Michael PolanyiReseñas

assessing man's knowledge

Libro eccezionale, che scuote le basi della presunta oggettività scientifica ribaltandole a favore della conoscenza personale intesa come modalità prima di apprendimento. Il testo è del 1958, la chiarezza filosofica con cui affronta problematiche scientifiche è inoppugnabile e alcune delle riflessioni qui messe su carta (per esempio il tema delle conoscenze tacite/esplicite) sono state negli anni a venire rimasticate e banalizzate un po' ovunque. Una lettura fondamentale.

Academic and professional life can seem fragmented at times. After receiving a course of general education, we specialize and then sub-specialize. (Will we sub-sub-specialize in the future?) In particular, the humanities can seem vastly different from the natural sciences, which can seem vastly different from engineering. Into this fragmentation, Polanyi offers a comprehensive philosophy with humans at the center. Polanyi, a physical chemist with economic and philosophical interests, can speak with authority on such broad matters due to his broad erudition.

Of course, Polanyi is most well-known for his book Personal Knowledge. This book can be read as a short introduction to that seminal work. Here, he introduces the concept that all objective knowledge relies on “tacit knowledge” based in human practices. We do not simply memorize our environment but take part in a social inquiry. This rightly notes that there is a human component to all studies. At its core, all studies of the outside are a way to teach ourselves how to live.

This means that all academic inquiry is ultimately a way to study humans and our place in the universe. By mastering endeavors of the mind, we master ourselves, and by mastering our subject matter, we find our place in human history. For Polanyi, this aim of mastery is equally true for the humanities, the natural sciences, and applied fields like engineering.

This work has had great impact in the second-half of the twentieth century. I find Polanyi’s approach liberating from those who just view the sciences as a way to earn money. Instead, they can involve the human soul and spirit as much as the humanities. And they also give scientists a reason to explore inquiry into what it means to be human. In the twenty-first century, this uniting vision is still needed, both on campus and in society, where fragmentation abounds along political lines.

It’s Foucault! It’s about power. This time through discipline.

12/10/21

This is a book with whose project I have much sympathy. This sounds awkward and condescending, and that is my fault, but it’s true. It is the effort of a successful chemist (who turned to philosophy later in his career) to engage with the broader implications of scientific knowledge and activity on the wider field of human knowledge. It seeks to challenge what Polanyi considers the orthodoxy of the critical mindset, which he regards as little better than scientism. Ultimately, however, all Polanyi offers us is a mish-mash of unreconstructed realism, pragmatism, and metaphysicism (!).

Full review HERE

Denne boken er et resultat av over 20 års arbeid fra en vitenskapsmann innen naturvitenskap, vitenskapsteori og filosofi.

This book contains, or at least it's based on, a series of lectures given by Polanyi in the 1960's. It's quite short and only gives a basic introduction to Polanyi's philosophy of science, so philosophers may just as well skip directly to his longer work Personal Knowledge which deals with the same questions in much more detail. Polanyi has a distinct writing style which seems to move in and out of focus. One point is brilliantly insightful, the next one might not seem to make any sense at all. But I still liked this short book and I recommend it as an introduction to his unique perspective on science.

An interesting and original contribution to the philosophy of science. Unlike many other books in this field, this one should be of interest to scientists as well. The weakness of this book is that the argumentation seems to meander this way and that without a very clear focus, but the author still makes some good points along the way.

A treatise on the nature of scientific inquiry, arguing that scientists take as an article of faith that truth exists and can be discovered by scientific methods.There is also some material on science and its relation to society, and to different types of government. Dry stuff, but useful for certain college classes.

science

Personal Knowledge by Michael Polanyi (1998)

Study of Man by M. Polanyi (1963)

Tacit Dimension by Michael Polanyi (1983)