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Michael Polanyi: the anthropology of intellectual history

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Abstract

Scientific and political developments of the early twentieth century led Michael Polanyi to study the role of the scientist in research and the interaction between the individual scholar and the surrounding conditions in community and society. In his concept of “personal knowledge” he gave the theory and history of science an anthropological turn. In many instances of the history of sciences, research is driven by a commitment to beliefs and values. Society plays the role of authority and communicative backdrop that presupposes individual liberty. As a system of beliefs science is rooted in community and also in history. However, as soon as fellow humans become the objects of research, their appeal transcends the researcher. Consequently, the history of human endeavor reveals a “firmament” of standards and obligations which represent an ontological reality, for which Polanyi invokes Teilhard de Chardin’s notion of noosphere.

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Notes

  1. Polanyi (1964, 7–9) ("Background and Prospect"). Polanyi (1966, 3 and 81). Scott and Moleski (2005, 134): Polanyi was offered a position in Leningrad in 1931; cf. pp. 109, 160–162.

  2. It should be noted (although this might sound impolite if not presumptuous) that Polanyi continued to think along the German and Hungarian languages: while in English the word 'personal' connotes intimacy and privacy, in Hungarian and in German the relevant terms ("personales [Wissen]", "személyes") are immediate derivatives of the concept of person (in Hungarian: "személy", which connotes: character, individual, personality) and personhood. Marjorie Grene sent a poem to Polanyi on his appointment to Oxford, which in all friendship chided him: "Where have you left your English? / Though good Magyar this may of course be, / With its 'never suspected's and 'deeper's / It sounds rather Teutonic to me." Quoted from Scott and Moleski (2005, 239 f). Instances of "deeper" in PK 5, 16, 43, and more.

  3. Polanyi 1962; henceforth: PK; numbers without further qualification refer to pages of this edition.

  4. For a detailed analysis of the differences between Lakatos and Polanyi see Sanders (1988: 128–158).

  5. Lakatos (1978, 130); cf. Palló (19970).

  6. Lakatos (1978, 124); this in contrast to Paul Feyerabend's anarchism.

  7. Cf. Polanyi (2006, p. 129): "Galileo claimed rightly that science 'had ravished the testimony of our senses', and we have never recovered our previous confidence in our direct non-scientific experience.".

  8. For details see Holton (1992, 25 f).

  9. This difference is overlooked in Mwamba (2001), chapter 5, which gives an otherwise fair analysis.

  10. Unpublished material in the Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Polanyi Collection (henceforth: RPC) box 34, folder 1, p. 19 f., undated. I am grateful to the librarians, the Center for the Humanities of Loyola University Maryland for a summer research grant, and to the Jesuit community in South Chicago for their hospitality, which allowed me to do research at the Regenstein Library in June 2009.

  11. Francis Bacon is not mentioned in this kind of context, but it is clear that Polanyi's opponent in his first public statement against planned science, J. D. Bernal, was advocating something like a New Atlantis; see Polanyi, Rights and Duties of Science (1936) in Polanyi (1997), chapter 5; here, p. 67, Polanyi identifies the "Marxist doctrine of social determinism and the kindred teachings of fascism". For a comparison of fascism and communism see also Quirico (2004, pp. 220–223).

  12. For strong assessment of Kuhn's "scientific revolutions" as a sociology of science see Musgrave (1971).

  13. The difference between Polanyi and Kuhn and the reasons for their apparent similarity have been extensively discussed by Moleski (2006–2007) in a special issue of Tradition and Discovery devoted to the Kuhn-Polanyi issue, which needs not to be rehashed.

  14. RPC box 34, folder 4, pp. 4–5. On authority and society in science see Breithecker-Amend (1992: 65–80).

  15. RPC box 16, folder 6, letter to Marjorie Grene, dated 4th December 1972: "Karl Popper sweeping in elegance and ignorance over his theories of discovery." Ibid. folder 13, letter to Harry Prosch, 26th July, 1973: "I would say that the position of Popper with the public here is closely associated with the predominant ideas of a mechanistic philosophy. …Unfortunately the basic method of simple mechanics as an explanation of all significant items, is so deep since its establishment 150 years ago, that only a far-reaching innovation could be effective." RPC box 8, folder 13 (quoted in Moleski (2006–2007: 16): " The reputation which Kuhn has earned is comparable only with that of Karl Popper whose writings, so far as they deal with science, seem to me just plain nonsense."

  16. RPC box 16, folder 11. The occasion was the critique in Zaffron (1970), where Popper was not actually mentioned.

  17. RPC box 16, folder 6, letter dated Oct. 13, 1972.

  18. Cf. Fehér (1995, pp. 163–180): "On the role accorded to the public by philosophers of science".

  19. That was found out through the trick of asking Hans questions without knowing the answer; in that case the poor horse was lost.

  20. See for details Mahoney (1974).

  21. A good summary in Vinti (1999: 101–114): "Persona e ontologia".

  22. For instance Lévinas (1972).

  23. Polanyi (1959: 39); on p. 41: "universal obligations". On his relationship to Protestant theology see Weightman (1994), specifically chapter 4.

  24. Saturday Review, 1960, p. 21. For details see Mullins (2003). I am indebted to James Salmon, SJ, for hints at the relationship between Teilhard and Polanyi; a paper from him on this topic is to be expected.

  25. RPC, box 22, folder 14, unnumbered pages. Cf. Scott and Moleski p. 244.

  26. Polanyi, The Body-Mind Relation [1968], in Polanyi (1997), 313–328: 328.

  27. Cf. Life Transcending Physics and Chemistry (1967), in Polanyi 1997: 283: "Form and function in an object may not be explicable in terms of the laws that govern the properties of its atomic constituents.".

  28. Polanyi 1974: 137 f.: "all meaning lies in higher levels of reality that I'm not reducible to the laws by which the ultimate particulars of the universe are controlled." (Faith and Reason, first published in Journal of Religion, 41:237-247, 1961.) The distinction of levels is also explained in the Oxford lecture mentioned above. -- By some irony, this article was republished by Polanyi in 1964 under the heading "The Scientific Revolution" (see Polanyi 1997, chapter 23), although it contains no discussions of the history of sciences or their current theories.

  29. Cf. Clayton 2002-2003 on emergence and reductionism; Gelwick 2005 on teleology. Also cf. Paksi 2007.

  30. To have overlooked this shift is the basis of Gulick's (2005) critique of Apczynski and Gelwick.

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  1. T.J. Higgins, S.J., Chair in Philosophy, Loyola University Maryland, 4501 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD, 21210, USA

    Paul Richard Blum

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Blum, P.R. Michael Polanyi: the anthropology of intellectual history. Stud East Eur Thought 62, 197–216 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-010-9110-2

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