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 bankrupcy 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, and then professor in 1926, 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 a shift in his interests from chemistry to economics and philosophy Manchester created a chair in Social Science (1948-58) 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 personal commitments and tacit knowing play in science.

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 played by spontaneous order but unlike Hayek he drew attention to the role which commitments play in forming dedicated communities.

Polanyi endorsed the existence of objective truth (Personal Knowledge, p. 16), but rejected the assumption that scientific method is a royal road to truth, because all methods ultimately rely upon interpretors, who draw upon their tacit awareness. This tacit awareness is not infallible, nor can it be wholly explicated, but nor is it simply reducible to cultural practices; our tacit awareness can connect us with realities.

Polanyi argued that all knowing is personal. A scientist's skills, biases, and passions play a necessary role in both discovery and validation. All observation is influenced by our assumptions and errors, but it does not follow that our claims therefore have no objective validity. They may be subjective, but only when they are false.

Polanyi acknowledged the importance of inherited practices (tradition). The fact that we know more than we can 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. His philosophical ideas influenced, amongst others, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerbend and Imre Lakatos.

Economics

His 1951 book, The Logic of Liberty, is a collection of essays most of which had been published in the 1940s which link the practice of science with the more general practices which sustain a free society. He elaborated on the connections in a 1962 article, "The Republic of Science: Its Political and Economic Theory" in Minerva.

Polanyi noted that scientists respond to each other in ways that are similar to the way in which individuals coordinate with each other in the free market. The spontaneous order that is generated however is constrained by the boundary conditions supplied by the commitments which generate the various dedicated communities that make up a free society.

He believed that free societies facilitate economic and intellectual advancement. Both his belief that science relies upon individual commitments, and his claim that these commitments operate within the context of a plurality of 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 emphasises the importance of allowing scientists the freedom to pursue truth as an end in itself i.e. independent of any practical objectives:

"...[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 opposed government planning of scientific inquiry, on the grounds that a central planning is inferior to the results generated by free inquiry constrained only by professional standards.

His Family

Michael Polanyi's son, John Charles Polanyi, is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Toronto, Canada. In 1986 he 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