Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-critical Philosophy

by Michael Polanyi

First published in 2012. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Nonfiction, Psychology, Education, Academic, Classics

428 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Michael Polanyi was a Hungarian-British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy.

His wide-ranging research in physical science included chemical kinetics, x-ray diffraction, and adsorption of gases.

He argued that positivism supplies a false account of knowing, which if taken seriously undermines humanity's highest achievements.

He pioneered the theory of fibre diffraction analysis in 1921, and the dislocation theory of plastic deformation of ductile metals and other materials in 1934. He emigrated to Germany, in 1926 becoming a chemistry professor at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, and then in 1933 to England, becoming first a chemistry professor, and then a social sciences professor at the University of Manchester. In 1944 Polanyi was elected to the Royal Society.

Reviews

[Chris Coffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a densely written book which is rich in ideas. Polanyi was a chemist of the first rank, and the scientific precision with which he expresses himself can be, frankly, tedious; in this respect he reminds me of the phenomenonlogist Edmund Husserl, who was the betrayed mentor of Heidegger.

Perhaps Polanyi's key insight is that there is no certainty--not in scientific facts, nor in logic, nor in rationality. Everything that we "know", we have actually made a personal commitment to accept as true. Sounds abstract, but unless anybody has actually met George Bush in person, we have all made individual personal commitments to accept as true that George Bush is currently President of the United States, for example. Polanyi shows that everything we superficially consider to be an incontestable fact is really a personal decision by each one of us to believe somebody else, something we have heard or read, or our own senses--none of which can be considered irrefutably accurate.

Polanyi then shows that this commitment to evaluating the trustworthiness of a source and then choosing whether or not to accept its claims as true is, at heart, an ethical decision.

Very interesting stuff. One implication is that science is less authoritative than we think, and art is more authoritative than we think, in our individual searches for truth. A second implication is that it is honourable to believe something that cannot be proven. Polanyi's main goal is to strip doubt and skepticism of their position as supreme ethical values in Western culture, which they have held since the time of Descartes; that is why the subtitle to his book is "Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy". Polanyi says that it is more noble and more ethical to believe on the basis of reasons we have chosen with good reason to accept, than to doubt because we are aware that proof is not available.

I will include one quote among dozens that are thought-provoking: "The principal purpose of this book is to achieve a frame of mind in which I may hold firmly to what I believe to be true, even though I know that it may conceivably be false." (Page 214) It sounds almost like Nietzsche, but Polanyi admits something that Nietzsche deceitfully concealed, which is that this decision is fundamentally--and unavoidably--an intensely ethical choice.

[Dionysius the Areopagite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reccomend this book to your enemies, especially the ones who act smarter than they are. Why? First, they'll have no excuse of saying it's 'Too old' or 'Outdated.' Second, they've never heard of Polanyi. Third, it's less risky than dosing their drink with acid but equally effective. Fourth, in case you decide not to you can read this obscure, mind breaking book yourself. Shout out 2 Michael Polanyi, I found u amidst a pile of socks.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Periodically I return to this great book, not only to squeeze every last drop of wisdom from it, but also to simply enjoy its prose. Organizationally, the book is discursive, yet coherent.

THE COHERENT WHOLE:
The plan of the book is four-fold.

(1) We notice that even in the most objective sciences, we have to make subjective judgements. The situation relies even more on our subjective selves the less formalized a discipline becomes.

(2) This observation spurs a long meditation on how our objective standards and subjective skills go together. The melding of the two, of the subjective and objective, is what Polanyi calls Personal Knowledge.

(3) This meditation allows us to attack the question, How can we be confident in our knowledge, seeing that it relies on our finite and error prone selves? The answer is, strangely perhaps, that though our judgements might be erroneous, we nevertheless feel compelled to make personal commitments to making our worlds of experience more satisfactory.

(4) Our conclusion opens up a view of all of life, where each creature uses its tacit skill to achieve unprecedented forms of understanding. The discarded view is the idea that life's creative outburst is the result of mechanistic, formal processes. The new view is that life's lifeblood is a organic gestalt, where parts contribute to wholes in unprecedented and non predictable ways.

THE DISCURSIVE SIDE:

Outside of this main plan, yet contributing to it, we travel over a huge range of territory. Physics, mathematics, psychology, biology, politics, history, religion, philosophy are all called into play. Along the way, we critique Marxism, scientism, mechanism, anti-traditionalism, over-traditionism, rationalism and more. It's quite an adventure. In it all, Polanyi says, "look and see how it all goes together." And it does.

APPRAISAL:

History and tradition might, and I think should, look upon Polanyi's work favorably. It is a very well argued work. His discursive range is vast, and for dilettantes, a smorgasbord of delight. And large portions of it are incontestably true (very rare for philosophy). A blemish appears to me Polanyi's realism. It seems Polanyi is unsure that we ever actually make contact with the real world, though we must nevertheless accept naively the appearances we're given. It would have been better if he had been aware of or argued for an Idealist conception of reality, where what is given in experience is actually the world. In this case, a gnawing sense of unreality about our knowing acts, would have transfigured into a joyful contact with actuality. But this means, at least, Idealists can appropriate his thoughts and feel their full vigor.

[Timothy Crouch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vying with McGilchrist for “the most important book I’ve read as an adult” status — and for that matter it’s amazing how much of McGilchrist is anticipated here, right down to the final chapter on teleology in the evolution of humanity (and the brilliant stinger: what IMcG says in 120 pages, Polanyi nearly says in a single paragraph). It’s prescient, comprehensive, definitive — offers a genuine channel between the Scylla of behaviorism/objectivism/rationalism/utilitarianism and the Charybdis of, well, whatever the post-Foucauldians and deconstructionists are up to.

Why four stars only? Because it took me nearly seven months to read four hundred pages. Polanyi’s prose has a real elegance at its best, but the sheer level of background knowledge he assumes and his readiness to abstract make (made) it incredibly slow going, if rewarding. So, difficult to “recommend” per se — but nevertheless essential and in many ways seemingly unsurpassed today. Never mind; I’ve changed my tune — five stars it is.

[Andrew]

This is such a thick, dense book, and so rich with ideas, some of which are brilliant and subtle, some of which reek of bullshit, and a great deal of which contradict each other.

The core of it: think harder about things, science isn't quite as positivist as we think it is, our daily experiences are peppered with acts of faith, and that everything occurs on multiple levels of experience-- our challenge as people-who-know-things is to be cognizant of our acts of faith, and to realize which levels we need to operate on to know more things.

It's a remarkable challenge, and it's a pity Michael Polanyi has been taken up by the intelligent-design cretins (despite the fact that he said we need to confront the fact that we evolved from inanimate matter) simply because he was a 20th Century philosopher who was largely motivated by his Christianity. It's definitely worth a read, especially for those of us who received a scientific education and want to continue to reflect on the lessons learned therein.

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not for the faint-of-heart - it's challenging and difficult in many places, but is one of the few books that Len Sweet assigns to every doctoral class that he teaches. You will definitely be rewarded if you persevere, but maybe find a friend with whom you can discuss and compare notes! It's about the fallacy of the purely scientific method and the impossibility of there being any kind of "objective" knowledge.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Polanyi, Michael. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago, reprint 1974.

Despite the extreme difficulty of both the subject matter and the text itself, Polanyi’s argument is relatively simple: the knower is more akin to a detective looking for patterns than traditional epistemological models allow for. Earlier models saw knowledge as instrumental, and the closer one got to lab instruments, the better the knowledge. With Einstein we see a beginning attack on this type of thinking. His 1905 essays “discovered rationality in nature, unaided by observation” (Polanyi 11).

You Know More than You Can Say

The scientist, or any knower, observes “a set of rules which are not known as such to the person following them” (49). There are rules to an art, but they do not always determine how you practice that art. Polanyi gives the example of practicing a piano. On one hand, a certain sequence of keys have to be hit, but they also have to be hit in a certain way, or “touch.” The element of “touch” remains surprisingly resistant to analysis.

This type of learning is tradition, or that of a master/apprentice relationship. The apprentice watches the master and imitates him. In doing so, he not only learns the technical process of the craft, but he also picks up the rules of the art which aren’t always known to the master himself (53).

Focal Awareness vs. Subsidiary Awareness

I hit a hammer with a nail. In doing so, I attend to both the hammer and the nail, but not in the same way. My focal awareness is on driving the nail. My subsidiary awareness is on the feeling the hammer has on my hand. I am “watch[ing] something else while keeping intensely aware of [it]” (55).

Polanyi concludes this chapter noting that “personal knowledge in science is not made but discovered, and as such it claims contact with reality beyond the clues on which it relies. It commits us, passionately and far beyond our comprehension, to a vision of reality” (64). This is what Thomas Torrance calls “kataphysic knowledge.” It is where we submit as knower to the object known, which then impresses itself into our mode of knowing.

When we discover patterns in learning, the process is irreversible. You can never “unsee” a completed puzzle. The child at early ages learns by basic operational rules. Over time and use, these rules form a system of logic. This system of logic does not give any new information. It is akin to “mere manipulation of symbols” (83). When confronted with a completely new opportunity for knowledge, the mind must make a “proleptic jump” from the known to the unknown.

Subsidiary knowledge is instrumental knowledge. “It is not known in itself but is known in terms of something focally known” (88). In the quest for knowledge, one cannot always say how the subsidiary facts fit together.

“The origin of this intellectual striving…both shapes our understanding and assents to its being true.” It is “an active principle” (96).

“Education is latent knowledge, of which we are aware subsidarily in our sense of intellectual power based on this knowledge” (103).

Polanyi’s project consists in reminding us that we rely on verbal clues in the quest for knowledge. Knowledge is not merely justified, true belief, but also “aha!” It is almost a gamble. Polanyi writes, “We take a plunge only in order to gain a firmer foothold” (106). We are moved by “a desire for greater clarity and coherence.”

Back to the Search

Polanyi points out three “strata of intensions:”

(1) Readily specifiable properties of a class of things.

(2) The known but not readily specifiable.

(3) Indeterminate range of anticipations.

In other words, “In order to analyse the use of a descriptive term we must use it for the purpose of contemplating its subject matter” (116). We move from analysis to use to proleptic jump. It is almost a paradox. One cannot discover a new thing by merely following the accepted rules. There remains a “logical gap” between the rules of the experiment and the discovery (123). Illumination bridges the gap. This logical leap is a heuristic act which requires the rules to be sometimes vague and that interpretation be an art.

Focus awareness {conception of solution} = Look at known data as clues to the unknown

^ ^ ^ ^
| | | |

Subsidiaries

Polanyi: “We look at the known data, but not in themselves, rather as clues to the unknown; as pointers to it and parts of it” (127-128). The act of knowledge has a certain “feel to it.”

“The application of existing rules can produce valuable surveys, but does not advance the principles of science. We have to cross the logical gap between a problem and its solution by relying on the unspecifiable impulse of our intellectual personality” (143).

“As observers or manipulators of experience we are guided by experience and pass through experience without experiencing it in itself” (197).

As Polanyi hints on his last page, and as Thomas Torrance said in all of his literature, the closet analogue to this type of knowing is worship and theology.

Conclusion

We should stand in awe of Polanyi’s breakthrough. One wonders, however, if he would have been as important if Thomas Torrance had not promoted his project. In Torrance’s hands Polanyi’s work, especially when incorporated into theological epistemology and the Trinity, is exhilarating. This book, however, is not. Before reading this book, one should spend some time with Esther Lightcap Meek‘s works on epistemology.

[dv · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Jonathan Ammon · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at page 299 of 400. The following two paragraphs were the last straw:

1. FUNDAMENTAL BELIEFS ‘I believe that in spite of the hazards involved, I am called upon to search for the truth and state my findings’ This sentence, summarizing my fiduciary programme, conveys an ultimate belief which I find myself holding. Its assertion must therefore prove consistent with its content by practising what it authorizes. This is indeed true. For in uttering this sentence I both say that I must commit myself by thought and speech, and do so at the same time. Any enquiry into our ultimate beliefs can be consistent only if it presupposes its own conclusions. It must be intentionally circular. The last statement is itself an instance of the kind of act which it licenses. For it stakes out the grounds of my discourse by relying essentially on the very grounds thus staked out; my confident admission of circularity being justified only by my conviction, that in so far as I express my utmost understanding of my intellectual responsibilities as my own personal belief, I may rest assured of having fulfilled the ultimate requirements of self-criticism; that indeed I am obliged to form such personal beliefs and can hold them in a responsible manner, even though I recognize that such a claim can have no other justification than such as it derives from being declared in the very terms which it endorses. Logically, the whole of my argument is but an elaboration of this circle; it is a systematic course in teaching myself to hold my own beliefs.

[Boggischewsbooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me fourteen years to read this book. Old bus tickets used as bookmarks tell me how far I got each time, but this time I finished. It was distinctly underwhelming.

There are lots of interesting insights in the book, but it suffers in the end from trying to explain everything. In the middle it suffers from having been written in the 1950s, so there are page-long paragraphs referring to scientific debates that have been long forgotten and the contemporary literature cited, with its casual references to lobotomies, torture of animals, and racism, is a good reminder that the 1950s were not the ethical highpoint of the 20th century. These historical vignettes are interesting, in a sense, and even serve to underscore some of his points, but the discussion often assumes a context that no longer exists and the logic rests on points that have long since evaporated so the reader has to fill in the gaps best they can.

It suffers throughout from being written in a style that belabours every single point and, towards the end, becomes increasingly repetitive. It's a shame, because when you work out what he means - which sometimes requires reading the same sentence five or six times (over a period of fourteen years) - you realise it could have been said much more simply and to greater effect. When he does unclench and lets the words flow, the effect is there and he can be almost memorable, but the moments are few and far between and the high points are never that high.

The argument, to paraphrase, goes something like this: induction is logically impossible, but we know stuff. Actually, I, Polanyi, really do know stuff, I'm sure of it. I swear on my head that I do. Mumblemumble. Therefore, god exists. The last bit, reached by an extremely dated critique of evolution, was an obvious overreach even at the time and he knew it. He fudges the whole thing by not saying it directly but it's clear what he means. The early part of the argument is stronger, but the whole thing is interesting.

All of which is a shame because a lot of what he says (before he goes off the rails in the final section of the book) will likely still resonate with the working scientist. He gets deep into what it means to *be* a scientist and places the scientist himself (it was the 50s, so it's always him) at the centre of science which sounds right to me (not the pronoun thing). He doesn't quite finish the job off though. He talks a lot about scientists individually, but less about scientists as a community. He also dodges other sources of interesting messiness. Having neatly pierced the idea that science can be purely objective, the messiness starts to ooze out and he recoils somewhat from the subjective chaos he's unleashed. He still talks a lot about the beauty of science and discovery and his scientists sound like warrior saints, aiming at a higher ideal and chasing the grail. To be fair, they are only aiming, but what happens when they miss, or stop aiming so high?

There are also passages on freedom, society, science, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism whose time has come round again and feel vital and fresh. He was writing in the aftermath of the Second World War with an active totalitarian state to help make his points. It was critically and obviously important then, and continued to be so even if we forgot. There's particular pertinence in his discussion of how science conceived purely for humanitarian ends (and not as an end in itself) can be hijacked by ideology. He was talking about Marxism, but you can substitute the world view of the past 40 years that human flourishing is a consequence of a strong and growing economy and therefore places economic pursuits above all others. In this view (as in the Marxist view) science is forced in a more technological direction by the insistence on immediate "impact" and "pull through" while also being criticised for anything that does not conform to the ideological view. In the final stages - which the US seems to be entering right now - scientific criteria of right and wrong are wholly replaced by ideological criteria. The US might already be there, but everyone else is cheerfully following along.

He also talks about thinking machines a lot. Technically, it's rather naive stuff - the machines weren't doing much thinking in the 50s - but through it you can trace the beginnings of an argument against, say, AI and its use in science, that's more sophisticated even in its nascent state than much of what passes for thoughtful discussion on the matter today.

In short, a difficult but occasionally worthwhile read.

[PKumar Sachin · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is this book about? : This book is about knowledge and how it is possible. In that sense it is a must read for anyone who has jostled with the question of how do we truly know something ? This is indeed quite a perplexing question and has occupied the minds of thinkers for millennia. The question of what counts as valid knowledge became particularly relevant in the aftermath of the scientific revolution, as several knowledge-creating disciplines emerged, and, as a result, it was important to establish a conceptual framework which can be wielded to separate scientific knowledge from non-scientific ones (think Marxism, Psychoanalysis, etc). In the early 20th century, the candle-bearers of this philosophical enterprise were a group called the Positivists, who argued that what counts as knowledge is only those statements whose truth value can be verified. So emerged the verification principle. Verification principle, as you can imagine, is quite a restrictive principle because it leaves statements about God, ethics, etc. to the realm of nonsense. Personal Knowledge tries to reclaim knowledge from the clutches of the "evil" and mechanical Positivists, basically by showing that even scientific statements, which are the epitome of knowledge we consider perfectly disembodied, are at their core personal commitments.

What is Polanyi's central claim? : Polanyi's central claim is that any system of knowledge (basically propositions about what is the case) rests upon a set of personal commitments that the knower makes about the world. Think of these as axioms in formal maths. While higher order propositions can be derived from lower order axioms, in a series of logical moves from axioms to theorems, the axioms themselves are a matter of faith, which arise from a set of personal beliefs about the nature of reality. Lets understand this with an example. Polanyi brings up the scientific study of crystals and argues that some arrangement of realities we consider as patterns, and therefore representative of a deeper level organizing principle, and others we consider mere randomness. What is the verification of this statement? The statement that some arrangements are patterns and some are random is afterall a proposition, but how would anyone verify it? By stating that the probability of things being arranged in a certain way is low? But this statement applies to both ordered and random arrangements. Thus, probability cannot help us establish that one picture is a pattern and one is a random. What can help us establish order is a personal commitment. We think of something as order because it, almost mystically, appeals to us as so. From examples such as these Polanyi argues that even science is in the end a set of commitments.

My View: As stated before, I think this book is a must read for those who have ever thought of knowledge and the conditions that make knowledge possible. Its language is poetic and highly evocative. Polanyi, like all good philosophers, is a great writer and communicates his message in a very simple manner. Simple should not be confused as easy. The book is quite dense, but thats the artefact of its subject-matter not the writers deliberate choices.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a difficult book on several levels, but where it is good, it is so good as to be well worth reading. It starts out as philosophy of science, a sort of refutation of Popper and a variation on Kuhn. You could see him as anticipating Feyerabend in seeing the journey of the scientist as being based on personal conviction more than on systematic process and reason, but he's much more constrained than Feyerabend. For Mr. Polanyi, it's not "anything goes". It's a process where personal conviction and cultural norms interact with scientific truth that corresponds on some level with an underlying reality. It felt to me like a sort of Kantian transcendental idealism - Maybe we cannot ever see the thing in itself but we do see the shadows on the wall of the Platonic cave and can build theories that more or less work and reflect an underlying reality, even if they are necessarily shadow theories colored by personal and cultural perspectives and must always be provisional. I also saw echoes of William James' "Will to Believe" in the discussion of how personal knowledge is formed, becomes established and drives us forward.

My first difficulty with the book is that Mr. Polanyi's articulation of his theories is a bit obscure. I had to pull out the metaphorical pickaxe more than once and engage in some excavation before I could begin to see where he was coming from. I'm sure that I still missed plenty. My second difficulty was that though the basic ideas seem sound, I had difficulty agreeing with their synthesis and application beyond the abstract level of philosophy of science and epistemology. The social analysis of free societies vs. totalitarian societies felt weak to me. I'm all for living in a free society, but I didn't buy Mr. Polanyi's arguments or their derivation from his underlying theory. I had the same problem when he got into biology and evolution. He kept falling back into teleology and the idea of progression toward complexity that seems wrong to me.

One of the most interesting aspects of this book for a contemporary reader is the implication of Mr. Polanyi's ideas for artificial intelligence. There were already computers in use in science and business when this book was written, and Mr. Polanyi could see many of their implications which he uses to argue against a mechanistic interpretation of human consciousness. He would have us believe that the nature of personal knowledge which he sees as the core of our humanity is fundamentally at odds with mechanistic theories. But I wonder if he would still say that in today's world of AI. In some ways the black box of neural networks that drive AI feels a lot like Mr. Polanyi's idea of tacit knowledge. It may be a non-human kind of tacit knowledge, but I think that in some ways it works a lot like the process that Mr. Polanyi sees in humans. I wish that I could find comfort in that, but it feels more alarming than comforting to me.

[David Moss · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unless you're pursuing a PhD in epistemology, read "The Study of Man" and "The Tacit Dimension" and skip this one.

He spends a lot of time in this book showing that he is quite smart and quite knowledgeable and has spent a lot of time considering the efficacy of his beliefs.

In the end, most of this work is justification for his fervent faith in the appropriateness of his Christian beliefs, since they are tacit beliefs and therefore not falsifiable. The reason for the subtitle of the book "Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy" is not just that we should be more a-critically accepting of the existence of beliefs that cannot be judged to be true, but, he argues, accepting that you believe these things then obliges you towards moral progress. He creates the idea of 'moral man' similar to 'rational man' or 'homo economicus'. That the idea "that 'this concept is not useful to 21st-century humans' is true," is something I assert because I believe it.

He occasionally recognizes that the rarified air of his philosophical and scientific elitism is based on democratic states and capitalism, but excuses this as preferable to the worse still authoritarianism/totalitarianism of the USSR at the time, and in doing so endorses the type of statism that enables his life. He at least admits that Britain was as bad as Germany in practice, just not in propaganda.

The best parts of the book, such as showing that words mean nothing except that the speaker is using them to convey their meaning, and the subsidiarity of previously-focal subjects after a skill has been learned, are covered in his short lectures collected in "The Study of Man" and "The Tacit Dimension".

The enlightenment idea that humans are the ultimate, and therefore the end, stage of progress in evolution and complexity is sadly exalted by Polanyi despite his apparent understanding of emergence, and therefore awkward.

This book would have been more profound when it was written, but since then we have emergence and complexity theory, systems science, memetics, and a better understanding of consciousness.

Save yourself some time and just read his lectures.

[Stephen Antczak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dense and a slow read, but interesting ideas on the nature and acquisition of knowledge via science and other means. Personal knowledge is a combination of assumptions that one does not actually verify empirically, such as how most of us accept global warming, relativity and evolution, or that lions are endangered in Africa, or shark attacks are rare, and and actual experiences (including scientific experiments) that, together, give us an approximate understanding of objective reality.

Polanyi's book is a response in part to the work of Kant (Critique of Reason), hence the subtitle "Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy."

I will be making a video about this book for my YouTube channel "I, Nerdius."

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like Polanyi's writing is my introduction to reading philosophy. My favorite moment in the book is when the author discusses evolution and the evolution of humans and human thought to advanced thinking and creating order. After he has made this case for this advancement of thought and defined how he means it when he says this is 'personal,' then he says that is what Christians are experiencing/doing when they articulate their understanding of God. Polanyi isn't trying to make a case for Christianity. He's writing a philosophy book. However, his philosophy does give Christians an interesting paradigm in which to conceptualize their faith.

[Errol Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with a lot of philosophy, you need to keep returning to these texts to gain a better understanding of the authors intent. However, this book challenges the concept of objectivity and repositions science as an exploration of our passion that leads to an agreed understanding or commitment to a particular understanding.

[Deborah Court · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book thirty years ago while doing my doctorate. It changed my thinking about knowledge, experience and how we know what we know, and has affected my academic work ever sense. It is one of the very few books to which I have returned again and again. Not an easy read, but a profound and enlightening one.

[Derek Kreider · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this over the course of a year or two. It is extremely profound and quite dense. I would need to read this ten more times to really glean and grasp all the connections ands content. I appreciate the multidimensional perspective Polyani is able to take, which is what I think really allows him to see the world so non-dogmatically. A must read, particularly in regard to epistemology.

[David Sunde · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is no understanding without standing under.
A slow, dense read with amazing depth of wisdom, cultural commentary, prophetic courage, and self-examination. Best read in community where you can 'think out loud' together.

[Damon · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://www.the-reeds.com/podcast/epi...

https://www.the-reeds.com/post/polany...

[Eric Bott · Rating 3 out of 5]

My brain hurts.

[marisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

ew

[Melissa]

Matthew Crawford

[Christoph · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow, what a long slog this one was.... I have been off-and-on reading this for what feels like two years now. I first happened upon Polyani after reading a pamphlet of his that touched on one of the themes of this work, that science is not a dogmatic authoritarian system of reason but an art that is practiced using all the inequitable faculties of humans. That work was amazing (I even gave it five stars); but this book was the inevitability of extending that pamphlet across 400 pages of jargon-laden ontology on scientism: this book was painful.

I certainly have no problem with dense works, but when the work is both dense, steeped in an out-moded philosophy, AND problematic on a number of supporting points. You are going to lose me. The fact is Polyani suffered from the need to outline a grand scheme in Husserlian fashion so that what we come up with is a Phenomenology of Science which sounds amazing, until we remember where Husserl went wrong. Well, all those same issues can be applied to this work.

There are some good points such as his notion of conviviality, a thorough and exhausting understanding of the nuanced scientific investigations of his day, etc., but the tower of fail continues to build brick by brick as he outlines an ontology of human epistemology and how it is expressed in the individual applying this in pursuit of scientific discovery.

At the end of the day I cannot recommend this book, though. I may revisit it another year, but till then, I feel generous giving this grueling opus two stars. If anything its at least a unique outpost in the genre of history of science.

[Joseph Sverker]

This is certainly an essential book to read if one is interested in epistemology in general and absolutely necessary if one is wanting to understand more of the scientific method and the myth that is upheld about science's objectivity. Polanyi argues very well, and well informed, about how the scientist needs to be personal in his/her quest for knowledge. Personal knowledge does not directly lead to relativity though. But here I think is the weak point in the book. I didn't perhaps read it as thorough as I should have, but to my mind there wasn't really a obvious argument for why there still is right and wrong, and how come the scientific method is better in understanding the world than for example the tribe magic world view. Also, there are long sections on the results of animal tests which I didn't quite understand how they tied in to his main argument. As such, this book could possibly be read selectively, but it might be difficult from the start to know what to skip, because you have to engage when reading this book, personally!

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Epistemology without the arcane syntax and vocabulary. Also, rather than try to define the mind, reality, and how we know that we know, Polanyi takes the remarkable tack of describing how we know what we know, arguing that we in fact know more than we know how to describe or articulate. I would have given the book 5 stars but for his struggles to reconcile Darwinianism with the fact of human sentience. Polanyi acknowledges human cognizance (denying behaviorism), accepts a form of vitalism, teleological (Aristotelian forms, final causation) evolution, and perhaps divine supervision of human evolution. However, William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantingaeach had a better take on this issue.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

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

[Al Maki · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The principle purpose of this book is to achieve a frame of mind in which I may hold firmly to what I believe to be true, even though I know it might conceivably be false.”

A book written by a scientist in the mid 1950's, which, to over-simplify, addresses the problem of belief created by Karl Popper. If the only thing that can be proven about a scientific theory is that it is false then what does it mean to be committed to a theory? Polanyi argues that it is avoiding the question to say that scientists don't believe their theories. He argues that knowledge, scientific and otherwise could not be developed without a personal commitment. His thinking about how we develop knowledge is fascinating reading.

I'm afraid it's beyond my competence to summarize his thinking.

[versarbre · Rating 5 out of 5]

I seldom read a monograph in awe. Yet Polanyi's spirit certainly come alive, jumping out from the curves and lines, to proclaim his own, deep-rooted intellectual passion. I feel myself trembled and almost dare not to continue the pages. The reader should not take the book lightly, because the reading action entails witnessing a true calling, however unspecifiable it is. This is exactly the tacit moment of sharing the same awe/respect of a "superior culture." So it seems, however reluctantly, I myself is committed to a fiduciary community of a particular kind, despite that my membership is dubious socially.

[Ian Slagle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited for this one, as it's a philosophy of science written by an actual scientist, and better yet, a physicist and chemist. Unfortunately, Polanyi makes the same error Popper does (applying his philosophy to whether or not we should accept a scientific theory, instead of experimental evidence). Unfortunately for Polanyi, the theory he went after was not an interpretation of quantum physics, but rather evolution. There's a little bit of "reading this in 2024" bias with that one, but it was still probably not great at the time it was written. I don't think his philosophy otherwise holds water either, but it was novel.