depend essentially upon personal coefficients that are tacit and exercised as skills.”
“Success depends not only upon precision but also upon the knack and art of the user.”
“The structure of our knowing turns out to be a reflection of the structure of being.”
Chapter 3
A New Paradigm
A Basic Change
“ As much as Copernicus changed the former world view by making the earth revolve around the sun, Polanyi is changing it by making all knowledge revolve around the responsible person.”
The new paradigm of Polanyi is shifting the world view from having knowledge without the person, to making knowledge revolve around the person.
“The old paradigm was based upon a separation of logic and psychology. It tried to understand the nature of inference and reasoning without including the central role of the person.”
A New View Of Knowing
“The success of science is in its training to pay attention to clues that are important. Yet this attention is a complex matter, for it involves the integration of seemingly random data into a meaningful pattern.” This means that we should turn data and clues into meaningful knowledge.
“Knowing is a type of tacit integration of clues into meaning… all that knowing, shares in this process of integration.”
The Clue from Gestalt Psychology
1941 – article “The Growth of Thought in Society.”
Polanyi believed in the freedom of science and he used gestalt psychology to argue for decentralized control. He thought that there were more ways for science than only predetermined planning. “Polanyi shows that there can be order of the highest complexity spontaneously achieved by internal mutual adjustment.”
“We saw that we had a knowledge that we could not completely tell. There was what Polanyi calls ‘the tacit dimension’.”
“According to the theory of psychology, we know the coherence or pattern of an object by a spontaneous equilibration of visual clues or stimuli that are impressed on the retina or the brain. We are unaware of the particulars or clues themselves, but we know them in the object that we recognize or the activity that we do.” From here is where Polanyi gets his theory of tacit knowlefge.
“All knowledge is an act of tacit knowledge.”
Fundamental structure of knowing:
1) focal target (problem)
2) clues of which we are only subsidiarily aware (part of our knowing how to deal)
3) person who links focal target with subsidiary clues (the process by which we move from our clues to their joint meaning (inferences are an achievement of the person)
New Terms
Once we learn something (interiorize clues and integrate them) our learning is irreversible. You wont be able to look at things the same way anymore.
“Archimedes’’ discovery exemplifies the fact that scientific discovery proceeds through tacit knowing. The intuitive flash springs from our subsidiary awareness which has served to orient us toward new understanding. “
“We can see that the nature of tacit knowing means that our bosy is the instrument by which we know the world. The structure of tacit knowing explains how we use our body to attend from it to things outside of it.” “It over throws centuries of dichotomies that have separates mind and body, reason and experience, subject and object, the knower and the known.”
“Polanyi is asserting that the processes at inference, wherever they occur, entail a relying upon subsidiary awareness in order to attend to tasks, problems or meaning focally.”
“Meaning cannot exist by itself. It requires a person who can integrate clues into coherent patterns that he or she can see as meaningful.”
Tacit Knowing and Classic Philosophy
Most ancient philosophies allowed a place for a tacit dimension in their thought, but most never emphasized it (Plato, Aristotle, Hume),
Plato: Knowledge is personal. Each person has to grasp it and judge it as knowledge.
“Aristotle followed the same approach in his ethics where the rule finding the mean between two extremes cannot be stated explicitly, but a person of practical wisdom knows it.”
“Tacit knowing is not a fiction but a dimension necessarily allowed, though undeveloped, by other philosophers.”
Tacit Knowing and Philosophy of Science
Changes by understanding of the communal area of science:
1. There is no scientific method leading to discoveries.
2. Facts of science arise out of a shared experience of the scientific community. “The facts of science arise out of the shared experience of the scientific community. Only those who participate in this community are able to observe the data and see scientific validity in their observations.” (MPC)
3. The truth of scientific claims is a function of the scientific community’s judgment. (judgment is regulated and shaped by attitudes and expectation that are in a process of growth and change). “The truth of scientific claims is a function of the scientific community’s judgment. This judgment is shaped by a set of attitudes and expectations that are in a process of growth and change.”
A Basic Change
“ As much as Copernicus changed the former world view by making the earth revolve around the sun, Polanyi is changing it by making all knowledge revolve around the responsible person.”
The new paradigm of Polanyi is shifting the world view from having knowledge without the person, to making knowledge revolve around the person.
“The old paradigm was based upon a separation of logic and psychology. It tried to understand the nature of inference and reasoning without including the central role of the person.”
A New View Of Knowing
“The success of science is in its training to pay attention to clues that are important. Yet this attention is a complex matter, for it involves the integration of seemingly random data into a meaningful pattern.” This means that we should turn data and clues into meaningful knowledge.
“Knowing is a type of tacit integration of clues into meaning… all that knowing, shares in this process of integration.”
The Clue from Gestalt Psychology
1941 – article “The Growth of Thought in Society.”
Polanyi believed in the freedom of science and he used gestalt psychology to argue for decentralized control. He thought that there were more ways for science than only predetermined planning. “Polanyi shows that there can be order of the highest complexity spontaneously achieved by internal mutual adjustment.”
“We saw that we had a knowledge that we could not completely tell. There was what Polanyi calls ‘the tacit dimension’.”
“According to the theory of psychology, we know the coherence or pattern of an object by a spontaneous equilibration of visual clues or stimuli that are impressed on the retina or the brain. We are unaware of the particulars or clues themselves, but we know them in the object that we recognize or the activity that we do.” From here is where Polanyi gets his theory of tacit knowlefge.
“All knowledge is an act of tacit knowledge.”
Fundamental structure of knowing:
1) focal target (problem)
2) clues of which we are only subsidiarily aware (part of our knowing how to deal)
3) person who links focal target with subsidiary clues (the process by which we move from our clues to their joint meaning (inferences are an achievement of the person)
New Terms
Once we learn something (interiorize clues and integrate them) our learning is irreversible. You wont be able to look at things the same way anymore.
“Archimedes’’ discovery exemplifies the fact that scientific discovery proceeds through tacit knowing. The intuitive flash springs from our subsidiary awareness which has served to orient us toward new understanding. “
“We can see that the nature of tacit knowing means that our bosy is the instrument by which we know the world. The structure of tacit knowing explains how we use our body to attend from it to things outside of it.” “It over throws centuries of dichotomies that have separates mind and body, reason and experience, subject and object, the knower and the known.”
“Polanyi is asserting that the processes at inference, wherever they occur, entail a relying upon subsidiary awareness in order to attend to tasks, problems or meaning focally.”
“Meaning cannot exist by itself. It requires a person who can integrate clues into coherent patterns that he or she can see as meaningful.”
Tacit Knowing and Classic Philosophy
Most ancient philosophies allowed a place for a tacit dimension in their thought, but most never emphasized it (Plato, Aristotle, Hume),
Plato: Knowledge is personal. Each person has to grasp it and judge it as knowledge.
“Aristotle followed the same approach in his ethics where the rule finding the mean between two extremes cannot be stated explicitly, but a person of practical wisdom knows it.”
“Tacit knowing is not a fiction but a dimension necessarily allowed, though undeveloped, by other philosophers.”
Tacit Knowing and Philosophy of Science
Changes by understanding of the communal area of science:
1. There is no scientific method leading to discoveries.
2. Facts of science arise out of a shared experience of the scientific community. “The facts of science arise out of the shared experience of the scientific community. Only those who participate in this community are able to observe the data and see scientific validity in their observations.” (MPC)
3. The truth of scientific claims is a function of the scientific community’s judgment. (judgment is regulated and shaped by attitudes and expectation that are in a process of growth and change). “The truth of scientific claims is a function of the scientific community’s judgment. This judgment is shaped by a set of attitudes and expectations that are in a process of growth and change.”
Chapter 4
A Heuristic Philosophy
The Point of View
Gelwick decides to call Polanyi’s philosophy as heuristic, in order to bring together and emphasize the distinctive contribution of Polanyi’s view.
Heuristic: greek; to find or to discover.
“The nature of discovery is the root idea that illuminates and motivates Polanyi’s philosophy.”
“Polanyi’s philosophy is one that is aimed primarily at the equipping and encouraging of humans in the unending task of pursuing meaning and truth.”
Science and Reality
Paradox of value: We trust in science and accept it because we believe it gives a truer account of reality, but what it is giving us could be wrong, as proved before by Copernicus.
“We accept the results of science as true even though we do not have strict proof that they are.” We do this because we believe it is more reasonable to accept scientific results than to doubt them.
“Science is a way of seeing things in nature; and we can see how it discovers realities in nature by noticing a parallel between the solution of a difficult perceptual problem and the solution of a scientific one.”
Scientific creativity is related to the way in which our human capacity integrates visual clues into an intelligible pattern. “Scientists establish a new way of seeing rightly by believing that the clues are not chaotic impressions but real objects yielding order and harmony.” Tacit knowing helps us find a bearing upon reality through clues.
The Point of View
Gelwick decides to call Polanyi’s philosophy as heuristic, in order to bring together and emphasize the distinctive contribution of Polanyi’s view.
Heuristic: greek; to find or to discover.
“The nature of discovery is the root idea that illuminates and motivates Polanyi’s philosophy.”
“Polanyi’s philosophy is one that is aimed primarily at the equipping and encouraging of humans in the unending task of pursuing meaning and truth.”
Science and Reality
Paradox of value: We trust in science and accept it because we believe it gives a truer account of reality, but what it is giving us could be wrong, as proved before by Copernicus.
“We accept the results of science as true even though we do not have strict proof that they are.” We do this because we believe it is more reasonable to accept scientific results than to doubt them.
“Science is a way of seeing things in nature; and we can see how it discovers realities in nature by noticing a parallel between the solution of a difficult perceptual problem and the solution of a scientific one.”
Scientific creativity is related to the way in which our human capacity integrates visual clues into an intelligible pattern. “Scientists establish a new way of seeing rightly by believing that the clues are not chaotic impressions but real objects yielding order and harmony.” Tacit knowing helps us find a bearing upon reality through clues.
“The bearing on reality is an act of personal judgment for the individual who makes discoveries and for the wider scientific community that evaluates them.”
“Discoveries do not really solve problems but also open up potentialities that reorder and redefine our existence in ways yet to be explored.”
Foundations of Tacit Knowing
“Written within us and exercised on a larger scale is this desire to find our way by satisfying standards and ideas that we set ourselves.”
“Tacit knowing: a theory that accounts for our personal participation in the finding and holding of knowledge.”
The Panorama of Tacit Knowing
The way we know reflects the structure of our being. Polanyi’s theory helps us rethink our existence.
Principle of tacit knowing:
Coherent knowledge is achieved by relying on one level (subsidiary awareness) for attending to another level (focal target). Lowe levels are sufficient for their own levels, but depend on principals above them to make sense. “The obvious yet important point here is thatw e live in a world of hierarchies that are governed by the principle of dual control. Each level is subject first to the laws or principles that apply directly to it, but also it is subject to the laws or principles of the achievement or comprehensive entity formed by it.”
Marginal control: influence exerted by a higher level of principles upon the particulars forming it. Applied to Polanyi’s theory:
“In order to understand ourselves, our world, and how we can know both, we must acknowledge the way hierarchies are formed. The universe, from inanimate matters up to human life, presents a highly complex and varied picture, yet it is one of ascending levels of order in which new operational principles come into play as the lower conditions are presented that make them possible.”
Man doesn’t make himself: we rely upon the current knowledge as the source of intuitions that guide our imaginations.
“Discoveries do not really solve problems but also open up potentialities that reorder and redefine our existence in ways yet to be explored.”
Foundations of Tacit Knowing
“Written within us and exercised on a larger scale is this desire to find our way by satisfying standards and ideas that we set ourselves.”
“Tacit knowing: a theory that accounts for our personal participation in the finding and holding of knowledge.”
The Panorama of Tacit Knowing
The way we know reflects the structure of our being. Polanyi’s theory helps us rethink our existence.
Principle of tacit knowing:
Coherent knowledge is achieved by relying on one level (subsidiary awareness) for attending to another level (focal target). Lowe levels are sufficient for their own levels, but depend on principals above them to make sense. “The obvious yet important point here is thatw e live in a world of hierarchies that are governed by the principle of dual control. Each level is subject first to the laws or principles that apply directly to it, but also it is subject to the laws or principles of the achievement or comprehensive entity formed by it.”
Marginal control: influence exerted by a higher level of principles upon the particulars forming it. Applied to Polanyi’s theory:
“In order to understand ourselves, our world, and how we can know both, we must acknowledge the way hierarchies are formed. The universe, from inanimate matters up to human life, presents a highly complex and varied picture, yet it is one of ascending levels of order in which new operational principles come into play as the lower conditions are presented that make them possible.”
Man doesn’t make himself: we rely upon the current knowledge as the source of intuitions that guide our imaginations.
Society of explorers: a joint enterprise with each field bearing a significant responsibility for the growth of thought and understanding.
“We have just recognized a fundamental way in which we begin to move from self-centered integration, those mainly of scientific kind, to self-giving integrations, those that arise through symbols.”
Ritual: resemblance in action to the history from which it comes and the meaning toward which it parts.
Metaphor: it takes thing that are not so obvious and brings them together in a comparison (The Story of Art). Meaning is bared upon nature and ourselves.
“The modern scientific outlook, with its objective ideal that passionately seeks to found right and truth upon a principle independent of our foundation, is not only false but it is destrictive of the nature of the created process that has enabled human life to integrate incompatibles into visions that can guide us.”
“Knowing in an unformalizable process striving toward an achievement that also is not fully specifiable; accordingly, it is also attributed to the agency of a center seeking satisfaction in the light of its own standards.”
“A society of free and creative persons will be one that has learned to live within these limitations (there will always be an unspecifiable and an unrealizable dimension)… It will respect and seek the truth… Such a society is a free community whose sovereign is the pursuit of truth. It is a Society of Explorers freed from the absurdity of the objective ideal and able to rely upon the frailties and strengths of its tradition and its heroes in an unlimited expedition into ranges of reality.”
“We have just recognized a fundamental way in which we begin to move from self-centered integration, those mainly of scientific kind, to self-giving integrations, those that arise through symbols.”
Ritual: resemblance in action to the history from which it comes and the meaning toward which it parts.
Metaphor: it takes thing that are not so obvious and brings them together in a comparison (The Story of Art). Meaning is bared upon nature and ourselves.
“The modern scientific outlook, with its objective ideal that passionately seeks to found right and truth upon a principle independent of our foundation, is not only false but it is destrictive of the nature of the created process that has enabled human life to integrate incompatibles into visions that can guide us.”
“Knowing in an unformalizable process striving toward an achievement that also is not fully specifiable; accordingly, it is also attributed to the agency of a center seeking satisfaction in the light of its own standards.”
“A society of free and creative persons will be one that has learned to live within these limitations (there will always be an unspecifiable and an unrealizable dimension)… It will respect and seek the truth… Such a society is a free community whose sovereign is the pursuit of truth. It is a Society of Explorers freed from the absurdity of the objective ideal and able to rely upon the frailties and strengths of its tradition and its heroes in an unlimited expedition into ranges of reality.”
Chapter 5
Invitation to Explorers
Exploration in the making
“This calling to discover is one that asks us both to rely upon all our powers, passional and rational, and to acknowledge at the same time the limits of all our powers.”
Traditional Philosophy
Polanyi starts his philosophy out by starting from an original starting point, the process of discovery, and this is how he is able to achieve a philosophic universality and relevance.
Exploration in the making
“This calling to discover is one that asks us both to rely upon all our powers, passional and rational, and to acknowledge at the same time the limits of all our powers.”
Traditional Philosophy
Polanyi starts his philosophy out by starting from an original starting point, the process of discovery, and this is how he is able to achieve a philosophic universality and relevance.
Analytical Philosophy
“Science proceeds with an appearance of precision that is only intelligible when seen against the background of assumptions, presuppositions, and intuitions upon which a scientist tacitly relies and can only vaguely define.”
Connections between Polanyi and analytical philosophy
Existensialism
Connections between Polanyi and existentialism. “Both present in philosophy emphasizing the force of individuation in the process of life.”
Pragmatism, existentialism and phenomenology: “All of these philosophies have in this century highlighted in distinctive ways the contribution of the self to knowledge.”
“The new philosophy of Michael Polanyi and academic philosophical inquiries do show the prophetic quality of his thought.”
“His (Polanyi’s) thought are not primarily to or for the sake of other philosophers but to all the thinkers who are concerned about the destiny of our society.”
Philosophy of natural and Social Sciences
Polanyi’s insights applied to natural sciences.
“Polanyi’s view of body and mind acknowledges the importance of the physiology of the person but it does not reduce the mind to this.”
“In science we must give a primary value to the person because ‘only in the individual does awareness exist’. Science viewed from this angle is both more humanizing and more open to discovery.”
Through Polanyi, new propositions that contribute to a new theory of historical and sociological contribution are found:
1) Only the creative method of science can reveal the nature of scientific knowledge.
2) It is unreasonable to sacrifice the interesting to the demonstrated since no scientific knowledge is truly demonstrated.
3) Any science becomes self-contradictory when it attributes a nature to its objects that renders its own resistance.
4) All facts presuppose a framework of interpretation.
5) Any proposition is subject to doubt and revision.
Art and Theology
“Polanyi connects our understanding in science through its theories of nature with the imagination of art.” “Just as we do not mistake a painting or a play’s murder for reality but we see reality through this device, neither do we mistake a scientific theory for reality, but we see reality through it.”
“Polanyi’s thought is no comfortable ally for theological concerns despite the favor with which many theologians have treated it.” “In Polanyi’s terms, theology, like all fields of knowing, is obligated to an openness to growth and discovery that is fundamental to being human and to earnest concern for the ever-depending knowledge of reality.” “It calls for a vast rethinking of the theological enterprise as an involvement in a common structure of knowing.”
“They saw that in the search for truth, whether in science or theology, there is a commitment of the person that transcends the subjective or objective alternative through his or her universal intent.” Most use this to try to link theology and science. Polanyi has stimulated new ways of thinking in theology.
A Focal Point for Change
Polanyi is one of the only ones that has made a connection between the objective ideal of knowledge generated by the scientific outlook and the disasters of our century.
“We, as the whole structure of tacit knowing shows, are the instruments of exploration in the universe… The acceptance of this responsibility is our most important choice.”
“Science proceeds with an appearance of precision that is only intelligible when seen against the background of assumptions, presuppositions, and intuitions upon which a scientist tacitly relies and can only vaguely define.”
Connections between Polanyi and analytical philosophy
Existensialism
Connections between Polanyi and existentialism. “Both present in philosophy emphasizing the force of individuation in the process of life.”
Pragmatism, existentialism and phenomenology: “All of these philosophies have in this century highlighted in distinctive ways the contribution of the self to knowledge.”
“The new philosophy of Michael Polanyi and academic philosophical inquiries do show the prophetic quality of his thought.”
“His (Polanyi’s) thought are not primarily to or for the sake of other philosophers but to all the thinkers who are concerned about the destiny of our society.”
Philosophy of natural and Social Sciences
Polanyi’s insights applied to natural sciences.
“Polanyi’s view of body and mind acknowledges the importance of the physiology of the person but it does not reduce the mind to this.”
“In science we must give a primary value to the person because ‘only in the individual does awareness exist’. Science viewed from this angle is both more humanizing and more open to discovery.”
Through Polanyi, new propositions that contribute to a new theory of historical and sociological contribution are found:
1) Only the creative method of science can reveal the nature of scientific knowledge.
2) It is unreasonable to sacrifice the interesting to the demonstrated since no scientific knowledge is truly demonstrated.
3) Any science becomes self-contradictory when it attributes a nature to its objects that renders its own resistance.
4) All facts presuppose a framework of interpretation.
5) Any proposition is subject to doubt and revision.
Art and Theology
“Polanyi connects our understanding in science through its theories of nature with the imagination of art.” “Just as we do not mistake a painting or a play’s murder for reality but we see reality through this device, neither do we mistake a scientific theory for reality, but we see reality through it.”
“Polanyi’s thought is no comfortable ally for theological concerns despite the favor with which many theologians have treated it.” “In Polanyi’s terms, theology, like all fields of knowing, is obligated to an openness to growth and discovery that is fundamental to being human and to earnest concern for the ever-depending knowledge of reality.” “It calls for a vast rethinking of the theological enterprise as an involvement in a common structure of knowing.”
“They saw that in the search for truth, whether in science or theology, there is a commitment of the person that transcends the subjective or objective alternative through his or her universal intent.” Most use this to try to link theology and science. Polanyi has stimulated new ways of thinking in theology.
A Focal Point for Change
Polanyi is one of the only ones that has made a connection between the objective ideal of knowledge generated by the scientific outlook and the disasters of our century.
“We, as the whole structure of tacit knowing shows, are the instruments of exploration in the universe… The acceptance of this responsibility is our most important choice.”
Chapter 6
The Transformation of Imagination
History and Hope
“We noticed earlier that Polanyi had observed that the main influence of science upon us is not through technology but through the impact of science upon our imagination and world view.” The changes that are known to the modern world have been through the ways we have come to believe and to think.
Aspects of our situation caused by the influence of the objective ideal of knowledge:
1. Creative relationship between tradition and innovation:
“Polanyi’s structure of tacit knowing demonstrates the relation between traditional frameworks, which form the background of our subsidiary awareness, and the acquisition of new knowledge, which is constituted from the present problems of our focal awareness.”
“A great tradition provides the grounds for both its being maintained and its being changed.”
2. Polanyi's grasp of the knowers unity with the world:
We constantly participate in the world, even when it seems distant. Relations of science and nature are relationships of communion and integration.
3. Joining human creativity in science with all the other arts of humanity.
“Originality in science, as well as in arts, involves letting our imagination run free. The contributions of play, of laughter, of dancing, of celebration, of serendipity, of our whole selves are central to all forms or knowing.”
4. Polanyi's philosophy strengthens our unity with the world and with each other by its holistic and dynamic view of knowing.
“The conception of knowing as having a common structure across the disciplines reveals a shared ground for understanding.”
5. Polanyi's heuristic philosophy, summarized in his image of a society of explorers, contradicts the concept of science as a neutral enterprise and leads to a view of history as a drama of moral purpose.
Knowledge is always an act of human responsibility.
An End to Dichotomies
The objective ideal of knowledge is still kept alive by philosophies that support schisms between mind and body, reason and experience, facts and values; between the knower and the known.
“The great problem of our knowledge now is not so much the recognition of the importance of reason and of experience as it is the dichotomizing of the knower at the expense of the known and the denigration of the knower at the expense of the known.”
Greek thought introduced the separation of knowing and being. In Polanyi’s philosophy, he began in opposition to this separation. His new view of knowledge understands the focal target without divorcing it from the subsidiary particulars that contribute to it.
Great philosophers:
They assumed that “knowledge is independent of the person and is the same everywhere because reason is alike in all persons.” They had an absence of a unique and knowing individual. They were “final, impersonal and certain.”
“When one looks back over even this cursory history of philosophy, it becomes clearer why our views of knowledge have produced the objective ideal. The emphasis generally has been upon securing the permanence and certainty of knowledge, an aim that has given rigor and clarity to human achievement. The concern for the creative process within knowledge has been neglected in favor of the certification of the already known. We have observed here the absence of a place for discovery, of individuality, of living things, and of persons in these philosophies. It is therefore not surprising that we have problems in our mode of knowing today that restrict and threaten human existence.
Consequences of the split between the knower and the known:
“In order to have a science of persons that includes the affective domain as well as the cognitive, that recognizes the way feelings play an important part in the significant discoveries, that understands the way institutions are persons, that upholds human freedom as consistent with an existence built up from natural laws, and that allows for human purposiveness, we have to reject the dualistic reality and unity to these aspects of life.”
The Meaning of Humanity
“Traditional values and beliefs that have guided and restrained us are denied then disguised as scientific absolutes according to the strident logic of objective ideal.”Polanyi’s hope for our future by seeing it as scientific discovery:
“Scientific discovery is a case of being responsible for reaching a perfection beyond one’s own powers, yet having a hope of succeeding. Science seeks to know reality, a reality with the richness to disclose itself in continuing new ways in the future. Scientific work, having made the disciplined effort to know, instead of being crushed by the burden it undertakes, moves ahead by making itself so that it receives the help of reality.”
“This process of giving ourselves up to a difficult task and finding that by pouring ourselves into it we are met with a solution that satisfies and exceeds our expectations is not that has a religious analogy.” (This is how we should try to do our work at the MPC).
Problem of humanity:
History and Hope
“We noticed earlier that Polanyi had observed that the main influence of science upon us is not through technology but through the impact of science upon our imagination and world view.” The changes that are known to the modern world have been through the ways we have come to believe and to think.
Aspects of our situation caused by the influence of the objective ideal of knowledge:
- Collapse of the morals of a civilized society: the more street crime, bombings, hijackings, etc., more governmental deceits.
- Difficulty in transmitting the best of our norms and aspirations to the next generation (new generations don’t want to learn from the older ones).
- State of gloom and pessimism about the future.
- Physical discomfort and pain in a world environment that is rapidly deteriorating as we continue to place our production and consumption of industrial commodities.
1. Creative relationship between tradition and innovation:
“Polanyi’s structure of tacit knowing demonstrates the relation between traditional frameworks, which form the background of our subsidiary awareness, and the acquisition of new knowledge, which is constituted from the present problems of our focal awareness.”
“A great tradition provides the grounds for both its being maintained and its being changed.”
2. Polanyi's grasp of the knowers unity with the world:
We constantly participate in the world, even when it seems distant. Relations of science and nature are relationships of communion and integration.
3. Joining human creativity in science with all the other arts of humanity.
“Originality in science, as well as in arts, involves letting our imagination run free. The contributions of play, of laughter, of dancing, of celebration, of serendipity, of our whole selves are central to all forms or knowing.”
4. Polanyi's philosophy strengthens our unity with the world and with each other by its holistic and dynamic view of knowing.
“The conception of knowing as having a common structure across the disciplines reveals a shared ground for understanding.”
5. Polanyi's heuristic philosophy, summarized in his image of a society of explorers, contradicts the concept of science as a neutral enterprise and leads to a view of history as a drama of moral purpose.
Knowledge is always an act of human responsibility.
An End to Dichotomies
The objective ideal of knowledge is still kept alive by philosophies that support schisms between mind and body, reason and experience, facts and values; between the knower and the known.
“The great problem of our knowledge now is not so much the recognition of the importance of reason and of experience as it is the dichotomizing of the knower at the expense of the known and the denigration of the knower at the expense of the known.”
Greek thought introduced the separation of knowing and being. In Polanyi’s philosophy, he began in opposition to this separation. His new view of knowledge understands the focal target without divorcing it from the subsidiary particulars that contribute to it.
Great philosophers:
They assumed that “knowledge is independent of the person and is the same everywhere because reason is alike in all persons.” They had an absence of a unique and knowing individual. They were “final, impersonal and certain.”
- Plato: knowledge was a recollection of truths already there in the world of eternal forms.
- Aristotle: analysis of the given data, of an order already there. There was no place for discovery.
- Descartes: dualism of body and mind. Certainty is independent of reality beyond the world or of a structure in the external world.
- Galileo: modern science shifted the attention of philosophy to experience and observation.
- Hume: skeptical, because our knowledge was based on our senses, so there is no certainty.
- Kant: things don’t get themselves known without a knower. Centered the world around the knower instead of the knower around the world. His knower is empty and lacking individuality. So this theory of knowledge doesn’t tell us about living things, which is inadequate.
“When one looks back over even this cursory history of philosophy, it becomes clearer why our views of knowledge have produced the objective ideal. The emphasis generally has been upon securing the permanence and certainty of knowledge, an aim that has given rigor and clarity to human achievement. The concern for the creative process within knowledge has been neglected in favor of the certification of the already known. We have observed here the absence of a place for discovery, of individuality, of living things, and of persons in these philosophies. It is therefore not surprising that we have problems in our mode of knowing today that restrict and threaten human existence.
Consequences of the split between the knower and the known:
- Separation of fact from value
- Reduction of living things to mere physics and chemistry
- The meaningless of persons
“In order to have a science of persons that includes the affective domain as well as the cognitive, that recognizes the way feelings play an important part in the significant discoveries, that understands the way institutions are persons, that upholds human freedom as consistent with an existence built up from natural laws, and that allows for human purposiveness, we have to reject the dualistic reality and unity to these aspects of life.”
The Meaning of Humanity
“Traditional values and beliefs that have guided and restrained us are denied then disguised as scientific absolutes according to the strident logic of objective ideal.”Polanyi’s hope for our future by seeing it as scientific discovery:
“Scientific discovery is a case of being responsible for reaching a perfection beyond one’s own powers, yet having a hope of succeeding. Science seeks to know reality, a reality with the richness to disclose itself in continuing new ways in the future. Scientific work, having made the disciplined effort to know, instead of being crushed by the burden it undertakes, moves ahead by making itself so that it receives the help of reality.”
“This process of giving ourselves up to a difficult task and finding that by pouring ourselves into it we are met with a solution that satisfies and exceeds our expectations is not that has a religious analogy.” (This is how we should try to do our work at the MPC).
Problem of humanity:
- Scientific outlook and objective ideal created a consciousness in humans that is less able to experience and to enter into the venture of the highest ideals in the face of risks.
- Authority of objective ideal discounts values and beliefs that can’t be materially proven limits our sense of reality.