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Contact with Reality: Michael Polanyi's Realism and Why it Matters
Is knowledge discovered, or just invented? Can we ever get outside ourselves to know how reality is in itself, independent of us? Philosophical realism raises the question whether in our knowing we connect with an independent reality--or only connect with our own mental constructs. Far from being a silly parlor game, the question impacts our lives concretely and deeply. Modern Western culture has been infected with antirealism and the doubt, skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, and atheism that attends it--not to mention distrust and arbitrary (mis)use of reality. Premier scientist-turned-philosopher Michael Polanyi stepped aside from research to offer an innovative account of knowing that takes its cue from how discovery actually happens. Polanyi defied the antirealism of the twentieth century, sounding a ringing note of hope in his repeated claim that in discovery, we know we have made contact with reality because ""we have a sense of the possibility of indeterminate future manifestations."" And that sense marks contact with reality, because it is the way reality is: abundant, generous, and fraught with as-yet-unnameable possibilities. This book examines that distinctive claim, contrasting it to the wider philosophical discussions regarding realism and antirealism in the recent decades. It shows why Polanyi's outlook is superior, and why that matters, not just to scientific discoverers, but to us all. ""In this lively book, Esther Lightcap Meek does more than simply make a compelling case for Polanyi's realism in the context of dominant epistemologies and philosophies of science; she also brings out a beautiful dimension of Polanyi's thought that is not often seen, deepening its metaphysical underpinnings through creative engagement with contemporary thinkers. This book makes a much-needed contribution to the reception of Polanyi--and offers a fresh, new way to think about reason more generally."" --D. C. Schindler, Associate Professor of Metaphysics and Anthropology, Pontifical John Paul II Institute, Washington, DC ""Justifiably renowned for her previous explorations of the knowing process, Meek here guides us expertly through Michael Polanyi's epistemology and commends to us a renewed and humble appreciation of the generosity of reality itself. In an era of 'post-truth' and 'alternative facts, ' this account of how we may discover what is real is very welcome indeed."" --Murray Rae, Professor, Department of Theology and Religion, University of Otago, New Zealand ""In this inspiring work, Meek brings us back to the most fundamental point of all: 'the natural trust and communion with reality that lies at the heart of humanness.' This book is a philosophical celebration of that relation, in the idiom of Michael Polanyi, and all who are drawn to this topic will find it a compelling read."" --Oliver Davies, Professor of Christian Doctrine, King's College London ""Meek's fans will welcome this extension of her covenant epistemology to the metaphysics of realism, in careful conversation with contemporary philosophy. Polanyi's claim that knowing always bears indeterminate future manifestations is her theme, and it reaches an exciting climax in her comparison of Polanyi with Catholic thinkers Schindler and von Balthasar. This is an original, important contribution to preserving Mystery and furthering hope in the modern age, and deserves the widest readership. Take and read."" --David Rutledge, Pitts Professor Emeritus of Religion, Furman University; Past President, The Polanyi Society Esther Lightcap Meek is Professor of Philosophy at Geneva College. Her other books include Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People (2003); Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology (2011); and A Little Manual for Knowing (2014). www.longingtoknow.com
- GenresPhilosophyTheology
320 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2017
21 people are currently reading
112 people want to read
About the author
Esther Lightcap Meek
12 books57 followersEsther Lightcap Meek (BA, Cedarville College; MA, Western Kentucky University; PhD, Temple University) is Professor of Philosophy emeritus at Geneva College. She is a Makoto Fujimura Institute Scholar, a member of The Polanyi Society, and an Associate Fellow with the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology.
Esther is the author of four books and several publications which express philosophical insights in every-day language for all of us. She also gives courses, workshops and talks for high schools, colleges and graduate institutions, as well as for businesses, churches, and other organizations.
Esther is the author of four books and several publications which express philosophical insights in every-day language for all of us. She also gives courses, workshops and talks for high schools, colleges and graduate institutions, as well as for businesses, churches, and other organizations.
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September 14, 2023
Meek, Esther Lightcap. Contact with Reality: Michael Polanyi’s Realism and Why it Matters. Cascade Books, 2017.
The truth is out there. Agent Mulder aside, we can really know the truth and make contact with it, even if we can never fully exhaust it. In fact, part of what it means to contact the real world is we will never fully exhaust our knowledge of it. The reason is obvious: we are always discovering new things.
Having read Esther Lightcap Meek’s Longing to Know and A Brief Manual on Knowing, I eagerly dove into her updated dissertation on Michael Polanyi’s epistemology. Understanding that it is a dissertation, the book succeeds. Because it is a dissertation, however, it is not written like the previous books. Those books had an almost healing texture to the prose. This book does not, nor probably should it. It is strictly academic work.
As such, it expands upon earlier Polanyian insights and places them within the larger dialogue on realist epistemology. It further explains key concepts in her earlier works, answering questions about the relationship between Polanyi and the different schools of modern philosophy, both analytic and Continental.
Michael Polanyi, a Hungarian chemist turned philosopher, attacked the post-Kantian notion that knowledge either involved a personal agent, and as such was never objective, or it denied the personal agent and reduced itself to positivism. By contrast, Polanyi cogently argued that the knower is more akin to a detective looking for patterns, trusting that reality is “out there” and we can access it.
Another of Polanyi’s key points is that we can know more than we can say. Lest this be misunderstood as some vague mysticism, we need to examine his distinction between focal and subsidiary. The human knower forms a triad of subsidiary, person, and focal. As personal knowers, we bring the facts into a larger integrative pattern. We are still at the level of tacit knowing. As the pattern emerges, our knowledge points to a focal point.
To use a concrete example, how do you know how you recognize a person in a crowd? You look for clues–the person’s chin, hair, ear–but you can never really say “how” these clues, these subsidiaries, merge into a focal point, allowing instant recognition of the person.
Every act of knowledge consists of the knower’s active integration of particulars into a larger whole. Subsidiary and tacit do not mean the same thing. Tacit is broader than subsidiary and includes concepts like imagination and intuition. The tacit knowing uses the subsidiary clues.
Athletes have a more intuitive (tacit?) understanding of this than anyone else. That is because they understand another Polanyian concept: indwelling. Indwelling means “our being is transformed as our bodies extend into the world…We come to dwell in the activity as we master the skills involved (render particular the subsidiaries) (Meek).” We move from thinking about to thinking through. For example, whenever you ride a bike, you just ride. You do not focus on how your body is balancing and the law of angular momentum, true as it is. Indwelling opens the world, connecting the knower more deeply in it. When my mind moves outward towards a pattern, I am trusting myself to that pattern, to the hope that it will open itself to me.
Realism
Realism is the belief that there exists a mind-independent reality. We can make propositions that correspond to the real world. This is a common-sense enough view. It is true, and Polanyi never rejects it, but it is not really how the day-to-day act of discovery works. Moreover, if made absolute, it is subject to a number of devastating criticisms.
Correspondence theories, while correct on one level, run aground on the temptation of the “God’s-eye view of knowledge.” In other words, to quote Quine, to check my words against the world requires an “illicit vantage point.” The idea of correspondence itself is part of the total theory that needs to be explained (e.g., Putnam). Must we then become postmodernists, embracing the horror of Continental Philosophy? No, for aim not at correspondence, but with contact. All we need for a statement to be true is for it to contact reality.
For Polanyi, as for scientists in general, Polanyi holds to a “correspondence of commitment,” personal passion → confident utterance → converges with accredited facts. We can never have a complete correspondence because we can never know all the subsidiaries. This means reality always presents before us the promise, even the hope, of discovery. No piece of information is able to capture completely what we mean by it. This is what Meek calls “indeterminate future manifestation.” Moreover, as Polanyi continues, any piece of information implies “a spectrum of information of which we at a particular time are not aware.”
What then is reality? Reality is “that which manifests itself indeterminately, experiences of which signals the knower’s contact with reality.” Real is that which may be expected to manifest itself indeterminately in the future.” The picture of knowledge is contact with reality, not mere correspondence.
Conclusion
Such is the essence of Polanyi’s thought. Meek spends the rest of the book surveying current models of realism and possible convergences with phenomenology. Phenomenology shares with Polanyi the insight that we are “always already” present in the act of knowing. What phenomenology (and Continental Philosophy in general) lacks is any clear explanation of how my presence in knowing extends however to the real. This is similar to the criticism that Martin Heidegger never really connects truth with mind.
If someone has not read Meek’s earlier works, then it is best not to begin with this one. This is an academic treatise. Her earlier works ably summarize Polanyi’s thought and prepare the reader for more difficult endeavors later on.
The truth is out there. Agent Mulder aside, we can really know the truth and make contact with it, even if we can never fully exhaust it. In fact, part of what it means to contact the real world is we will never fully exhaust our knowledge of it. The reason is obvious: we are always discovering new things.
Having read Esther Lightcap Meek’s Longing to Know and A Brief Manual on Knowing, I eagerly dove into her updated dissertation on Michael Polanyi’s epistemology. Understanding that it is a dissertation, the book succeeds. Because it is a dissertation, however, it is not written like the previous books. Those books had an almost healing texture to the prose. This book does not, nor probably should it. It is strictly academic work.
As such, it expands upon earlier Polanyian insights and places them within the larger dialogue on realist epistemology. It further explains key concepts in her earlier works, answering questions about the relationship between Polanyi and the different schools of modern philosophy, both analytic and Continental.
Michael Polanyi, a Hungarian chemist turned philosopher, attacked the post-Kantian notion that knowledge either involved a personal agent, and as such was never objective, or it denied the personal agent and reduced itself to positivism. By contrast, Polanyi cogently argued that the knower is more akin to a detective looking for patterns, trusting that reality is “out there” and we can access it.
Another of Polanyi’s key points is that we can know more than we can say. Lest this be misunderstood as some vague mysticism, we need to examine his distinction between focal and subsidiary. The human knower forms a triad of subsidiary, person, and focal. As personal knowers, we bring the facts into a larger integrative pattern. We are still at the level of tacit knowing. As the pattern emerges, our knowledge points to a focal point.
To use a concrete example, how do you know how you recognize a person in a crowd? You look for clues–the person’s chin, hair, ear–but you can never really say “how” these clues, these subsidiaries, merge into a focal point, allowing instant recognition of the person.
Every act of knowledge consists of the knower’s active integration of particulars into a larger whole. Subsidiary and tacit do not mean the same thing. Tacit is broader than subsidiary and includes concepts like imagination and intuition. The tacit knowing uses the subsidiary clues.
Athletes have a more intuitive (tacit?) understanding of this than anyone else. That is because they understand another Polanyian concept: indwelling. Indwelling means “our being is transformed as our bodies extend into the world…We come to dwell in the activity as we master the skills involved (render particular the subsidiaries) (Meek).” We move from thinking about to thinking through. For example, whenever you ride a bike, you just ride. You do not focus on how your body is balancing and the law of angular momentum, true as it is. Indwelling opens the world, connecting the knower more deeply in it. When my mind moves outward towards a pattern, I am trusting myself to that pattern, to the hope that it will open itself to me.
Realism
Realism is the belief that there exists a mind-independent reality. We can make propositions that correspond to the real world. This is a common-sense enough view. It is true, and Polanyi never rejects it, but it is not really how the day-to-day act of discovery works. Moreover, if made absolute, it is subject to a number of devastating criticisms.
Correspondence theories, while correct on one level, run aground on the temptation of the “God’s-eye view of knowledge.” In other words, to quote Quine, to check my words against the world requires an “illicit vantage point.” The idea of correspondence itself is part of the total theory that needs to be explained (e.g., Putnam). Must we then become postmodernists, embracing the horror of Continental Philosophy? No, for aim not at correspondence, but with contact. All we need for a statement to be true is for it to contact reality.
For Polanyi, as for scientists in general, Polanyi holds to a “correspondence of commitment,” personal passion → confident utterance → converges with accredited facts. We can never have a complete correspondence because we can never know all the subsidiaries. This means reality always presents before us the promise, even the hope, of discovery. No piece of information is able to capture completely what we mean by it. This is what Meek calls “indeterminate future manifestation.” Moreover, as Polanyi continues, any piece of information implies “a spectrum of information of which we at a particular time are not aware.”
What then is reality? Reality is “that which manifests itself indeterminately, experiences of which signals the knower’s contact with reality.” Real is that which may be expected to manifest itself indeterminately in the future.” The picture of knowledge is contact with reality, not mere correspondence.
Conclusion
Such is the essence of Polanyi’s thought. Meek spends the rest of the book surveying current models of realism and possible convergences with phenomenology. Phenomenology shares with Polanyi the insight that we are “always already” present in the act of knowing. What phenomenology (and Continental Philosophy in general) lacks is any clear explanation of how my presence in knowing extends however to the real. This is similar to the criticism that Martin Heidegger never really connects truth with mind.
If someone has not read Meek’s earlier works, then it is best not to begin with this one. This is an academic treatise. Her earlier works ably summarize Polanyi’s thought and prepare the reader for more difficult endeavors later on.
August 9, 2019
Reality: It’s not what it used to be
We have come to a point in human history where philosophical skepticism of objective reality, and its accompanying despair, have seeped into the popular culture so that even the young are in the grip of existential angst, fretting over whether anything really exists outside their mind and independently of their knowing it. One young lady, longing for contact with reality, clung to the glimmer of hope that it was possible. She grew up to become a Professor of Philosophy and she wrote this book.
The author found hope in Michael Polanyi’s speculation that fallible human brains could generate correct ideas about their surroundings, at least insofar as the brains belonged to well-trained, well-intentioned, devoted and honest scientists, and the ideas were properly vetted by other equally well-trained, well-intentioned, devoted and honest scientists. This of course presupposes a special class of uber-scientists on whom we must rely to inform the rest of humanity what reality is all about. Given Polanyi’s devastating critique of logical positivism, i.e., that there are no neutral objective scientific observers, we are left to wonder who oversees the scientific geniuses that oversee us in the event they turn out to be less well-intentioned and honest than the theory requires them to be.
The author invokes Polanyi’s definition that the real is that which manifests itself indeterminately in the future and we know we have contacted reality “because our discovery is accompanied, and therein attested to, by a sense of unspecifiable future prospects of what we have found.” Page 3. Scientific geniuses are said to have a more highly developed sense for detecting unspecifiable future prospects and this, we are told, makes them uniquely qualified to be our arbiters of reality. A logical, though counter-intuitive, result of this definition of reality, and manner of detecting it, is that there is a sliding scale of reality: the greater the sense of future indeterminate manifestations, the more real the object that inspired the sensation and, conversely, the lesser the sensation the less real the object.
From whence comes this sixth-sense that detects reality through intimations of indeterminate future manifestations? It is a combination of intuition and imagination: “Confirmatory intuition proclaims validity of discovery; imagination points to inexhaustible future manifestations.” Page 53. The author admits that this fundamental reliance on intuition “serves to fuel the fire of the critic’s claim that Polanyi’s work sanctions mysticism.” Page 49. She denies a mystical source to Polanyian knowledge, but only “in the sense of [a mysticism] that provides knowledge immediately or irrationally.” Page 46. She subsequently redefines the term “rationality” so broadly so as to include the non-rational in order to claim that the Polanyian source of knowledge is not irrational and therefore not mystical: “Rationality of a Polanyian sort is ultimately unspecifiable”; “This rationality is not fully determinate”; and “The kind of rationality involved is not restricted to some sort of formal consistency but rather exceeds the understanding of its discoverer.” Page 100. If the quoted sentences make no sense to you, simply replace the word “rationality” with the word “mysticism” and things will become clearer.
The author’s own experiments in contacting reality are quite perplexing, and even troubling, though this may be attributable to her being a philosopher and not a scientific genius. The author explains how individual people with whom she makes contact are more or less real based on her sensations of their indeterminate future manifestations. She writes:
“The reality statement seems especially applicable with respect to our involvement with human beings. I find a person intriguing to the extent that he intimates an indeterminate range of future manifestations – I sense that there is a much more there for me to get to know. To the extent that a person does not strike me in this way, he strikes me as ‘unreal’ or shallow and uninteresting.” Page 72.
This way of thinking readily lends itself to the de-humanization of individuals (and classes of individuals). It is small step from determining that individuals (or classes of individuals) are less ‘real’ due to their limited perceived future potential, to then asking, “What is the harm in eliminating the ‘unreal’ from society?” Of course, our well-intentioned uber-scientists would never ask such a question. Would they?
In any event, if this is the new reality, I prefer the old one.
We have come to a point in human history where philosophical skepticism of objective reality, and its accompanying despair, have seeped into the popular culture so that even the young are in the grip of existential angst, fretting over whether anything really exists outside their mind and independently of their knowing it. One young lady, longing for contact with reality, clung to the glimmer of hope that it was possible. She grew up to become a Professor of Philosophy and she wrote this book.
The author found hope in Michael Polanyi’s speculation that fallible human brains could generate correct ideas about their surroundings, at least insofar as the brains belonged to well-trained, well-intentioned, devoted and honest scientists, and the ideas were properly vetted by other equally well-trained, well-intentioned, devoted and honest scientists. This of course presupposes a special class of uber-scientists on whom we must rely to inform the rest of humanity what reality is all about. Given Polanyi’s devastating critique of logical positivism, i.e., that there are no neutral objective scientific observers, we are left to wonder who oversees the scientific geniuses that oversee us in the event they turn out to be less well-intentioned and honest than the theory requires them to be.
The author invokes Polanyi’s definition that the real is that which manifests itself indeterminately in the future and we know we have contacted reality “because our discovery is accompanied, and therein attested to, by a sense of unspecifiable future prospects of what we have found.” Page 3. Scientific geniuses are said to have a more highly developed sense for detecting unspecifiable future prospects and this, we are told, makes them uniquely qualified to be our arbiters of reality. A logical, though counter-intuitive, result of this definition of reality, and manner of detecting it, is that there is a sliding scale of reality: the greater the sense of future indeterminate manifestations, the more real the object that inspired the sensation and, conversely, the lesser the sensation the less real the object.
From whence comes this sixth-sense that detects reality through intimations of indeterminate future manifestations? It is a combination of intuition and imagination: “Confirmatory intuition proclaims validity of discovery; imagination points to inexhaustible future manifestations.” Page 53. The author admits that this fundamental reliance on intuition “serves to fuel the fire of the critic’s claim that Polanyi’s work sanctions mysticism.” Page 49. She denies a mystical source to Polanyian knowledge, but only “in the sense of [a mysticism] that provides knowledge immediately or irrationally.” Page 46. She subsequently redefines the term “rationality” so broadly so as to include the non-rational in order to claim that the Polanyian source of knowledge is not irrational and therefore not mystical: “Rationality of a Polanyian sort is ultimately unspecifiable”; “This rationality is not fully determinate”; and “The kind of rationality involved is not restricted to some sort of formal consistency but rather exceeds the understanding of its discoverer.” Page 100. If the quoted sentences make no sense to you, simply replace the word “rationality” with the word “mysticism” and things will become clearer.
The author’s own experiments in contacting reality are quite perplexing, and even troubling, though this may be attributable to her being a philosopher and not a scientific genius. The author explains how individual people with whom she makes contact are more or less real based on her sensations of their indeterminate future manifestations. She writes:
“The reality statement seems especially applicable with respect to our involvement with human beings. I find a person intriguing to the extent that he intimates an indeterminate range of future manifestations – I sense that there is a much more there for me to get to know. To the extent that a person does not strike me in this way, he strikes me as ‘unreal’ or shallow and uninteresting.” Page 72.
This way of thinking readily lends itself to the de-humanization of individuals (and classes of individuals). It is small step from determining that individuals (or classes of individuals) are less ‘real’ due to their limited perceived future potential, to then asking, “What is the harm in eliminating the ‘unreal’ from society?” Of course, our well-intentioned uber-scientists would never ask such a question. Would they?
In any event, if this is the new reality, I prefer the old one.
September 1, 2017
I met Esther Meek a couple of years back at an American Scientific Affiliation meeting, and that encounter led me to read Meek's book on covenant epistemology. It was a tough read in some ways, but it also had some brilliant insights.
This book provides background material that has helped me get my head around Michael Polanyi and his epistemological thoughts. So, for my purposes, I give it five stars.
See my review on the Social Epistemology Review & Reply Collective.
This book provides background material that has helped me get my head around Michael Polanyi and his epistemological thoughts. So, for my purposes, I give it five stars.
See my review on the Social Epistemology Review & Reply Collective.
November 12, 2024
This is a PhD on Polanyi that was published many years after its examination. To focus on 'realism' is provocative, but the politics and the political context that shaped Polanyi's fight with just about everyone (!) is absent.
I was impressed by the writer's exploration in four paragraphs about why Polanyi has been lost to intellectual history. That is the starting place for a remarkable book...
I was impressed by the writer's exploration in four paragraphs about why Polanyi has been lost to intellectual history. That is the starting place for a remarkable book...
November 1, 2024
Love it. Too much philosophy for me at times (all the different terms; also the background regarding other philosophers & how they see the world/ certain terms), but when the transparency-opacity shifts hits & you see through the terms into what she's describing -- yea, that's real and that's super cool! :)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews