Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing by Mark T. Mitchell
(Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2006).
Thinkers of Our Time: Polanyi by Richard Allen (London: Claridge
Press, 1990).
Everyman Revived: The Common Sense of Michael Polanyi by
Drusilla Scott (Lewes, Sussex: Book Guild Limited, 1985;
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995).
The Way of Discovery: An Introduction to the Thought of Michael
Polanyi by Richard Gelwick (New York: OUP, 1977; Eugene,
OR: Wipf & Stock, 2004).
The Tacit Mode: Michael Polanyi’s Postmodern Philosophy by Jerry
H. Gill (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000).
Michael Polanyi: A Critical Exposition by Harry Prosch (Albany,
NY: SUNY Press, 1986).
. . . Professor Polanyi’s ambition to let nothing go by default, to surround his argument with embroidery, not of qualification but of elaboration, and to follow his theme into every variation that suggests itself, makes the book like a jungle through which the reader must hack his way.4
It is easy to see why Personal Knowledge is a daunting and perplexing book. As Oakeshott’s comment implies, it is long— some 403 pages long; most of the thirteen chapters, broken into dense subsections, require very serious concentration and Polanyi includes detailed comments on an array of subjects. The thirteen chapters are grouped into four parts, and each part makes an argument, and these arguments build on each other.5 Although not as daunting as Personal Knowledge, many of Polanyi’s other books and essays are also difficult and frequently leave readers exasperated and quite unclear about the coherence of Polanyi’s larger philosophical perspective. Although Polanyi’s prose is often lucid, many texts have an illusive quality; their larger implications are not clear, at least to those just beginning to study Polanyi.6 Many make a case in ways that seem quite odd. Perhaps especially seasoned philosophers find Polanyi strange. Polanyi was not a professional philosopher and he did not write primarily with philosophers as his imagined audience, but given the extraordinary interdisciplinarity of his discussions, it seems unlikely that specialists in any one discipline would be comfortable.7
Personal Knowledge as a whole, as well as most of Polanyi’s other writing, weaves inseparably together three elements: broadbased critical philosophizing, broad-based constructive philosophizing, and articulation of a Lebensphilosophie. While it is helpful to bear in mind these interwoven elements, simply identifying them does not make Polanyi’s writing any easier. That is, to focus for a moment only on Personal Knowledge, Polanyi mounts an attack (part of his critical philosophizing) upon what he dubs “”objectivism,”” although this is hardly a transparent term, especially since Polanyi’s real agenda was not only to criticize some of the popular philosophical approaches of the mid-twentieth century but to attack some of the assumptions of the modern turn in philosophy beginning in the seventeenth century. Polanyi attacks some Enlightenment values, but he affirms other Enlightenment values. Therefore, grasping the contours of his constructive philosophical alternative to “”objectivism”” in Personal Knowledge is not easy.
In a general way, it is apparent that he re-evaluates the importance of skills and especially language, that he insists upon distinguishing subsidiary and focal awareness and emphasizing the person’s integration of subsidiaries, and that he wants to reclaim what he dubs “”conviviality”” and “”intellectual passion.””8 But it is not altogether clear (1) how such matters constitute what he calls in his book’s preface a “”fiduciary program”” that fulfills the “”task of justifying the holding of unproven traditional beliefs””9 and (2) that his book is thus providing “”an alternative ideal of knowledge.””10 And, for most readers, it is altogether confusing what Polanyi’s alternative account of knowing, which is epitomized in scientific discovery, could have to do with evolutionary emergence, the topic treated in the concluding section (three chapters) of the book.11 Finally, the Lebensphilosophie that is embedded in Polanyi’s constructive philosophizing is certainly also an unsettling element for many readers of Personal Knowledge. His overt affirmation of personal beliefs, his emphasis on personal commitment, his sympathy for some of the views of Saint Paul and Saint Augustine, and his effort to reflect in his account of knowing a certain awe before the majesty of the unknown but intriguing universe are likely to make wary—if not alienate— readers who have absorbed many Enlightenment values.
In sum, the difficulties of Personal Knowledge, if not other Polanyi texts, have often understandably dimmed the enthusiasm of many who genuinely hoped to digest Polanyi’s thought. There is, however, an array of secondary literature that anyone initially put off by Polanyi’s texts should know is available. An overview as well as some detail about Polanyi’s ideas can be helpful to prospective Polanyi readers. My purpose here is to review some of the best of this secondary literature, which puts Polanyi’s ideas in a context and shows their scope and coherence. The first part of what follows focuses on four books written by Mark Mitchell, Richard Allen, Drusilla Scott and Richard Gelwick. These are all books clearly designed as introductions to Polanyi’s thought, although they don’t all seem to imagine exactly the same introductory Polanyi reader. Also the writers themselves have somewhat different interests in Polanyi and have produced introductory texts under somewhat different constraints, and these factors are reflected in their respective discussions. My review of each introduction attempts to set forth rather directly the approach taken and the interests of the author. But I also try to provide enough detail about the author’s treatment of Polanyi so that anyone reading this essay can form a judgment about the depth of the account of Polanyi’s philosophy. My treatment of these introductions moves from the newest to the oldest book and, in some of the notes, I alert the reader to a few other matters in the Polanyi literature that may be helpful or interesting. The final sections of this essay, following the treatment of the true introductions to Polanyi, discuss two other books by Jerry Gill and Harry Prosch. These books have some peculiarities and are not straightforwardly and simply introductions to Polanyi. But for some readers with particular backgrounds and/or interests, at least parts of these books can be used as introductions. I somewhat expand my discussion of Harry Prosch’s Michael Polanyi, A Critical Exposition not only because it is an interesting and valuable book, but because its author was co-author with Michael Polanyi of Polanyi’s final book, Meaning.
Mark Mitchell’s Michael Polanyi
Mitchell’s strikingly good opening chapter provides a biographical discussion that nicely contextualizes Polanyi’s life and work. He shows that Polanyi’s move from medicine to physical chemistry, to economics and political philosophy, to epistemology and cosmology, has plausibility. He emphasizes that Polanyi was an outsider and that both the creativity of his contributions and the reactions to his work have been colored by this. Mitchell makes good use of the new Polanyi biography15 as well as other sources, including some of the Polanyi archival material at the University of Chicago. The only quibble I have with Mitchell’s biographical account is that he likely misreads Polanyi’s 1919 Roman Catholic baptism as an attraction “”toward an institution that could provide the resources for comprehending the moral and spiritual vacuum of Europe.””16 More likely, the baptism was largely the pragmatism of a young scientist fleeing Hungary for Germany, the scientific capital of the world. Polanyi, like many other secular Jews, took the precaution of getting baptized.17 But Mitchell does appropriately emphasize Polanyi’s stress upon tradition and authority and his interest and sympathy for religion. Mitchell comments on Polanyi’s earliest non-scientific writing in the period of World War I and on Polanyi’s rise within the scientific community. At the end of his opening chapter, Mitchell sums up how he understands Polanyi’s philosophical perspective: “”Confronted with the alternative of Enlightenment rationalism (which has clearly failed to live up to its promises) and what has come to be called postmodernism, Polanyi’s theory of knowledge neither succumbs to rationalist hubris nor retreats into the hovel of postmodern despair.””18
In his seminal second chapter, “”Economics, Science, and Politics,”” Mitchell outlines and links Polanyi’s contributions in these three important areas. There is a review of Polanyi’s criticisms of movements for centralized planning from the thirties forward. In a nutshell, here is Polanyi’s objection to centralization: “”A centralized system . . . is predicated on the belief that the central authority is capable of gathering and assimilating all available information about every aspect of the economic system and then making decisions based upon that information.””19 Polanyi’s solution to the problem was to recognize and support “”polycentricity”” which is a system “”that operates according to the mutually adjusting actions of independent participants.””20 Mitchell notes that Hayek later borrowed Polanyi’s term “”spontaneous order.”” All in all, Mitchell does a solid job of showing how Polanyi applies his thinking about polycentricity to economics. He shows how Polanyi’s empirical study of the Soviet economy made clear that it did not abolish the market mechanism but merely modified it. He makes clear that Polanyi is not merely a laissez-faire supporter: “”Polanyi was a fierce opponent of collectivism, but he was not a laissez-faire libertarian. On the contrary, he accused both libertarians and collectivists of being wrongly suspicious of government intervention in economic matters.””21 Polanyi’s position is that “”[c]apitalism is the only viable option, but this does not imply that the state has no role beyond enforcing contracts and preventing fraud. On the contrary, the state can work (albeit at the margins) to ensure that the market operates as effectively as possible.””22 Mitchell nicely summarizes Polanyi’s ideas about how the government might influence the money supply to affect the employment rate. This is a synthesis of Keynesian and monetarist economics that went largely unrecognized by economists of his time.
One of the most interesting discussions in this chapter is Mitchell’s account of the differences between Michael’s and brother Karl Polanyi’s views. Mitchell concisely outlines Karl’s account of modern society and the market system and then compares this with his younger brother’s views. The main difference, as Mitchell summarizes it,
lies in their respective accounts of the cause of the current crisis. . . . Karl suggested—and here we can identify Marx’s influence on his thought—that the woes of the twentieth century resulted from a faulty economic structure. These obstacles could be overcome if the right institutions were altered better to reflect human nature. . . . Michael . . . ultimately located the problem in the spiritual and moral vacuum that resulted from a deficient conception of knowing—one that denied the very possibility of spiritual and moral reality. This denial was the product of a view of reality that was both skeptical and materialistic. Michael Polanyi called this union “”objectivism.””23
All in all, Mitchell, in a very few lucidly written pages, brings together in this chapter, under the rubric of “”economics,”” some of the most important ideas that Polanyi developed in the thirties, forties, and fifties. I would supplement Mitchell’s account in this section in only one modest respect, and Mitchell in fact does later make clear that he appreciates this point: I think it might be helpful for those unfamiliar with Polanyi to see in this early discussion the nuances in Polanyi’s discussions about liberty. Too often Polanyi’s ideas about liberty are taken to be largely the byproduct of his study of economics. Certainly Polanyi’s visits to the Soviet Union, his attunement to Soviet oppression (particularly of scientists), and his strong “”intellectual commitment to liberty motivated his long struggle against totalitarianism.””24 But Polanyi’s support of liberty is also of a particular kind. Polanyi supports what he sometimes termed “”public liberty,”” as opposed to “”private freedom.””25 That is, Polanyi offers a sophisticated argument about complex social organization that Mitchell has in fact well laid out; but, as a consequence of his support of polycentrism, Polanyi is not a garden-variety libertarian opposing totalitarianism. His early writing provides a liberal vision of an evolving, pluralistic society in which human beings take on responsibility within the many specialized communities of interest like science and the law, and the work of such sub-cultural groups benefits society as a whole. This vision is an application of Polanyi’s support of polycentricity as it pertains to moral and intellectual rather than primarily economic matters. His most important insights about and commitments to liberty do not focus on private liberty or personal freedom, but emphasize the rights persons have to serve ideals and purposes preserved in specialized circles like that of science and the law in a society. The health of a dynamic society depends on the freedom that persons have to act independently on convictions that further the work of such circles of skilled persons. In fact, Polanyi’s understanding of a “”totalitarian”” society is bound up with his recognition of the importance of public liberty. A totalitarian society contends that it “”completely represents all the collective interests of the community”” and, even though it may allow private freedoms, it rejects the “”claims of individuals to act independently for the benefit of society.””26
Mitchell does make these more subtle points (that flesh out Polanyi’s notions of liberty) somewhat clearer in a later section of his second chapter that is devoted to showing how Polanyi’s ideas about polycentrism yield a certain vision of science:
The kind of society Polanyi describes is not one in which individuals are at liberty to do anything they please so long as they do not infringe upon any other individual’s freedom to do the same. This is an inadequate foundation to support the supervisory structure required for the continuation of either science or a free society.27
In science, Polanyi argues that “”individual freedom is restrained by an authority that is created by the practioners themselves but it is ultimately rooted in a common commitment to transcendent ideals . . . .””28 In Mitchell’s general portrayal of Polanyi’s account of science, he emphasizes how and why Polanyi resisted the pervasive centralizing ideology of the mid-twentieth century. This ideology “”was rooted in a materialist vision of the world, a world conceived completely in terms of cause-and-effect relationships””29 that Polanyi did not accept. Polanyi saw through the movements aimed at “”reducing science to applied science,”” recognizing that this would be “”the end of science as we know it””30 and effectively the end of the cultivation of knowledge. Mitchell stresses Polanyi’s appreciation for tradition and authority in science, and it is the rejection of these that “”gave rise to the ideal of explicit, objective knowledge””31 which came to be revered in the science and philosophy of science of Polanyi’s day. Polanyi’s account of science and society is one that emphasizes how important are the commitments of participants to transcendent ideals such as truth and justice. Mitchell makes clear that Polanyi portrays the scientist as a person of conscience and as one not so much who applied a “”method”” as one who can see and solve problems. Polanyi links such skilful discernment with perception. In sum, Mitchell’s seventeen-page discussion of science incisively covers Polanyi’s major themes. He makes much use of some of Polanyi’s essays written from the mid-thirties until the publication of The Logic of Liberty in 1951. This is important material, and it is true that Polanyi’s ideas about the organization of science and the delicate relation of the scientific community to the larger political culture did not change much after World War II.
The final section of Mitchell’s important second chapter is titled “”Politics””; discussion here turns from Polanyi’s account of science per se to Polanyi’s broader criticism of the development of modern ideas and the political fallout these ideas have yielded in the twentieth century. Mitchell clearly sets forth Polanyi’s account of the moral and political implications of objectivism, showing how the turn to modern philosophical suppositions ultimately leads to what Polanyi calls “”moral inversion,”” which is a “”combination of skeptical rationalism and moral perfectionism.”” 32 Moral inversion succors nihilism; according to Polanyi, its impact has been devastating in modern life. Unlike Europe, Britain and America to some degree “”escaped the frenzied passion produced by moral inversion””33 because political life muddled along in practice following established traditions and ignoring the consequences of theoretical views that took root in modernity. Polanyi’s philosophy, in Mitchell’s words, calls for and provides the philosophical ground for “”a recovery of balance between man’s moral demands and his critical powers.””34 The philosophical grounding for such a recovery required hammering out a new vision of the nature of knowing. In sum, in the final component of his second chapter, Mitchell nicely complements his earlier discussion of Polanyi’s ideas about economics and science. He deftly summarizes Polanyi’s critical philosophical conclusions about the development of modern ideas and their violent consequences.
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Mitchell next turns to Polanyi’s epistemology as the heart of his constructive philosophizing. The discussion here is broken into ten sections. Polanyi recognized that belief was the foundation of knowledge and that a proper understanding of liberty also required understanding how foundational belief was. His Gifford Lectures and the book that grew out of these lectures, Personal Knowledge, make his case for the priority and importance of belief; this is what Polanyi called “”the fiduciary programme,””35 and it is woven seamlessly with the philosophy of commitment that he articulates. Out of his interest in belief and commitment grows a richer understanding of what Polanyi later called the “”structure of tacit knowing.””36 The sections in Mitchell’s chapter are meant to mirror this development in Polanyi’s ideas. First there is a discussion of what Polanyi draws from Augustine, the recognition of the “”indispensable role belief plays in all knowing.”” 37 But according to Mitchell, “”while Polanyi embraces an Augustinian approach to epistemology, he is decidedly non- Augustinian in his view of social progress.””38 Next Mitchell turns again to tradition and authority, matters that he has already emphasized in earlier chapters. But in this epistemological discussion, he wants to make clear that tradition for Polanyi is not static; there is “”an orthodoxy that enforces a kind of discipline on those subject to the tradition; but the orthodoxy is a dynamic one in that ‘it implicitly grants the right to opposition in the name of truth.'””39 This well-turned phrase that incorporates one of Polanyi’s most eloquent comments shows that Mitchell has an eye for Polanyi’s most concise and clear statements; he puts them to excellent use here and throughout his book to summarize major themes. Mitchell emphasizes how tradition is always linked to a community that embraces and passes forward valued practices and ideals: “”. . . knowing requires the existence of a society committed to a particular tradition and engaged in passing it on.””40 He carefully lays out Polanyi’s integrative model of tacit knowing, showing its roots in Gestalt ideas.41 Knowers dwell in subsidiary particulars in order to attend to a more comprehensive focal target; Polanyi regards the comprehensive entity as an achievement that is an integration of tacitly known particulars or subsidiaries. Mitchell sets forth a classification of six kinds of examples of tacit knowing that Polanyi gives in his writing, and he explains the four aspects of tacit knowing that Polanyi discusses in The Tacit Dimension. He carefully reviews Polanyi’s claims about indwelling and extending the body and participation in knowing. In sum, the nine-page discussion in the subsection titled “”Tacit Knowing”” is a good concise summary of the central elements of Polanyi’s theory of knowledge.
In the sections at the end of his third chapter, Mitchell rounds out his account of Polanyi’s epistemologically grounded perspective by briefly discussing some topics and themes that, unfortunately, are sometimes overlooked. He tries briefly to explain Polanyi’s particular brand of philosophical realism, which does not fit comfortably with most modern discussions of philosophical realism.42 Mitchell notes that Polanyi’s realism has been an element of his thought much discussed by scholars. His discussion is sensibly organized around four points about which there will likely be general agreement. Mitchell does a particularly good job of conveying Polanyi’s sense of
the infinite richness of reality. The richness of the real produces unexpected manifestations. Because we are finite, we will never reach the core of reality, a reality that presents us with infinite possibilities. The process of knowing presents us with continual surprises.43
In his subsection titled “”On Embeddedness,”” Mitchell makes clear Polanyi’s conviction that to be human is to be grounded in a particular language used in a particular culture in a particular historical context. Human knowers have no access to Archimedean points of view.44 While our finite embedded nature marks our limitedness, it also marks the opportunity for our achievement. In the final two sections of his third chapter, Mitchell shows how, from a Polanyian perspective, the subjective-objective and factvalue dichotomies that so readily spring to mind for most moderns are not tenable. He discusses briefly the importance of intellectual passions and what Polanyi called “”universal intent.””45 Mitchell shows how Polanyi’s model re-conceives the nature of knowing and shifts the discussion of the nature of truth and meaning:
By eliminating the distinction between facts and values, Polanyi sought to reestablish the possibilities for humans to embrace with confidence such values as truth, beauty, and justice. These are not merely subjective preferences; they are ideals to which we may personally commit ourselves in the belief that they are truly meaningful, for they bear on intangible reality.46
In “”Meaning, Morality, and Religion,”” Mitchell moves from Polanyi’s fundamental claims about knowing to a broader discussion of the implications of these claims. Clearly Polanyi is not a materialist, but a figure whose goal “”in formulating a new account of knowing was to reintroduce the possibility of making meaningful truth claims, about nonphysical reality.””47 Polanyi reopens the door for conversations about moral ideas, aesthetics, and religion. Mitchell does a nice job of summarizing Polanyi’s criticisms of modern reductionism and of sketching out Polanyi’s multilevel conception of reality. He sorts carefully through some of Polanyi’s confusing terminology (dual control, boundary conditions, etc.) and Polanyi’s ideas about the hierarchical structure of comprehensive entities. In one of his subsections, he makes an interesting attempt to sketch out a moral theory, something Polanyi did not do but something Mitchell argues is implicit in Polanyi’s writing. Moral ideas and practices are like other ideas and practices: “”we come to accept moral teaching, like any other body of skillful knowing, by entrusting ourselves to a moral tradition or teacher in a process that is often referred to as interiorization.””48 Moral ideas are products of a person’s tacit integrations; while they are not arbitrary, they are tied to a tradition and a community. They are intangibles more real than most tangibles. Moral ideas function as largely unspecifiable subsidiaries that inform human judgment and they have indeterminate future manifestations. New values in both science and culture do emerge when human beings struggle to understand reality more deeply and their moral ideas subtly shift.
There is a lengthy discussion in this chapter of Polanyi’s ideas about religion. Mitchell is a fair-minded scholar (an important virtue, according to Polanyi) who acknowledges that this is terrain on which there has been much conflict in Polanyi scholarship. His book is an introduction and he intends primarily to reference rather than explore some of the debated questions. Perhaps because Polanyi’s philosophical ideas seem early to have attracted the attention of Christian theologians (a group more open to criticism of the modern philosophical tradition), writing about Polanyi’s religious ideas and his religious affiliations (or lack thereof) became a virtual cottage industry. Mitchell is aware of much of this discussion, which I treat below in discussions of other books. It is certainly the case, as Mitchell stresses, that Polanyi’s ideas about religion as well as other topics were importantly shaped by his friend J. H. Oldham and Oldham’s circle of friends, who had great interest in Christianity and Christianity’s role in the world emerging after World War II. Polanyi’s postcritical ideas were in part shaped through his participation for about twenty years in Oldham’s discussion groups. As Richard Gelwick has pointed out, Polanyi credited his participation in Oldham’s groups as second only to his experience as a scientist in shaping his thought.49 It is also certainly true, as Mitchell emphasizes, that Polanyi’s post-critical philosophical perspective is open to, and interested in, religious realities and religious truth in a way that most modern philosophy is not. One only has to look at the end of Personal Knowledge, The Tacit Dimension, some late Polanyi essays, or the late book Meaning, written with Harry Prosch, to see that Polanyi seems to have anticipated a religious renaissance. It is often, however, not clear precisely what Polanyi is saying about religion in many texts (and opinions of interpreting scholars have varied), and it is not clear that there is consistency among the different texts; it seems that Polanyi often preferred to hint at rather than thoroughly expound his ideas about religion in the way he did on some other topics.50 While Mitchell’s general comments on Polanyi’s ideas and religion are balanced, in my view he relies too much on what the Christian theologian Thomas Torrance had to say about Polanyi’s religious commitments and religious ideas. Some of the things Torrance has said about Polanyi and his religious commitments and ideas seem largely to be self-serving. Some of Torrance’s comments about Harry Prosch’s collaboration with the aging and increasingly senile Polanyi on his last book Meaning, as well as Torrance’s claims about his appointment as Polanyi’s literary executor, do not fit with the historical record. While these may be small matters in an introduction to Polanyi’s thought, those who read Mitchell’s account should be keyed to the fact that there is more to the story about Polanyi and religion than Mitchell lays out here, although he does do a credible job of referencing some important parts of the scholarly discussion.
The section in Mitchell’s chapter titled “”Religion in Personal Knowledge“” works through Polanyi’s cryptic comments about religion in his magnum opus. This is something that other scholars have also tried to sort out.51 Mitchell does quote and comment helpfully upon some of the striking Polanyi lines about religion that always attract the attention of readers new to Personal Knowledge. He nicely summarizes Polanyi’s discussion of differences in verification and validation and Polanyi’s ideas about levels of participation vis-à-vis types of real known objects. For my taste, Mitchell’s occasional attempts in his discussion to explain Polanyi’s views by analogs with C. S. Lewis’s views are of limited value. Polanyi was not a conservative Christian, and readers should be very clear about this. Mitchell’s short section titled “”Faith and Reason”” picks up themes noted earlier in his discussion of Polanyi and Augustine: “”Polanyi seeks to restore faith to its proper place by showing how it is central to the knowing process.””52 The final discussion in the “”Science and Religion”” subsection returns to implications of Polanyi’s stratified ontology. Mitchell does a nice job of showing how Polanyi weaves together his antimaterialistic metaphysic, his cosmology, and his Lebensphilosophie:
Life is an achievement. Human life—characterized by consciousness, curiosity, creativity and moral responsibility—represents the apex of this achievement. Bound up within the meaning of human existence is our duty, as individual centers of thought and responsibility, to employ our faculties to live lives worthy of our cosmic calling.53
Mitchell’s final chapter, “”Engaging Polanyi in the Twentieth Century and Beyond,”” moves from the overview of Polanyi’s thought to a brief comparison of Polanyi’s views and those of three contemporaries: Michael Oakeshott, Eric Voegelin, and Alasdair MacIntyre. These three have some affinities with Polanyi or make some use of Polanyi, and all three are, like Polanyi, deeply interested in the politics of the twentieth century and the cultural roots of politics. Certainly, for the reader seeking an introduction to Polanyi who also knows something about any one or all of these figures, this discussion might be a helpful bridge. Readers unfamiliar with any of these thinkers can perhaps skip this section, although there are in Mitchell’s discussions some generally interesting wrinkles. Mitchell, for example, comments on Polanyi’s correspondence with the recently deceased William F. Buckley Jr., and Polanyi’s hesitancy to see much that paralleled his ideas in American conservatism. Mitchell does a particularly good job in his discussion of MacIntyre and Polanyi in showing that Polanyi’s ideas are closer to those of MacIntyre than MacIntyre thinks. At the end of this chapter, Mitchell concludes with a brief final discussion outlining how Polanyi’s ideas in the new century can “”help move us beyond both Enlightenment rationalism and postmodern skepticism.””54 This discussion is one of the most interesting sections of this introduction to Polanyi because here Mitchell moves somewhat beyond Polanyi, but in a way that is consistent with Polanyi’s thought. Mitchell suggests, for example, that “”philosophical materialism provides the psychological and spiritual license”” for the consumerism of the contemporary American society and that “”in such a milieu, fidelity to one’s home or community is eroded by the primary value of acquisition.””55 He discusses the ways in which contemporary society often is selfindulgent and relativistic in orientation and how far this falls from Polanyi’s vision for humanity in which “”liberty must ultimately be in the service, not of trade, but of transcendent ideals.””56 At least to this reader, such claims seem to be on the Polanyian mark.57 I look forward to Mitchell’s future scholarly efforts to dwell in Polanyi’s philosophical framework in order to extend the contours of post-critical thought. In sum, Michael Polanyi is a very solid introduction to Polanyi, one that probes in a sophisticated manner the breadth and depth of Polanyi’s thought.
Allen begins by commenting on the fact that Polanyi was not a professional philosopher but a talented scientist who took up philosophy to protect science in a period when Marxist influenced ideas about planned science were popular. He argues that Polanyi “”found current thinking about science and freedom inadequate.””62 In Personal Knowledge, Polanyi’s target was objectivism, “”the assumption that knowledge must be a function of the observed object alone, and that any personal shaping of his knowledge by the knower renders it ‘merely subjective’. He sought to show that knowledge is and must be a personal achievement.””63 Allen follows with a straightforward list of six “”dangerous errors that have infected modern thought since Galileo and Descartes.””64 His unembellished list, of course, includes the same items (reductionism, unwarranted confidence in the method of doubt, etc.) that most of the other introductions treat at greater length. Allen includes a five-page biographical statement that also identifies the topics treated in Polanyi’s major books. He provides, as well, a very succinct statement about how Polanyi’s philosophy is unlike most contemporary philosophy. For readers whose expectations are shaped by familiarity with contemporary philosophy, this brief discussion may be helpful.
After this introduction, Allen’s second chapter succinctly lays out the parts in Personal Knowledge that I earlier called Polanyi’s critical philosophizing, that is, the claims against objectivism understood as “”the source of our specifically modern ills and as that which has derailed humanitarian ideals and attempts at their realisation.””65 Allen provides a four-element characterization of objectivism and then, in about ten pages, he summarizes the arguments that Polanyi uses to counter each element.66 Some elements are also treated further in later chapters. The third chapter turns to a summary of Polanyi’s “”alternative account of knowledge as a personal achievement.””67 In a very compact fashion, Allen here sets forth Polanyi’s theory of tacit knowing. He manages to cover a remarkable number of Polanyi’s ideas in very few pages and even suggests a few comparisons with other philosophers. The fourth chapter, “”The Fiduciary Programme,”” treats Polanyi’s account of belief as the root of knowledge, a claim that puts Polanyi directly at odds with much (but not all) of the Western philosophical tradition. Allen shows how Polanyi deemphasizes doubt and emphasizes commitment; “”post-critical”” philosophy is a “”presuppositional approach””68 that begins with belief and acceptance of our social-cultural framework as the conditions marking our calling “”to achieve the universal obligations to which we are subject.””69 In “”Comprehensive Entities and Complex Performances,”” Allen summarizes Polanyi’s ontological and cosmological ideas. He shows how Polanyi “”reinstates the ancient conception of degrees of reality and does so in a direction contrary to that of Reductionism, which assumes the more tangible to be the more real.””70 He outlines Polanyi’s arguments concerning the two levels of control in comprehensive entities and sketches Polanyi’s interesting account—countering C. P. Snow—of the complementary domains of human inquiry, running from the hard sciences to dramatic history. He provides a succinct summary of Polanyi’s discussion of evolution as an achievement and shows that Polanyi’s image of the universe as multi-level is a stark contrast to the reductionism often promulgated in modern and post-modern culture. In his penultimate chapter, Allen treats Polanyi’s political philosophy and his interest in modern problems of meaning. Polanyi’s political philosophy emphasizes that “”a free society needs a commitment by its members to truth and a mutual respect for each other’s selfdedication.”” 71 Although his comments are very few, it is clear in his remarks on Polanyi and the problem of meaning that Allen, like the writers of almost all of these introductions, is especially interested in religion and theology. Allen hints at a few criticisms of what he takes to be Polanyi’s overly this-world account of religion. At the end of Allen’s book is a two-and-a-half page orientation (now somewhat dated) to Polanyi scholarship and a brief bibliography. He comments on books and authors who have written about Polanyi or who have applied Polanyi’s post-critical perspective.
Although my overview of Allen’s book, like the book itself, has been concise, the reader should not conclude that this introduction is a second-class effort. It is simply a very tightly wrought introduction, and perhaps no Polanyi scholar is better able to be brief than Richard Allen. Of course, the contrast is sharp between, for example, a loquacious introduction like that of Drusilla Scott, who projected a modern “”everyman”” as a reader, and Allen’s book, whose publisher projected an audience with no time for details. Allen’s Polanyi is a very basic orientation to Polanyi’s post-critical perspective, and that is just what this Claridge Press series intended.
Drusilla Scott’s Everyman Revived
Her opening chapter, “”The Power of Ideas,”” makes the case that Polanyi valued ideas and came to believe that a misunderstanding of science, woven with a particular modern philosophical and cultural narrative, led to the violence in the twentieth century that Polanyi knew firsthand. Scott discusses Polanyi’s notions about a “”disastrous dissonance””75 at work in modern culture, which combines extreme critical lucidity and an intense moral conscience to produce nihilism. Polanyi argued that the hope of early Enlightenment ideas got lost as later generations succumbed to a materialist outlook obsessed with objectivity. Scott traces the development of Polanyi’s understanding and criticism of modernity in terms of his own experience as a fin de siècle Hungarian-born, refugee research scientist who eventually turned from physical chemistry to economics, social science, and philosophy as he sought to understand his own culture. There is a rather good short biography in this chapter that shows how important problems and conclusions for Polanyi are set by his personal experience. With verve, Scott introduces Polanyi’s themes and weaves these into a story of his experience, carefully choosing quotations from various Polanyi writings to make her case eloquently, as she often also does in succeeding chapters.
Each chapter after the first begins with a few italicized sentences that link the chapter’s discussion to the characters in the medieval play Everyman and that provide a summary of what the chapter explores in Polanyi’s philosophy. Although, as a reader, I was at first puzzled by this section, I came to appreciate this succinct way in which Scott focuses her discussion. The second chapter is a brief plunge into the history of modern ideas (some of which were touched on in the first chapter) that sets forth more concretely the problematic that Polanyi addresses in his philosophy. This chapter also focuses more directly on the main trope used in this book: Scott employs the story in Everyman as an envelope within which to present a reasonably well-rounded account of Polanyi’s philosophical perspective. This old play still has an “”emotional force”” today because it is an “”agonized search for values that can stand and endure in the face of suffering and death””; it is a play about “”the urgent need of man to know something sure about the meaning of his existence . . .””76 Scott’s comparison focuses on the old authoritarianism of the Roman Catholic Church and the similar new authoritarianism of scientism (i.e., the misread tradition of science) which systematically undercuts the person as a skilled and responsible holder of knowledge at home in the world. Polanyi’s work was to re-equip human beings to trust their own faculties, which the era of critical thought has taught them to distrust. The liberation of the early critical era brought a new authoritarianism which included “”the rift between Knowledge and Everyman.””77 The picture of the world and the person that developed from the seventeenth to the twentieth century was one in which mind and matter were split and ultimately the motion of matter was what counted. What evolved was “”a picture of the universe as a vast assembly of atoms moved relentlessly on its path by impersonal inevitable forces,”” and this picture “”seized the imagination of man and dominated it.””78 Therefore, when “”Knowledge turned her cold and analytic eyes on to Everyman, and saw that he too was part of the world of matter, made of atoms, obeying the same laws as the planets, she could not recognize her sister Good Deeds nor her friend Everyman.””79 Scott’s reading here of the development of the history of ideas is not a close reading, but she provides a creative and concise sketch of Polanyi’s critique of modern culture against which Polanyi’s constructive philosophical ideas began to develop. Polanyi “”set about building a truer picture of how Everyman knows his world, how he can justify his claim for the validity of ‘personal knowledge’,”” and this makes a great difference “”in bringing hope, reality and responsibility back to Everyman.””80
After the introduction of Polanyi and Polanyi’s cultural criticism in the first two chapters, Scott turns in the next three chapters to an elaboration of the constructive themes in Polanyi’s thought that counter the prevailing cultural narrative. The third chapter focuses on discovery as the paradigm case in Polanyi’s model of knowing and the key to his understanding of science.81 Scott here introduces the process of scientific research in terms of the pursuit of intellectual beauty, which she portrays as a reinstatement of Beauty in Everyman’s world.
Discovery is the most illuminating element in science, yet it has been ignored by philosophy of science. However, Polanyi— himself a practicing scientist—made discovery central. Scott’s discussion of discovery unfolds as a brief comparison of the views of Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper with the ideas of Polanyi. Russell focused on observation, deduction, and induction, while Popper relegated the creative element in developing scientific ideas to psychology and focused attention on questions of validity. Polanyi, however, emphasized first the matter of choosing a good problem (which relies upon highly personal skills of seeing). Polanyi also assigned importance to intellectual passions, imagination, and the discoverer’s “”dim sense of direction,”” which is guided by “”intimations of reality, indicated by scientific beauty.””82 Scott provides a fair summary of Polanyi’s account of discovery seen starkly against the backdrop of Russell’s and Popper’s views. There is perhaps a bit too much effort in her discussion to link Polanyi’s ideas with a popular book of the eighties, Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Readers today will likely not know Pirsig, and I don’t believe Pirsig ever truly had a grasp of many of the issues that Polanyi sought to address. However, with her many examples from other writers, Scott does show that other thinkers share Polanyi’s view of the importance of discovery. Finally, included in this review of Polanyi’s perspective on discovery is a succinct but lucid summary of Polanyi’s interesting effort to show the difference between accounts of discovery in modern science from before and after the act of discovery.
The fourth chapter, titled “”Tacit Knowing,”” follows from the extended discussion of discovery as the central puzzle of science. Because discovery is central to knowing, it is necessary to reconceive the nature of knowledge and the knowing process. As his philosophical ideas matured, Polanyi developed such a reconception which he eventually called the theory of tacit knowing. Scott lays out the main parameters of the theory, which she portrays as “”the rehabilitation of Five Wits.””83 Not all knowledge is explicit, exact, and testable, Polanyi argues, but all that is explicit, exact, and testable relies upon tacit elements used by a knower to attend to what is of interest. By carefully discussing skills, Scott shows how Polanyi broadens and reworks the traditional understanding of acquiring and holding knowledge. She discusses Polanyi’s interest in the practical, skillful, and bodily elements of all knowing by reinterpreting Gestalt ideas and partwhole dynamics:
We focus on the whole by not attending to the parts, or as Polanyi says by attending from them to something else which is their joint meaning. We integrate the parts into the whole not by a reasoning process but by a sort of bodily skill, which is so much part of our make-up that we are usually not aware of it—you don’t think of it as a skilled performance when you recognise your child among a crowd!84
Scott ably shows how Polanyi binds together perception and other kinds of knowing and how tacit knowing in human beings is linked to the capacities of other animals and to evolutionary history. Seen against the standard account of knowing, Scott thus summarizes the nature of Polanyi’s personal knowledge: “”There is then no finished certainty to our knowledge, but there is no sceptical despair either. Through all our different kinds of knowledge there is a reasonable faith, personal responsibility and continuing hope.””85
“”Reality,”” Scott’s fifth chapter, sets forth the several important aspects of Polanyi’s metaphysical realism. Against the backdrop of a positivistic view of science, Polanyi reasserted that “”science progresses by guessing at aspects of reality indicated by clues in what is seen and heard, just as we guess that certain sounds indicate the presence of a real burglar and go to look.””86 Polanyi’s realism is commonsensical, but, more importantly, it focuses attention on the knower’s commitments, passions, and tacitly held skills. Polanyi repudiated an impersonal and rule-bound method as the path to discovery, and instead developed a portrait of the scientific discoverer as a responsible, committed person, making full use of tacit powers. Doubt, Polanyi argued, is not the royal road to truth, but responsibly held belief, which one puts forth with universal intent, serves as the key to all human understanding of reality. However, Polanyi’s notion of “”reality”” is not a simple notion that focuses on tangibility: “”we recognize something as real because it draws us on, makes us feel an obligation to search and discover, rewards us by revealing more and unexpected but recognisable meaning.””87 Minds are, for Polanyi, more richly real than cobblestones, and we can know rich realities only by deeply dwelling in their particulars. As Scott puts it, Polanyi’s “”idea of indwelling gives a firmer outline to the idea of commitment. If we indwell in the clues we perceive, using them as an extension of ourselves and a tool for discovering more, we have to commit ourselves more to them.””88 All in all, Scott’s seamless discussion of the several components of Polanyi’s realism is one of her best chapters.
Scott follows chapter 5 with “”Truth and the Free Society,”” a discussion that complements her chapters on discovery, the theory of tacit knowing, and Polanyi’s metaphysics. She outlines Polanyi’s broader account of the operation of the larger scientific community situated in a free society. Polanyi was an astute and articulate scientist who recognized the social aspects of science. Particularly those influenced by early Polanyi texts like Science, Faith, and Society sometimes see Polanyi as an early sociologist of science. Although I, like Scott, think this is an inadequate description of Polanyi’s approach, it is true that Polanyi carefully laid out an account of the scientific endeavor as a cooperating community of independent researchers pursuing truth. Polanyi’s examination of science emerged in the thirties and forties against the backdrop of Marxist-influenced movements to plan science. Scott skillfully sketches how Polanyi emphasized the independence of the scientist and the authority of scientific opinion operating across the many neighborhoods of science. She lays out Polanyi’s view of how professional standards operate within science and how what Polanyi later called “”conviviality””89 provides a necessary but often overlooked element in the scientific community which is committed to the exploration of an unfolding reality. She ably summarizes Polanyi’s account of science as a global self-governing “”form of spontaneous organization,””90 an organization that in early modernity had to reject the authority and tradition of the church but now has (and should acknowledge) its own indispensable tradition. All of these broader social themes in Polanyi’s thought come together in a circumspect discussion in Scott’s chapter.
What Scott does less convincingly in chapter 6 is show concisely how Polanyi’s vision of the scientific community also yielded what he regarded as a liberal vision of society grounded in certain notions of freedom. There is no doubt that Scott appreciates the larger political philosophy Polanyi articulates, as shown by her discussion of Polanyi’s reflection on the important role of a rich variety of independent associations in the state. But she might have here discussed Polanyi’s notions about “”public liberty”” and “”transcendent ideals”” as a way quickly to get to the heart of his political vision. Her comparison of the evolution of scientific views and legal precedents is helpful, but I expect that many readers will find strained her extended effort to compare Puritan ideas about liberty of conscience and what she regards as Polanyi’s sense of the “”scientific spirit.””91 Also disconcerting at the end of this chapter is the several-page retelling and analysis of the story in Selma Langerlof’s novel Jerusalem. Scott construes the story to be about “”moral discovery””92 and “”moral community,””93 but most readers are apt to find it a long stretch to see this story as an analog pulling together Polanyi’s “”account of how scientific discoveries are made, and how they relate to the tradition and authority of the scientific community.””94
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Scott’s seventh chapter, “”Moral Inversion and the Unfree Society,”” circles back to explore in more depth Polanyian themes concerned with the destructive currents in late modern culture, themes introduced in the opening two chapters. Polanyi’s analysis of the troubled modern mind pointed to the fusion of two kinds of convictions: from a misleading theory of knowledge that came with the rise of modern science, we inherited a far-reaching skepticism that undercuts all moral ideas and judgments; but eighteenth-century scientific rationalism also brought a “”giant wave of man’s unlimited moral aspirations which, turned from its Christian channel, poured like a destructive torrent through the channels of rationalism.””95 Scott rightly emphasizes how Polanyi again and again in his analysis of late modern culture hammers home his conclusions about the explosive, destructive impact of this combination of extraordinary contempt for moral values and excessive moral passions fueling a Utopian perfectionism. She outlines Polanyi’s case that England and the United States were spared the full impact of “”moral inversion”” because there “”the inversion is limited to vocabulary and logic but not put into practice; men talk a language of materialism, behaviourism, value-free sociology or utilitarianism, and yet continue in practice to respect the principles of truth, justice or morality which their vocabularies anxiously deny.””96 Scott then reviews Polanyi’s numerous criticisms of Marxism and Soviet institutions and practices. She ends this chapter with an analysis of a speech by a British foreign secretary who typifies what she regards as the muddled moral, epistemological, and metaphysical ideas underlying late-twentieth-century British policies. Scott tries to refine and update some of Polanyi’s cultural criticism but she gets somewhat carried away with her analysis of the British foreign secretary’s speech; she sometimes sounds much more conservative than Polanyi himself.
Polanyi held that scientism often misrepresented complexity for it contended that ultimately everything, including the human being, could be exhaustively described in terms of physical and chemical laws. In her eighth and ninth chapters, Scott summarizes and applies Polanyi’s case against this and other forms of reductionism. Polanyi countered a one-level mechanical account of entities with a hierarchical view that emphasizes how higher level principles of organization operate in margins left open by lower levels of control. Lower levels of control determine the conditions of success and failure in an entity, but they do not control the nature of higher level principles that can come into play. Polanyi used this hierarchical account not only to counter what he regarded as the reductionism of behaviorism but also to criticize Neo-Darwinian arguments that focus too narrowly on variation and selection. Polanyi contended that discussions of evolution needed to make a place for the emergence of greater organizational complexity from the margins left open by lower levels of control. Ultimately, Polanyi held that a theory of evolution that cannot account for the emergence of human beings who are creatures inquiring about evolution is a failure. Polanyi tried to link the structure of evolutionary emergence with his account of tacit knowing. He makes a case that his understanding of the hierarchical structure of entities is a parallel to his account of knowing in terms of subsidiary and focal elements. These matters are the most difficult elements in Polanyi’s philosophical perspective. Scott does a reasonably good job (although sometimes I think she makes things too simple) in summarizing the main ideas in this difficult terrain. She does a better job in her ninth chapter, “”Mind and Body,”” where she presents Polanyi’s criticisms of behaviorism and his effort to institute a starting point for philosophical reflection that does not accept an unbridgeable ontological chasm between mind and matter. Here she introduces some of the discussion in the sixties between Polanyi and Marjorie Grene, Polanyi’s closest philosophical supporter after 1950, but also one of his best critics.97 Although Polanyi disagreed, Grene thought Polanyi’s eagerness to defeat behaviorism led him back to a mindbody dualism. There are a number of things that Polanyi scholars have debated and still debate; Scott’s discussion of this topic of debate should be interesting to even those readers using Scott’s book to locate the general contours of Polanyi’s philosophical perspective.
From discussions in earlier chapters, Scott pulls together in her tenth chapter a rich description of Polanyi’s account of a person. She argues that in Polanyi’s reinterpretation of science, centered on discovery, there is a recovery of the person as more than material and mechanical: “”Polanyi’s ideas of tacit knowledge and the many-level world transform the possibilities for recognising persons in their full humanity, without rejecting the scientific knowledge of the physical world.””98 Polanyi’s person is an engaged, changing, and unique figure grounded in the natural and historical world; Polanyi gives us an account that “”extends biology into theory of knowledge.””99 Polanyi’s person is an inquirer, one who dwells in in order to break out, a responsible figure that makes choices, respects the achievements of all living things, and accepts kinship with them: “”Polanyi set human personhood in a cosmic perspective of evolution, seen as emergence and achievement.”” 100
The final two chapters of Scott’s book, although interesting, are likely of limited value to readers seeking a basic introduction to Polanyi’s ideas. These chapters do treat some themes in Polanyi’s writings, but they are a rather indirect discussion. The eleventh chapter, “”The Poet’s Eye,”” begins with a comparison between the literary critic F. R. Levis and Polanyi, and then introduces Polanyi’s late writing treating symbol, metaphor, art, myth, and religion, which is the main topic. Certainly Scott is right in pointing out that late in life Polanyi tried to extend his earlier philosophical ideas to say more about meaning that he regarded as related to but somewhat different than meaning in science. She says Polanyi’s argument was “”sometimes ambiguous and not entirely convincing””; yet she thinks Polanyi’s efforts to identify a “”special sort of truth””101 are interesting and important. This launches her discussion of Polanyi’s misreading of Coleridge’s claim that appreciating art requires the willing suspension of disbelief. She argues that Polanyi has pulled Coleridge’s idea out of context; what Coleridge has in
