Michael Polanyi

Michael Polanyi (born Polányi Mihály) (March 11, 1891 – February 22, 1976) was a Hungarian–British polymath who made original contributions in physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy. He was both a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.

Early life

Michael was born into a Jewish family in Budapest. His older brother Karl became a famous economist. Their father was an engineer and railway entrepreneur whose bankruptcy motivated Polanyi to seek financial stability through a career in medicine. He graduated in 1913, and served in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I, but was hospitalised, and during his convalescence wrote what became a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Budapest (with Gusztáv Buchböck) in 1917.

In 1920, he emigrated to Germany and eventually ended up as a research chemist at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Fiber Chemistry in Berlin. There, he married Magda Elizabeth in a Roman Catholic ceremony. In 1929, Magda gave birth to a son John, who went on to win a Nobel Prize in chemistry. With the coming to power in 1933 of the Nazi party Polanyi took up a position as Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Manchester. As a consequence of his shift of interest from chemistry to economics and philosophy Manchester created a chair in Social Science (1948-58) especially for him.

Physical chemistry

Polanyi's scientific interests were diverse, embracing chemical kinetics, x-ray diffraction and the absorption of gases at solid surfaces.

In 1934, Polanyi, at the same time as G. I. Taylor and Egon Orowan realised that the plastic deformation of ductile materials could be explained in terms of the theory of dislocations developed by Vito Volterra in 1905. The insight was critical in developing the modern science of solid mechanics.

Philosophy of science

From the mid-1930s, Polanyi began to articulate his opposition to the prevailing positivist account of science, arguing that it failed to recognise the the role which creativity and tacit knowing play in fallible judgements by persons seeking the transcendent ideal truth.

Polanyi argued that positivism encouraged the notion that scientific research ought to be directed by the State. He drew attention to what happened to genetics in the Soviet Union, once the doctrines of Trofim Lysenko gained political approval. Polanyi, like his friend Friedrich Hayek, drew attention to the part by spontaneous order but unlike Hayek he rejected that a free society is value neutral. Polanyi argued that a free society gives dedicated communities the freedom to pursue self-set ideals.

Polanyi endorsed the existence of objective truth (Personal Knowledge, p. 16), but rejected the assumption that scientific method supplies objective truths, because all methods ultimately rely upon interpretors, who draw upon their tacit awareness. This tacit awareness cannot be wholly explicated, but it is not simply reducible to cultural practices, it connects with our experience of realities.

Polanyi argued that all knowing is personal. A scientist's personal skills, biases, and passions play an important and necessary role in the discovery process. For example the ability to select problems for investigation that have a high chance of yielding valuable discoveries. All observation is influenced by individual biases and human error, but it does not follow that it is only subjective. It may be subjective, but only when it is false. Our awareness of the world can also lead us to make claims that are true.

What is meant by personal knowledge is amongst other things:

• the individual scientist's ability to perceive opportunities for valuable discovery -- partly a learned skill, and partly a personal aptitude ("It is of the essence of the scientific method to select for verification hypotheses having a high chance of being true. To select good questions for investigation is the mark of scientific talent...." Personal Knowledge, p. 30);
• the scientist's belief that the hypothesis is correct and will shed light on some aspect of "rationality in nature" -- importantly, the scientist holds this belief before validating the hypothesis, making this belief in some sense like faith, and strong enough to lead the scientist to commit to the hypothesis;
• the scientist's personal commitment to investigating his or her hypothesis, which he or she demonstrates by investing valuable time and resources in the investigation, and by staking his or her reputation on the claimed result;
• the notion that we know more than we can articulate; and make our commitment towards knowledge confirmation in an indeterminate future.

Polanyi acknowledged the importance of inherited practices (tradition). The fact that we know more than we can clearly articulate contributes to the conclusion that much knowledge is passed on by non-explicit means, such as apprenticeship (observing a master, and then practicing under the master's guidance).

Polanyi's philosophical ideas are most fully expressed in the Gifford lectures he gave in 1951–52 at the University of Aberdeen which resulted in the book Personal Knowledge. These ideas would influence the thought and work of Thomas Kuhn Paul Feyerbend and to a lesser extent [Imre Lakatos]].

Economics

Polanyi applied his philosophy of science to the field of economics in his 1951 book, The Logic of Liberty, a collection of essays most of which had been published in the 1940s. He elaborated on the connections in a 1962 article, "The Republic of Science: Its Political and Economic Theory" in Minerva.

Polanyi noted that scientists cooperate with each other in a way similar to that in which individuals coordinate in the free market. The spontaneous order that is generated however is constrained by the boundary conditions supplied by the commitments which generate dedicated communities such as scientists and the operation of the legal system.

He believed that a free society facilitates economic and scientific advancement. Both his belief that science relies upon personal commitments, and his claim that these commitments operate within the context of wider communities, lead to this conclusion. Scientists, like entrepreneurs, require freedom to pursue their ends. Moreover, they must be free to react to claims made by their peers. In The Republic of Science, Polanyi urged societies to allow the freedom to pursue science for its own sake:

"...[S]cientists, freely making their own choice of problems and pursuing them in the light of their own personal judgment, are in fact cooperating as members of a closely knit organization. ...

"Such self-co-ordination of independent initiatives leads to a joint result which is unpremeditated by any of those who bring it about. Their co-ordination is guided as by an "invisible hand" towards the joint discovery of a hidden system of things. Since its end-result is unknown, this kind of co-operation can only advance stepwise, and the total performance will be the best possible if each consecutive step is decided upon by the person most competent to do so. ...

"Any attempt to organize the group ... under a single authority would eliminate their independent initiatives and thus reduce their joint effectiveness to that of the single person directing them from the centre. It would, in effect, paralyse their cooperation."

He criticized government planning of scientific inquiry as stifling, because it tends to punish scientists for pursuing their own hunches as opposed to the agenda of the state.

Family

Michael Polanyi's son, John Charles Polanyi, is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Toronto, Canada. In 1986 John Polanyi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

See also

• Tacit knowledge
• Knowledge management

Bibliography

• Polanyi, M (1946) Science, Faith, and Society ISBN 0-226-67290-5
• Polanyi, M (1951) The Logic of Liberty ISBN 0-226-67296-4
• Polanyi, M (1964) Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy ISBN 0-226-67288-3
• Polanyi, M (1967) The Tacit Dimension ISBN 0-8446-5999-1 (1983 Doubleday reprint)
• Polanyi, M & Prosch, H (1975) Meaning ISBN 0-226-67294-8

Further reading

• Richard Gelwick, The Way of Discovery, An Introduction to the Thought of Michael Polanyi. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2004, 181, pp. ISBN 1-59244-687-6 (English).
• Drusilla Scott, Everyman Revived: The Common Sense of Michael Polanyi. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995, 216 pp. ISBN 0-8028-4079-5.
• William Taussig Scott and Martin X. Moleski, Michael Polanyi, Scientist and Philosopher. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005, 364 pp. ISBN-13-978-0-19-517433-5, ISBN 0-19-517433-X

External links

• Broad biography by Mary Joe Nye
• Largely philosophical biography by Phil Mullins, Editor of the Polanyi journal Tradition and Discovery
• Polanyi Society home page
• Polanyi resources at erraticimpact.com
• Polanyiana, Volume 8, Number 1-2 published in Budapest.
• 'Michael Polanyi and tacit knowledge' by M. K. Smith (2003), the encyclopedia of informal education