Science Faith Society New Essays On The Philosophy Of Michael Polanyi

The book is arguably the first comprehensive collection of essays on Michael Polanyi’s social, political philosophy. The essays combine philosophical and historical approaches to show Polanyi’s social thought in the context of his epistemology and philosophy of science as well as the 20th century intellectual history. This volume appeals to specialists in Michael Polanyi’s philosophy, political philosophers who are interested in the 20th century political thought, mainly conservative-liberal political tradition. Furthermore it appeals to scholars focusing on the intersections between epistemology and political philosophy.

In its concern with science as an essentially human enterprise, Science, Faith and Society makes an original and challenging contribution to the philosophy of science. On its appearance in 1946 the book quickly became the focus of controversy. Polanyi aims to show that science must be understood as a community of inquirers held together by a common faith; science, he argues, is not the use of "scientific method" but rather consists in a discipline imposed by scientists on themselves in the interests of discovering an objective, impersonal truth. That such truth exists and can be found is part of the scientists' faith. Polanyi maintains that both authoritarianism and scepticism, attacking this faith, are attacking science itself.

This book offers the first full exploration of the religious, ethical, and social dimensions of Michael Polanyi's philosophy, and its implications for the crisis of modern culture. Michael Polanyi developed a new way of understanding the process of discovering scientific knowledge - a theory which can alter our notions of ourselves and of existence. In 'The Way of Discovery', Richard Gelwick, a former student of the renowned scientist-turned-philosopher, presents us with a comprehensive and documented introduction to Polanyi's theory of knowledge. Michael Polanyi was born in Budapest in 1891. After a distinguished career as a physical chemist, he turned to philosophy, religion, and social sciences, becoming, by the time of his death in 1976, one of the greatest scientist-philosophers of our century. Polanyi maintained that three centuries of belief in scientific detachment had produced a crisis of culture. Working from his own experience as a scientist, and with an insight from Gestalt psychology, Polanyi asserted that objective scientific knowledge is at bottom personal knowledge - that scientists and artists establish meaning in basically the same way. His ideas call for a new way of thinking and pose a new frontier of thought, a new image of humanity

Michael Polanyi is one of the most inspiring and original thinkers in the 20th century. He launched a new and independent philosophical tradition and fertilized many intellectual areas from cognitive psychology to management sciences. Polanyi’s systematic thoughts span over many areas of philosophy, yet his most fruitful ideas, the fundamentals of his system are contributions to epistemology and ontology. His theory of tacit knowledge, his critique of both the objectivist and the subjectivist views of knowledge, his concept of emergence, and his theory of spontaneous order and coordination—just to mention a few—are probably the most important and most well-known. Polanyi also gave us a new picture about science in which scientist’s personal participation guided by his cognitive and moral commitment, passions and trust, is an essential part of knowledge itself, in both its discovery and its validation. This volume focuses on these epistemological and ontological issues. Thirteen critical essays analyze, interpret and develop further Polanyi’s ideas in the two parts of the book: Knowing and Being. Most of these papers address Polanyian themes in a comparative way, in dialogue with other major traditions illuminating both sides and helping to re-evaluate Polanyi in broader philosophical context. The title of this book also refers to a seminal collection of papers of Michael Polanyi (edited by Marjori Grene in 1969), Knowing and Being.

Michael Polanyi was an eminent physical chemist, economist, and philosopher. This book explains how the many diverse topics that concerned him belong together as essential elements in his effort to play physician to "the sickness of the modern mind." Using both published and unpublished writings, Prosch critically evaluates Polanyi's efforts and examines the value of his work as philosophy. The book contains a complete bibliography of Polanyi's humanistic publications and all of his earlier works.