Struan Jacobs

Anthropological discussions were important for Michael Polanyi in the middle phase of his intellectual career, in which he articulated in some detail his understanding of science, culture and society. This middle period commenced with his 1946 Riddell Memorial Lectures at Durham University in early 1946, published as Science, Faith and Society later that year, and extended through the publication of Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy in 1958, based on Polanyi’s 1951 and 1952 Gifford Lectures. The Riddell Lectures gave Polanyi’s most robust working out of his constructive theory of science to date, although some of the ideas developed in Science, Faith and...

It is a testimony to the enduring importance of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that, 30 years on, its doctrines of normal science and paradigm, incommensurability and revolution continue to challenge metascien tists and stimulate vigorous debate. Critique has mainly come from philosophers and historians; by and large, interested sociologists have embraced Kuhn. Un justifiably so, this article argues, bringing to light a serious difficulty or anom aly in his account of the social side of science. Contrary to what he claims, scientific knowledge is not the achievement of organic communities. It is con structed in trans-epistemic arenas by diverse participants, laypeople, and specialists. Accepting community is a flawed concept in the sociology of science, and in appreciating the major role Kuhn assigned it, the Kuhnian system looks less robust than it did before.

Celebrated as a theorist of science, and a source of stimulating ideas for theologians and philosophers of religion, Michael Polanyi explicitly denied cognitive relativism. Yet cognitive relativism, this paper suggests, is implied by Polanyi's account of conceptual frameworks and intellectual controversies.In ‘The Stability of Beliefs’ Polanyi understands conceptual frameworks as embedded in, and as expressed in the use of, their own languages. The language‐with‐theory limits the range of discussable subjects, interprets relevant facts in its own terms, permits only certain questions to be asked, with answers to these questions serving to confirm the framework.In Polanyi's masterwork, Personal Knowledge , these ideas inform his discussion of controversies over scientific frameworks and frameworks vying to become part of science. In each controversy, frameworks are logically disconnected, Polanyi foreshadowing the incommensurability thesisI argue that Polanyi's ideas satisfy recognised criteria of cognitive relativism. Perception is undetermined by objects and conditioned by language. Empirical propositions, in Polanyi's view, are accepted as true only within a conceptual framework. Polanyi regards supporters of logically disconnected frameworks as thinking differently, living in different worlds, speaking different languages and as experiencing communication failure. There is no framework‐independent argument or evidence to distinguish any framework as the best available approximation to the truth. Frameworks are logically disconnected and incommensurable

How did Karl Popper arrive at his theory of science? Popper believed that Einstein’s general theory of relativity and his attitudes of modesty and self-criticism were all important.This paper challenges details in Popper’s account and suggests an alternative interpretation of the formation of his theory. It is held that his disillusionment with Marxism predated and conditioned his understanding of Einstein, and that the liberalism of J. S. Mill may have exercised an influence. Political ideas and practice paved the way for Popper’s philosophy of science.

It has been said that Robert Boyle gave in the century of The Scientific Revolution the “fullest expression” of the view that laws of nature are continually impressed by God (“occasionalism”). So regarded, the universe is anything but an autonomous machine, its ordered operation depending on God’s continuous imposition of lawful, patterned relations between phenomena and his continuous provision of motion for them to actually enter relations. The present paper contests this treatment of Boyle. Evidence is elicited to show that, for Boyle, most physical relations issue from intrinsic dispositions of phenomena, not divine impositions, dispositions determined by corpuscular textures. Members of classes of phenomena have capacities to make specific changes which members of other classes have capacities to receive, these correlative capacities being necessarily connected, subjects in principle of a priori synthetic necessary knowledge. The same view is found in John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. It is additionally argued that Boyle’s God, the quintessentially active being, imparted motion at the creation, whereafter the motion of (at least most) natural phenomena has derived from natural, not supernatural, impulsion.

Between 1945 and 1948, Michael Polanyi, Michael Oakeshott, and Karl Popper respectively discussed the nature of tradition, and the part that traditions play in free societies. This article analyzes these thinkers’ ideas of tradition. Polanyi depicted tradition as knowledge that is embodied in skilled practice, and tradition for Oakeshott consists in activities that are suffused with practical knowledge and technique. Popper emphasized rational criticizability, whereas Polanyi and Oakeshott emphasized the tacit dimension of traditions.

C. P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures” controversially contrasted science and literature, suggesting that neither scientists nor literary intellectuals have much in common with, and seldom bother speaking to, the other. Responding to Snow, Michael Polanyi argued that specialization has made modern culture, not twofold but manifold. In his major work, Personal Knowledge, Polanyi explained that branches of modern culture have personal knowing and knowledge in common, and there is extensive cross-pollination of ideas. He also, in this book, saw the branches of culture as disparate intellectual frameworks that are divorced from one another.

Celebrated as a theorist of science, and a source of stimulating ideas for theologians and philosophers of religion, Michael Polanyi explicitly denied cognitive relativism. Yet cognitive relativism, this paper suggests, is implied by Polanyi's account of conceptual frameworks and intellectual controversies.In ‘The Stability of Beliefs’ (1952) Polanyi understands conceptual frameworks (science, psychoanalysis, Azande witchcraft, Marxism) as embedded in, and as expressed in the use of, their own languages. The language‐with‐theory limits the range of discussable subjects, interprets relevant facts in its own terms, permits only certain questions to be asked, with answers to these questions serving to confirm the framework.In Polanyi's masterwork, Personal Knowledge (1958), these ideas inform his discussion of controversies over scientific frameworks and frameworks vying to become part of science. In each controversy, frameworks are logically disconnected, Polanyi foreshadowing the incommensurability thesisI argue that Polanyi's ideas satisfy recognised criteria of cognitive relativism. Perception is undetermined by objects and conditioned by language. Empirical propositions, in Polanyi's view, are accepted as true only within a conceptual framework. Polanyi regards supporters of logically disconnected frameworks as thinking differently, living in different worlds, speaking different languages and as experiencing communication failure. There is no framework‐independent argument or evidence to distinguish any framework as the best available approximation to the truth. Frameworks are logically disconnected and incommensurable.

Having watched totalitarianism emerge in its left-wing (Russian Soviet) and right-wing (Nazi) forms, Michael Polanyi devoted considerable attention to analysing totalitarianism in its development, makeup and mode of operation. At the same time as he developed his account of totalitarianism incrementally he pieced together his picture of liberalism. His fundamental insight is that while liberal civilization is dedicated to protecting, and is animated by, a set of ideals that includes freedom, truth, toleration, equality and justice, totalitarian regimes aim at erasing ideals such as these from their social face.