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Meaning
Published very shortly before his death in February 1976, Meaning is the culmination of Michael Polanyi's philosophic endeavors. With the assistance of Harry Prosch, Polanyi goes beyond his earlier critique of scientific "objectivity" to investigate meaning as founded upon the imaginative and creative faculties.
Establishing that science is an inherently normative form of knowledge and that society gives meaning to science instead of being given the "truth" by science, Polanyi contends here that the foundation of meaning is the creative imagination. Largely through metaphorical expression in poetry, art, myth, and religion, the imagination is used to synthesize the otherwise chaotic and disparate elements of life. To Polanyi these integrations stand with those of science as equally valid modes of knowledge. He hopes this view of the foundation of meaning will restore validity to the traditional ideas that were undercut by modern science. Polanyi also outlines the general conditions of a free society that encourage varied approaches to truth, and includes an illuminating discussion of how to restore, to modern minds, the possibility for the acceptance of religion.
Establishing that science is an inherently normative form of knowledge and that society gives meaning to science instead of being given the "truth" by science, Polanyi contends here that the foundation of meaning is the creative imagination. Largely through metaphorical expression in poetry, art, myth, and religion, the imagination is used to synthesize the otherwise chaotic and disparate elements of life. To Polanyi these integrations stand with those of science as equally valid modes of knowledge. He hopes this view of the foundation of meaning will restore validity to the traditional ideas that were undercut by modern science. Polanyi also outlines the general conditions of a free society that encourage varied approaches to truth, and includes an illuminating discussion of how to restore, to modern minds, the possibility for the acceptance of religion.
260 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 1975
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426 people want to read
About the author
Michael Polanyi
32 books109 followersMichael 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 28, 2007
Michael Polanyi (1891 - 1976) was a Hungarian-Jewish (I mention this because his writings contain intermittent, but always positive, references to Christianity) chemist of the first rank, who in the middle of his scientific career became an economist and philosopher of considerable influence. Primarily an important and innovative research scientist in the 1920s and 1930s, Polanyi began thinking about the basis for scientific knowledge during the Lysenko controversy in the late 1930s, when the charlatan Lysenko was able to drive his colleagues into exile and death, with the result that Soviet biology and genetics was crippled for two generations at least.
What Polanyi realised was that the controversy between Lysenko and Western (Darwinian and Mendelian) geneticists came down, not to factual disputes, but to a he-said, she-said question of authority: the authority of Western scientists versus the authority of Soviet scientists.
Of course, most people think of science as a field in which human beings enjoy absolute certainty about they do know--physicists may not understand the full implications of quantum mechanics, but we have figured out the Law of Gravity, Relativity, the nature of light, etc. Polanyi was one of the first to show that the truth is much more complicated than that, and that in fact science and scientific knowledge have clear limits, and that the really interesting questions are all beyond those limits. We can describe the law of gravity mathematically, for example, but we don't know WHY it works.
Polanyi shows how all knowledge is what he calls "personal knowledge", ie a belief to which we are individually committed because of an ultimately moral decision that the knowledge we accept is true, or as close to the truth as we are likely to get on any particular issue. He also shows how, in the world of science, the personal knowledge of individual scientists is constantly clarified, re-calibrated, and cross-checked by other scientists who are equally committed to approaching as closely as possible to the truth. Notice that there is no reference in this concept to "the facts" or "physical proof", or "experimental confirmation", because Polanyi's point is that none on of these supposed foundations of scientific knowledge are anything other than provisional and subject to further re-assessment.
Readers of Thomas Kuhn (whose books began coming out at the same time, but independently, of Polanyi's) will be familiar with some of these issues. But Polanyi's analysis is profound and much broader than Kuhn's, and like all good scientific theories (in Polanyi's view), his analysis has all kinds of unexpected implications. Polanyi was one of the first to focus on spontaneous order, which is a major underlying feature of evolution but also effects all kinds of chemical and physics behaviour, as well as economics and sociology. Chaos theory owes a great deal to Polanyi, for example.
Another interesting implication of Polanyi's analysis is his critique of aesthetics, which proposes a much more interesting explanation of art than mimesis.
{REVIEW CONTINUED AS COMMENT #1)
What Polanyi realised was that the controversy between Lysenko and Western (Darwinian and Mendelian) geneticists came down, not to factual disputes, but to a he-said, she-said question of authority: the authority of Western scientists versus the authority of Soviet scientists.
Of course, most people think of science as a field in which human beings enjoy absolute certainty about they do know--physicists may not understand the full implications of quantum mechanics, but we have figured out the Law of Gravity, Relativity, the nature of light, etc. Polanyi was one of the first to show that the truth is much more complicated than that, and that in fact science and scientific knowledge have clear limits, and that the really interesting questions are all beyond those limits. We can describe the law of gravity mathematically, for example, but we don't know WHY it works.
Polanyi shows how all knowledge is what he calls "personal knowledge", ie a belief to which we are individually committed because of an ultimately moral decision that the knowledge we accept is true, or as close to the truth as we are likely to get on any particular issue. He also shows how, in the world of science, the personal knowledge of individual scientists is constantly clarified, re-calibrated, and cross-checked by other scientists who are equally committed to approaching as closely as possible to the truth. Notice that there is no reference in this concept to "the facts" or "physical proof", or "experimental confirmation", because Polanyi's point is that none on of these supposed foundations of scientific knowledge are anything other than provisional and subject to further re-assessment.
Readers of Thomas Kuhn (whose books began coming out at the same time, but independently, of Polanyi's) will be familiar with some of these issues. But Polanyi's analysis is profound and much broader than Kuhn's, and like all good scientific theories (in Polanyi's view), his analysis has all kinds of unexpected implications. Polanyi was one of the first to focus on spontaneous order, which is a major underlying feature of evolution but also effects all kinds of chemical and physics behaviour, as well as economics and sociology. Chaos theory owes a great deal to Polanyi, for example.
Another interesting implication of Polanyi's analysis is his critique of aesthetics, which proposes a much more interesting explanation of art than mimesis.
{REVIEW CONTINUED AS COMMENT #1)
Currently reading
April 7, 2011I've been meaning to read Polanyi for a while, since hearing about him on an audio show (Mars Hill Audio). One of the lesser known "architects" of postmodern thought, and, I think, a fairly accessible and positive example of postmodern thought. Despite the title "Meaning," he and Harry Prosche (his co-author) claim, in the first chapter, that their real topic is "intellectual freedom", which post-Enlightenment thought (or really, thought since the Reformation) has failed to justify according to its logic, despite being founded on the premise of intellectual freedom. This crisis was felt most strongly in Europe, where the advent of Enlightenment philosophy (and its natural conclusions which proved so bloody) was contemporaneous with the dissolution of the church as an effective entity-- whereas this was not as extremely the case in Anglophone countries (or so I gather from P & P's introduction), where there was a sort of "freeze" on logic, so that the natural, nihilistic conclusions of Enlightenment & post-Enlightenment philosophy were not recognized and Anglophone countries (America seems specially singled out) went on providing aid and living according to their values, believing they were logically derived but in fact were traditionally derived. I'm surprised there is not more explicit reference to the dominance of church in America, but maybe that's b/c I was raised in an Evangelical setting and have been told since childhood that things like our intervention in WWII were ethically motivated and part and parcel of our faith in God and Country.
From what I understand, one of Polanyi's signature "moves" is to emphasize the role of "authority" in any sort of knowledge, as a necessary part of what "human knowing" is, against the Enlightenment philosophers, who, for good reason at the time, insisted that knowledge had to be dealt with independent of "Authority." I'm wondering if this book with perhaps look at ethical behavior not in terms of the logical explanations given by the practitioners, but instead looking at ethical behavior as simply something we already "do" and are therefore competent in, deriving an explanation from the implict logic of praxis-- much as Ricoeur claims to do when he looks at "what historians do" when developing an epistemological justification of historical knowledge, rather than creating ideal criteria apart from practice and then imposing them on historical praxis.
I should also note that, while Polanyi has been latched onto in certain Christian intellectual circles (i.e. Mars Hill Audio), his book is not in any way a justification of, say, American Christianity or any religion, as far as I can tell so far-- I imagine that Polanyi's work is as relevant for critiquing christian epistemology and praxis as well as post-Enlightenment epistemology and praxis. I should also note that this book is from 1975, and Polanyi was active earlier (the book is posthumous), so that he really does belong to the very start of Postmodernism, and his criticisms will be of Modern thought-- reading him now may seem a bit out of date, if you take his criticisms personally and have already been through the "postmodern turn".
And finally-- I figure I'll enjoy this book because of the variety of author's cited in the notes whom I find very interesting, yet underrepresented: Merleau Ponty (though he is getting more popular the last decade or two), C.S. Lewis (don't know yet how critically P&P will engage with Lewis, but I find it exciting anyway-- I mostly encounter Lewis' thought in naive and out-of-date Christian evangelical thought), Owen Barfield (the forgotten, yet most philosophically minded Inkling, whose book Poetic Diction has some really interesting linguistic-philosophical speculation going on), and then anthropologists/historians of religion like Levi-Strauss and Mircea Eliade who touch on my own field as a mythologist. Anyway, I'm pretty excited to see someone engage with Lewis and Barfield at the academic level-- I've been wanting to start connecting the dots with them and contemporary scholarly discourse for a while, since the Inklings served as my "archetype" for "scholarly figures" when I was first discovering I wanted to go into academics. I may be "firmly rooted" in poststructuralism myself now, but I'm still very interested in their thought.
BRIEF UPDATE-- so far it looks like he is just giving his own version of a Heideggerian or Merleau-Pontian epistemology, though he doesn't cite Heidegger at all, despite using one or two of H's examples very blatantly. I also just saw that Polanyi as ALSO a professor of Chemistry, so I'm enjoying getting a perspective on scientific and other types of knowing from someone with experience in BOTH the sciences and philosophy-- I think people like that are really important, otherwise we end up looking at the other camp and thinking "well, THEY don't know what they're talking about." I think science and continental philosophy go together better than people tend to realize-- for example, Kuhn's idea of scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts was derived from his encounter with Foucault and others, I think when he was an undergrad maybe-- I haven't read his book yet, but from what I've heard it is basically a scientist appropriating continental philosophy-- so maybe a bit naive from the POV of continental phil., but very informed from the perspective of the sciences. I'm not sure, could be wrong. Polanyi, however, is thoroughly informed in both worlds, even if his prime was 1/2 a century ago now. Still very relevant, just as Heidegger and MP are, but again, this perspective is more of a given in the humanities now, rather than groundbreaking.
Another brief update: Trying to start this again (will hopefully finish it this time)-- the main chapter, though seems to be the second one, where he introduces his concept of tacit knowledge. Again, it is very similar to Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty (though he criticizes Merleau-Ponty at one point)-- the idea is that we have tacit knowledge which we are not focused on while we are perceiving/manipulating/investigating something else. One analogy he uses is using a probe to explore a cavity--while the sensation of holding the probe, as well as the sensations of increased or decreased resistance in the hand holding the probe, is all essential for the project, you are not conscious of or focused on the holding--your focal awareness is on the cavity. Once your focus shifts to the probe itself, that aspect of the project becomes focal-- it is no longer tacit. The idea is you need glasses to see, but you cannot see your glasses through your glasses.
All this is tied in to his project of establishing that the humanities, arts, sciences, every brand of human knowledge can be covered under a basic human epistemology-- there is no radical difference, there is no privileged position. All modes of knowing or investigating the world involve skilled activity based on explicit or implicit theories which function a the tacit knowledge, the "lenses" through which we see/understand things, and that the boundary between tacit awareness and focal awareness is always in flux. He also uses this to deal with the mind-body problem and other things, but I have not recently read up on all that, and think I will pass that issue by for the moment.
Anyway, so far it is easy to read-- unusual for postmodernish theory. I would like to think even my scientist friends would like this, but so far the only scientist I've talked to who knows of Polanyi is John Lennox...
From what I understand, one of Polanyi's signature "moves" is to emphasize the role of "authority" in any sort of knowledge, as a necessary part of what "human knowing" is, against the Enlightenment philosophers, who, for good reason at the time, insisted that knowledge had to be dealt with independent of "Authority." I'm wondering if this book with perhaps look at ethical behavior not in terms of the logical explanations given by the practitioners, but instead looking at ethical behavior as simply something we already "do" and are therefore competent in, deriving an explanation from the implict logic of praxis-- much as Ricoeur claims to do when he looks at "what historians do" when developing an epistemological justification of historical knowledge, rather than creating ideal criteria apart from practice and then imposing them on historical praxis.
I should also note that, while Polanyi has been latched onto in certain Christian intellectual circles (i.e. Mars Hill Audio), his book is not in any way a justification of, say, American Christianity or any religion, as far as I can tell so far-- I imagine that Polanyi's work is as relevant for critiquing christian epistemology and praxis as well as post-Enlightenment epistemology and praxis. I should also note that this book is from 1975, and Polanyi was active earlier (the book is posthumous), so that he really does belong to the very start of Postmodernism, and his criticisms will be of Modern thought-- reading him now may seem a bit out of date, if you take his criticisms personally and have already been through the "postmodern turn".
And finally-- I figure I'll enjoy this book because of the variety of author's cited in the notes whom I find very interesting, yet underrepresented: Merleau Ponty (though he is getting more popular the last decade or two), C.S. Lewis (don't know yet how critically P&P will engage with Lewis, but I find it exciting anyway-- I mostly encounter Lewis' thought in naive and out-of-date Christian evangelical thought), Owen Barfield (the forgotten, yet most philosophically minded Inkling, whose book Poetic Diction has some really interesting linguistic-philosophical speculation going on), and then anthropologists/historians of religion like Levi-Strauss and Mircea Eliade who touch on my own field as a mythologist. Anyway, I'm pretty excited to see someone engage with Lewis and Barfield at the academic level-- I've been wanting to start connecting the dots with them and contemporary scholarly discourse for a while, since the Inklings served as my "archetype" for "scholarly figures" when I was first discovering I wanted to go into academics. I may be "firmly rooted" in poststructuralism myself now, but I'm still very interested in their thought.
BRIEF UPDATE-- so far it looks like he is just giving his own version of a Heideggerian or Merleau-Pontian epistemology, though he doesn't cite Heidegger at all, despite using one or two of H's examples very blatantly. I also just saw that Polanyi as ALSO a professor of Chemistry, so I'm enjoying getting a perspective on scientific and other types of knowing from someone with experience in BOTH the sciences and philosophy-- I think people like that are really important, otherwise we end up looking at the other camp and thinking "well, THEY don't know what they're talking about." I think science and continental philosophy go together better than people tend to realize-- for example, Kuhn's idea of scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts was derived from his encounter with Foucault and others, I think when he was an undergrad maybe-- I haven't read his book yet, but from what I've heard it is basically a scientist appropriating continental philosophy-- so maybe a bit naive from the POV of continental phil., but very informed from the perspective of the sciences. I'm not sure, could be wrong. Polanyi, however, is thoroughly informed in both worlds, even if his prime was 1/2 a century ago now. Still very relevant, just as Heidegger and MP are, but again, this perspective is more of a given in the humanities now, rather than groundbreaking.
Another brief update: Trying to start this again (will hopefully finish it this time)-- the main chapter, though seems to be the second one, where he introduces his concept of tacit knowledge. Again, it is very similar to Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty (though he criticizes Merleau-Ponty at one point)-- the idea is that we have tacit knowledge which we are not focused on while we are perceiving/manipulating/investigating something else. One analogy he uses is using a probe to explore a cavity--while the sensation of holding the probe, as well as the sensations of increased or decreased resistance in the hand holding the probe, is all essential for the project, you are not conscious of or focused on the holding--your focal awareness is on the cavity. Once your focus shifts to the probe itself, that aspect of the project becomes focal-- it is no longer tacit. The idea is you need glasses to see, but you cannot see your glasses through your glasses.
All this is tied in to his project of establishing that the humanities, arts, sciences, every brand of human knowledge can be covered under a basic human epistemology-- there is no radical difference, there is no privileged position. All modes of knowing or investigating the world involve skilled activity based on explicit or implicit theories which function a the tacit knowledge, the "lenses" through which we see/understand things, and that the boundary between tacit awareness and focal awareness is always in flux. He also uses this to deal with the mind-body problem and other things, but I have not recently read up on all that, and think I will pass that issue by for the moment.
Anyway, so far it is easy to read-- unusual for postmodernish theory. I would like to think even my scientist friends would like this, but so far the only scientist I've talked to who knows of Polanyi is John Lennox...
January 10, 2018
One of my favorite Polanyi books so far.
September 2, 2021
Good bits, sometimes confusing.
November 12, 2024
This is - in many ways - Polanyi's last work. Formed from his last series of lectures and co-written - or edited together - by Harry Prosch - this book is the archetype of Edward Said's Late Style.
The book shares an angry argument about nihilism, totalitarianism, the extreme right and the extreme left. Most powerfully, the book offers a potent lens on academic freedom.
Noting the chaos in the contemporary world, returning to Polanyi's Meaning is a reminder of what academics can be and can do, if the world's political leaders did not discard reading, writing, research and interpretation.
The book shares an angry argument about nihilism, totalitarianism, the extreme right and the extreme left. Most powerfully, the book offers a potent lens on academic freedom.
Noting the chaos in the contemporary world, returning to Polanyi's Meaning is a reminder of what academics can be and can do, if the world's political leaders did not discard reading, writing, research and interpretation.
December 14, 2025
This took me a while to get through, even though it's quite short, which is a compliment. I wanted to soak up every page.
The final chapter about politics felt unrigorous and unnecessary though.
The final chapter about politics felt unrigorous and unnecessary though.
November 16, 2011
Polanyi offered an alternative take on his title for this small volume as "intellectual freedom." I believe this was Polanyi's last book, and he appeared to be tying up lose ends. I preferred the first half of the book to the second. In the first half he provides a quick but potent recap of "personal knowledge" (which for the curious, is a good synopsis of the Polanyi volume of the same title). In this chapter Polanyi sets up the triangle of tacit knowledge where the point of the triangle are subsidiary particulars, the knower, and the focal target.
In his chapter called "Reconstruction" Polanyi wrestles with the implications and barriers to the transfer of tacit knowledge. My favorite chapter was "From Perception to Metaphor." Polanyi correctly points out, "...our personal judgement is what it is because of the clues we dwell in, including, of course, the general views to which we are committed about the nature of things and the nature of knowledge. We ought, therefore, to adopt the kind of general views about the nature of things and the the nature of knowledge that will not prevent our belief in the reality of those coherences that we do, in fact, see." (From the supposition that perception is reality.) In this chapter, Polanyi emphasizes the importance of words in the integration of new ideas, and this chapter finds the author presenting a formula of sorts to describe how we "integrate" new ideas by identifying subsidiaries and their relationship(s) to focal meaning.
The second half of the book is very good, but it held little interest compared to the mechanistic first half. The closing chapter on Freedom has a "preachy" tone, but it is not objectionable; Polanyi makes no mystery of his reliance on his Faith.
This volume is recommended, however for those curious about Polanyi, start with The Tacit Dimension, and move to Personal Knowledge (I have not read Knowing and Being, but I have been told it is very good.).
In his chapter called "Reconstruction" Polanyi wrestles with the implications and barriers to the transfer of tacit knowledge. My favorite chapter was "From Perception to Metaphor." Polanyi correctly points out, "...our personal judgement is what it is because of the clues we dwell in, including, of course, the general views to which we are committed about the nature of things and the nature of knowledge. We ought, therefore, to adopt the kind of general views about the nature of things and the the nature of knowledge that will not prevent our belief in the reality of those coherences that we do, in fact, see." (From the supposition that perception is reality.) In this chapter, Polanyi emphasizes the importance of words in the integration of new ideas, and this chapter finds the author presenting a formula of sorts to describe how we "integrate" new ideas by identifying subsidiaries and their relationship(s) to focal meaning.
The second half of the book is very good, but it held little interest compared to the mechanistic first half. The closing chapter on Freedom has a "preachy" tone, but it is not objectionable; Polanyi makes no mystery of his reliance on his Faith.
This volume is recommended, however for those curious about Polanyi, start with The Tacit Dimension, and move to Personal Knowledge (I have not read Knowing and Being, but I have been told it is very good.).
March 28, 2017
I picked this book up at a used store after seeing the title and quickly skimming the description on the back cover. It reminded me of some online lectures by Jordan Peterson I had been watching.
It's fair to say this book is in a similar vein - it deals with the notion of meaning (duh) experienced by human beings. This has implications for all the major branches of philosophy. The chapters (based on a series of prior lectures) step through these in a way that seems to order the branches by their scope across cultures and across time (as Peterson would say) - from the personal to the interpersonal to the mythological, the religious and then to tradition.
Beginning with epistemology (personal knowledge, reconstructing experiences, shared experiences, metaphor), the book broadens out to discuss aesthetics. This leads to a discussion of myth (related to 'visionary' art), then to religion. The final chapters describe how religion has been instrumental in the derivation of meaning (and the challenges to this tradition from naive secular/existential/marxist schools). The ultimate thesis is a defense of classical liberalism and freedom in western culture, supported by traditional structures such as religion, science and art.
Polanyi crosses paths with Peterson, reminding us that a hypothetical absolutely free society would be too disordered to reduce suffering and allow human advancement. The book's conclusion makes the case that, although traditional structures take us away from *absolute* freedom, they allow us to have a society which persists over time and potentially improves. Not a dogmatic viewpoint (for either the secular or orthodox camps). I was reminded of Richard Rorty's pragmatist view of liberalism ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8... ).
Peterson references evolutionary psychology, psychological archetypes and persistent mythical stories (e.g. snakes, the fall of man, floods, the father, the mother...). Polanyi touches on similar subject matter in mythology, but not in the realm of psychology. Unlike Peterson, he makes interesting references to the history and methodology of science (possibly owing to his career as a chemist). Both are interesting thinkers, and it's too bad they aren't both available to sit down for a fireside chat.
This is a great book for anyone 'growing out of' the popular and very polarized schools of philosophy (e.g. secularism, postmodernism, existentialism) and wanting to integrate together the ideas that actually work.
It's fair to say this book is in a similar vein - it deals with the notion of meaning (duh) experienced by human beings. This has implications for all the major branches of philosophy. The chapters (based on a series of prior lectures) step through these in a way that seems to order the branches by their scope across cultures and across time (as Peterson would say) - from the personal to the interpersonal to the mythological, the religious and then to tradition.
Beginning with epistemology (personal knowledge, reconstructing experiences, shared experiences, metaphor), the book broadens out to discuss aesthetics. This leads to a discussion of myth (related to 'visionary' art), then to religion. The final chapters describe how religion has been instrumental in the derivation of meaning (and the challenges to this tradition from naive secular/existential/marxist schools). The ultimate thesis is a defense of classical liberalism and freedom in western culture, supported by traditional structures such as religion, science and art.
Polanyi crosses paths with Peterson, reminding us that a hypothetical absolutely free society would be too disordered to reduce suffering and allow human advancement. The book's conclusion makes the case that, although traditional structures take us away from *absolute* freedom, they allow us to have a society which persists over time and potentially improves. Not a dogmatic viewpoint (for either the secular or orthodox camps). I was reminded of Richard Rorty's pragmatist view of liberalism ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8... ).
Peterson references evolutionary psychology, psychological archetypes and persistent mythical stories (e.g. snakes, the fall of man, floods, the father, the mother...). Polanyi touches on similar subject matter in mythology, but not in the realm of psychology. Unlike Peterson, he makes interesting references to the history and methodology of science (possibly owing to his career as a chemist). Both are interesting thinkers, and it's too bad they aren't both available to sit down for a fireside chat.
This is a great book for anyone 'growing out of' the popular and very polarized schools of philosophy (e.g. secularism, postmodernism, existentialism) and wanting to integrate together the ideas that actually work.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews