Michael was born - then still Michal Polanyi (Polányi Mihály) - in Vienna; he was the fourth child of Michael and Cecilia Pollacsek, Jews from Hungary and Lithuania, respectively. Michael's relatives on his father's side were entrepreneurs; his grandfather on his mother's side was the chief rabbi of Vilnius.
After some time, the family moved to Budapest; It was there that Polachek changed their surname into the Magyar way - “Polani”. Michael's father took part in the construction of the Hungarian railway system; Unfortunately, he lost most of his fortune in 1899, when bad weather conditions forced the builders to go over budget. In 1905, Polanyi the elder died. Michael's mother opened a salon in Budapest, which enjoyed considerable success among the local intellectual elite.
In 1909, Michael graduated from the Budapest gymnasium and went to study to become a doctor; Polanyi received his diploma in 1914. With the help of Ignác Pfeifer, a chemistry professor at a university in Budapest, Michael received a scholarship to study chemistry at a technical college in Karlsruhe, Germany.
During the First World War, Polanyi served as a medical officer in the Austro-Hungarian army on the Serbian front. In 1916, Michael left the service due to health reasons; He spent his free time writing a PhD thesis on adsorption. Polanyi's work was approved by Albert Einstein himself; Gustav Buchböck supervised their implementation. Already in 1919, Polanyi received a doctorate from the University of Budapest.
In October 1918, Mihály Károlyi created the Hungarian Democratic Republic; In the newborn state, Polanyi received the post of secretary to the minister of health. In March 1919, the communists came to power in the country; Michael left his political career and returned to medicine. The Hungarian Soviet Republic, however, also did not last very long. Alas, new government Polanyi also did not like it - even though Michael refused to serve in the Red Army, he also did not have friendship with the regime of Miklós Horthy.
In 1920, Michael returned to Karlsruhe; Fritz Haber invited him to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut für Faserstoffchemie.
In 1923, Polanyi became a Christian and married Magda Elizabeth Kemeny.
In 1926, Michael headed the division of the Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry (Institut für Physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie).
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In 1929, Magda gave birth to Michael’s son John, a future famous chemist and Nobel Prize winner. Michael's second son, George Polanyi, now a famous British economist, also achieved success in life.
Michael himself was also involved in economics at one time - in Weimar Germany he studied inflation and unemployment problems. After the Nazis came to power, Polanyi fled to the United States; there he concentrated on sociology.
In Personal Knowledge, Michael Polanyi argues that absolute objectivity is a false ideal because all inferences are based on personal judgment. He refutes the idea of mechanically establishing truth through the use of the scientific method. All knowledge is personal and for this reason is based on individual judgment. Polanyi advocates the approach that we believe more than we can prove and know more than we can express in words.
Michael Polanyi. Personal knowledge. – M.: Progress, 1985. – 344 p. (on English the book was first published in 1958)
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Preface. M. Polanyi's initial theoretical ideas about the mechanism of development of science contrast sharply with Popper's. So, for example, if K. Popper considers rationality to be an immanent feature of science and looks for the internal logic of its development, abstracting from the influence of socio-cultural factors on it, then M. Polanyi considers its cultural and historical determinants as the immanent characteristics of science, which form not only the institutional appearance science, but also the very forms of scientific rationality. If Popper tried to build “epistemology without a knowing subject,” then the pathos of M. Polanyi’s works is associated with identifying the human factor of science.
M. Polanyi first formulated the concept of tacit knowledge, which was later used by T. Kuhn (for more details, see). Polanyi considered the theory of tacit knowledge to be the main result of his theoretical work. The main core of the concept of tacit knowledge is the proposition that there are two types of knowledge: central, or explicit, explicit (external), and peripheral, tacit, hidden, implicit (internal).
Polanyi insists that the information received through the senses is much richer than that which passes through the consciousness, and “a person knows more than he can say.” Unconscious sensations form the empirical basis of implicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is personal by definition. M. Polanyi believes that it is difficult to reveal the content of the very concept of tacit knowledge because of a semantic difficulty caused by the epistemological nature of this type of knowledge as hidden, implicit, tacit. Therefore, M. Polanyi seeks to give its operational definition (for the latter, see).
Part I. THE ART OF KNOWLEDGE
Chapter 1. OBJECTIVITY
Copernicus deprived man of his position at the center of the universe, a position that both the Ptolemaic system and the Bible had prescribed for him. Since then, moralists of all kinds have repeatedly and decisively called upon us to abandon sentimental egoism and look at ourselves objectively, in the true perspective of space and time.
Needless to say, no one - including scientists - holds such a view of the Universe, no matter how much praise is raised for "objectivity". But this does not surprise us. Because, as human beings, we are inevitably forced to look at the Universe from the center that is within us, and to speak about it in terms of human language, shaped by the urgent needs of human communication. Any attempt to completely exclude the human perspective from our picture of the world inevitably leads to nonsense.
To consider the Copernican system more objective than the Ptolemaic system will be fair only if we consider this shift in the nature of intellectual satisfaction as a criterion for strengthening objectivity. This means that of the two forms of knowledge, we must consider the more objective one to be the one that relies more on theory than on sensory perception. In other words, if theory is viewed as a screen placed between our senses and those things of which our senses might otherwise form a more immediate impression, then we should tend to rely more on the theoretical way of interpreting our experience and thereby see in the "raw" impressions of dubious and confusing ghosts. It seems to me that we have found sound arguments indicating that theoretical knowledge is more objective than direct experience.
It can be argued that in general, any theory that we proclaim as unconditionally rational is thereby endowed with prophetic power. We accept it in the hope that through it we will be able to come into contact with reality; and, if the theory is truly true, it may demonstrate its truth throughout the centuries in ways its authors could not have dreamed of. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries of this century have been rightly presented as astonishing confirmations of accepted scientific theories. In this indefinite range of true consequences of a scientific theory lies its objectivity in the deepest sense.
Chapter 2. PROBABILITY
The purpose of my book is to show that absolute objectivity, usually attributed to the exact sciences, belongs to the category of fallacies and is oriented towards false ideals. In rejecting this illusion, I want to offer another view that, in my opinion, deserves more intellectual credibility. I called it “personal knowledge”.
The personal involvement of the scientist is present even in those research procedures that seem to be the most accurate. In scientific research there are always some details that the scientist does not pay special attention to in the process of verifying the theory. This kind of personal selectivity is an integral feature of science.
The process of establishing the invalidity of a particular statistical statement was systematically developed by Sir Ronald Fisher in his famous work Design of Experiments. I will give a diagram of Fisher's reasoning in relation to Charles Darwin's experiment, which revealed the comparative influence of self-pollination and cross-pollination on plant height.
From two groups of plants obtained as a result of self-pollination and cross-pollination, 15 plants were selected; they were randomly grouped into 15 pairs, each corresponding to 15 differences in their height (measured in eighths of an inch). On average, cross-pollinated plants were 20.93 eighths of an inch longer than self-pollinated plants. The essence of the question is further whether this difference is accidental or not. To find out, we must compare the magnitude of this difference with the spread of random variation found in our samples. A difference will be considered significant only if it significantly exceeds the limits of these variations. The standard deviation in our case gives the value σ = 9.75 eighths of an inch. It follows that the difference is greater than the standard deviation in plant height. But the question still remains whether it is sufficiently superior to σ to consider the result non-random.
If we accept the hypothesis that our results are random (Fisher calls it the null hypothesis), then the probability of getting exactly the same result as we did is less than 5% (for more details, see). There is no limit to the confidence we can place in the null hypothesis, nor is there any specific lower bound on the probability of events that we believe will occur without compromising the null hypothesis. It follows from this that no event, even the most incredible, can contradict a probabilistic judgment. A contradiction can only be established by an act of personal evaluation that rejects certain possibilities as too improbable to be true.
No scientist can refuse to select data in the light of his heuristic expectations. He often cannot say at all on what data his confidence in the correctness of the hypothesis is based. It is absurd to view the scientific method as a process dependent on the rate of accumulation of data that automatically arises to test randomly selected hypotheses.
Choosing and testing a scientific hypothesis are personal acts, but, like all such acts, they presuppose certain rules; probability theory can be considered as a system of such rules. I would like to name them maxims. Maxims are rules, the skilful application of which forms part of the field of mastery in which they are formulated as certain regulative principles. But they immediately become absurd if we try to replace skill with them. When another person uses my scientific maxims to guide his inductive reasoning, he may come to completely different conclusions. It is precisely because of this obvious uncertainty that maxims can function only within the boundaries of the sphere of personal judgment.
Chapter 3. ORDER
I will argue that the concept of random events presupposes the existence of a certain type of order, which these events reproduce by chance. Determining the probability of such coincidences and thereby the admissibility of the assumption that they actually took place is the essence of the technique of Sir Ronald Fisher, who thus proves by contradiction the reality of a given ordering scheme. On this basis, I want to put forward a very general thesis that the assessment of order is an act of personal knowledge, just like the assessment of probability, the originality of a pattern of order (created intentionally or seen in nature) is assessed as its improbability.
Probabilistic judgments can apply both to random systems and to highly ordered systems that interact with random systems. Although the discovery of significant order may be unreliable due to random biases, these kinds of heuristic guesses are still quite different from simply guessing the outcome of a random event. Pure chance can never give rise to meaningful order, since its very essence lies in the absence of such. Therefore, one should not treat the structure of a random event as a pattern with a meaningful order.
Chapter 4. SKILL AND MASTERY
The goal of a skilful action is achieved by following a set of norms or rules unknown as such to the person performing the action. For example, the decisive factor by which a swimmer stays on the surface of the water is the way he breathes; it maintains the necessary buoyancy due to the fact that it does not completely empty the lungs when exhaling and takes in more air than usual when inhaling. However, swimmers are generally unaware of this. Written rules can be useful, but in general they do not determine the success of an activity; these are maxims that can serve as a guide only if they fit into practical skill or mastery of art. They cannot replace personal knowledge. Because skills cannot be fully explained analytically, the question of mastery of skills can be very confusing.
To assert the impossibility of what has apparently been done, or the improbability of what is supposed to be observed, simply because we cannot explain the origin and existence of that phenomenon within the framework of our conceptual system is to deny very real areas of practice or experience. Nevertheless, this method of criticism is inevitable, because without its constant application, neither a scientist nor an engineer would be able to feel solid ground under their feet, faced with a mass of illusory observations literally every day. Destructive analysis is an indispensable means of combating prejudices and pseudo-activities. Let's take homeopathy for example. In my opinion, this pseudo-treatment, still widespread, can be completely discredited by subjecting its prescriptions to analysis. As can be seen from homeopathic recipes, the recommended concentration of medicinal substances is so small that ordinary food and drinking water contain the same amount, or even more, of the same substances.
Another situation, essentially hopeless, arises when those who have discovered some new skill, the effectiveness of which is at first questionable, give this skill a false interpretation. This can be illustrated by the example of the tragic failures that accompanied the activities of the discoverers of hypnotism for a century from Mesmer to Brad (for Mesmer, see and).
In recent decades, a process very similar to the criticism of mesmerism has been observed in a number of technical laboratories, although without such obvious failures. Many branches of industrial production, including leather, pottery, brewing, metallurgy, textiles and various branches of agriculture, suddenly realized that all activities heretofore carried out as a kind of art complete lack of knowledge of its constituent operations and procedures. When a modern scientific approach began to be applied to these traditional areas of human activity, the first task arose to find out what exactly happens in each of these production processes, which makes it possible to create material values.
An art whose procedures remain hidden cannot be conveyed through precepts, for there are none. It can only be transmitted through personal example, from teacher to student. Even in modern industry, tacit knowledge is still a critical part of many technologies. An art that is not practiced within one generation is irretrievably lost. Usually these losses are irreparable. It is a pity to observe the endless attempts - with the help of microscopes and chemistry, mathematics and electronics - to reproduce the only violin made, among other violins, by the semi-literate Stradivarius 200 years ago. Society must adhere to tradition if it wants to preserve the stock of personal knowledge.
The features of traditionalism are revealed in the system of customary law. Common law is based on precedent. In deciding a case, a judge today follows the example of other courts that have decided cases of the same kind in the past, for these decisions are considered to embody the spirit and letter of the law. This procedure is based on the conviction characteristic of all traditionalism that practical wisdom is truly embodied in deeds, and not in rules. The judge's actions are viewed as more reliable than his interpretation of his own actions.
Becoming an expert, just like becoming a craftsman, is possible only as a result of following an example in direct personal contact; No instructions will help here. Until the physician learns to recognize certain symptoms - for example, to identify secondary murmurs in the pulmonary artery - there will be no benefit from reading the literature.
It can be assumed that if expertise is used in science and technology, or experts are involved, then this is done for the simple reason that they cannot be replaced by measurement. Measurement is characterized by greater objectivity, thanks to which its results are stable regardless of where and how it is carried out. However, then large number the academic time that chemist, biologist and medical students devote to practical exercises indicates important role, which in these disciplines is played by the transfer of practical knowledge and skills from teacher to student.
Focus and periphery of consciousness are mutually exclusive. If a pianist turns his attention from the piece he is performing to the movements of his fingers, he becomes confused and interrupts the performance. This happens whenever we shift our focus to details that were previously on the periphery of our consciousness.
The perception of objects as external, opposing your body, is based on the fact that we are aware with our peripheral consciousness of the processes occurring in our body. An object appears as external only if we consciously place it outside ourselves in space. We can think of peripheral awareness of tools as analogous to awareness of body parts. The way we use a hammer or a blind man's cane clearly demonstrates a shift in the focus of consciousness to points of contact with objects that we consider external. We include the tool in the sphere of our being; he serves as our continuation.
I want to put forward the point of view that all attempts to fix the premises of science have been futile, because the real foundations of scientific beliefs are generally impossible to identify. By accepting a certain set of premises and using them as an interpretative system, we seem to begin to live in these premises, just as we live in our own body. Their uncritical assimilation is a process of assimilation, as a result of which we identify ourselves with them. These prerequisites are not and cannot be proclaimed,
Three types of learning in animals (including humans) can be distinguished: learning techniques can be considered as an act of invention; learning signs is an act of observation, and latent learning is an act of interpretation.
There are three main types of speech utterance: (1) expression of feeling, (2) appeal to other persons, (3) statement of a factual nature. My reasoning leads to the discovery of a component of personal emotion inherent and necessary even in the least personal forms of speech.
Any application of a formal scheme to experience entails uncertainty, the elimination of which is carried out on the basis of criteria that are not themselves strictly formulated. Equally unformalized and unarticulated is the process of applying language to things. To speak means to invent signs, to observe their usefulness, to interpret their various relations.
Animals already have an idea of numbers, but man, consistently inventing more and more new symbols, has developed this concept far beyond its original framework, which was limited to six or eight integers. The creation of positional notation, Arabic numerals, the zero sign and the comma for decimal fractions - all this facilitated the invention of arithmetic operations, which in turn greatly enriched our concept of number and at the same time made the methods of practical application of number for counting and measurement more powerful .
The emergence of formal logic is reminiscent of the advances that mathematics owes to the invention of successful new symbols. Logical symbols allow us to clearly formulate such complex sentences that would be completely unthinkable in reality.
ordinary language. Thanks to this, the range of grammatical structures suitable for operation has expanded significantly, and we can now, in relation to these structures, achieve such successes in deductive reasoning that we could not even dream of otherwise.
There appear to be two kinds of operational principles of language that explain all the intellectual superiority of man over animals. The former control the process of linguistic representation, the latter control the operation of symbols to ensure the thought process. We now have the following series of scientific disciplines, arranged in order of decreasing role of the first and increasing role of the second operational principle of language: (1) descriptive sciences, (2) exact sciences, (3) deductive sciences. This is a sequence in which symbolization and manipulation of symbols increases, and in parallel contact with experience decreases. Higher levels of formalization make the judgments of science more strict, its conclusions more impersonal; but each step towards this ideal is achieved through an ever greater sacrifice of content. The immeasurable wealth of living forms, over which descriptive spiders reign, is narrowed in the sphere of exact sciences to the simple reading of arrows on instruments; and when we pass to pure mathematics, experience disappears altogether from our immediate field of vision.
To describe experience more fully, language must be less precise. At the same time, the increase in inaccuracy strengthens the role of the ability for hidden assessment, which becomes necessary to compensate for the resulting speech uncertainty. Thus, the richness of concrete experience to which our speech can refer is regulated precisely by our personal participation in this experience. Only with the help of this implicit component of knowledge can we say anything at all about experience.
Let us remember what various new types of numbers - irrational, negative, imaginary, transfinite - were introduced into mathematics as a result of the extension of the rules for performing already known algebraic operations to yet unexplored subject areas; and how these numbers, initially rejected as meaningless, were eventually recognized to represent important new mathematical concepts. The amazing successes achieved through the speculative application of methods of mathematical notation for purposes that were not originally intended remind us that the most fruitful functions of formalism can be precisely those very functions for which it was not previously intended at all. But at the same time, it is here that, apparently, the greatest danger is of bringing it to the point of absurdity.
I proposed to reconcile the concept of truth with the following three facts: 1) almost all the knowledge in which man is superior to animals is acquired through the use of language; 2) operations associated with the use of language are ultimately based on our wordless intellectual abilities, which are related in their genesis to the corresponding abilities in animals; 3) in undifferentiated intellectual acts there is a desire to satisfy self-established standards, and this desire achieves its goal thanks to the confidence in success that accompanies these acts.
Ames and representatives of the direction he developed in their experiments demonstrated the following interesting visual illusion. If you place a rubber ball on a neutral background and then begin to slowly inflate it, it seems as if the ball, while maintaining its normal size, is approaching the viewer (see an interesting video). In forming the image of an inflated ball, we follow a rule learned from infancy, when we first experiment with a rattle, now bringing it closer to our eyes, now moving away. We have to choose: whether to see the rattle either increasing or decreasing, or whether to see it as changing its distance from us, but maintaining its size. We accept the second assumption.
When we see things arranged normally rather than upside down, it satisfies our own self-imposed standards of consistency between visual, tactile and proprioceptive sensations. Retinal inversion glasses cause us to see objects upside down. However, after several days of getting used to such glasses, the eye again restores the aforementioned consistency, starting again through these glasses to see things as they stand normally. Now, if the glasses are removed, the subject will see the objects upside down, but eventually the match is restored again by returning to normal vision
An incomprehensible text speaking about an incomprehensible subject jointly directs our efforts to solve it; in the end they are solved simultaneously by the discovery of some concept which contains within itself the simultaneous understanding of both words and things.
The ability to continuously enrich and revitalize one’s conceptual system, assimilating new experience, is a sign of an intellectual personality.
Any use of language to describe experience in a changing world presupposes its application to something that has no precedent in the given subject area. As a result, both the meaning of language and the structure of our conceptual scheme are somewhat modified.
J. Piaget defined the subsuming of a new case under a previously established concept as a process of assimilation, while by adaptation he understood the formation of new or changed concepts in order to master new data.
Verbal errors go hand in hand with a misunderstanding of what is being said. Confusion can exist for a long time in any branch of the natural sciences and will only cease as a result of clarification of terminology. The atomic theory of chemistry was created by John Dalton in 1808 and almost immediately became generally accepted. However, during the approximately half-century period when this theory gained general acceptance, its meaning remained unclear. It was a real revelation for scientists when, in 1858, Cannizzaro clearly distinguished between three closely related concepts: atomic weight, molecular weight and weight equivalent (weight in relation to valence), while previously these concepts were used interchangeably.
Thanks to Cannizzaro's successful interpretive scheme, our understanding of chemistry has become clearer and more coherent. This clarification of terminology is irreversible: the imprecise concepts that chemists used over the previous half-century are today as difficult to reconstruct as it would be difficult to solve a puzzle problem and again be stumped by it.
Since each use of a word differs to some extent from any previous one, it is to be expected that its meaning will also change to some extent. For example, when Urey discovered heavy hydrogen (deuterium) in 1932, he described it as a new isotope of hydrogen. During a debate at the Royal Society in 1934, F. Soddy, who discovered isotonia, objected to this on the grounds that he had from the outset defined the isotopes of an element as chemically inseparable from each other, which was not the case with heavy hydrogen .
No one paid any attention to this objection; on the contrary, by general tacit consent a new meaning of the term “isotope” was established. This new value allowed deuterium to be included among the isotopes of hydrogen, despite the fact that it had the previously unknown property of chemical separability from other isotopes of the same element. Consequently, the statement "there is an element deuterium, which is an isotope of hydrogen" was taken in a sense that involved redefining the term "isotope" in such a way that the proposition became true (and without such redefinition it would be false). The new concept rejected the previously accepted criterion of isotony as superficial. It proceeded only from the same nuclear charge of isotopes.
The adaptation of our concepts and their corresponding language to new things, which we identify as new variants of the kinds of things already known to us, is achieved at the peripheral level, while our attention is focused on making sense of the situation we are faced with.
Thus, the meaning of speech undergoes a change in the course of our groping for words, which, however, do not fall into the center of our attention; in the course of these searches, words are enriched with whole complexes of unspecified connotations.
Modern authors have rebelled against the power of words over our thoughts, expressing their protest by reducing them to a mere convention established for the sake of convenience of communication. But this is as erroneous as the assertion that the theory of relativity was chosen for the sake of convenience.
The undervaluation of language, which consists in understanding it as a set of convenient symbols used according to the conventional rules of the “language game,” goes back to the tradition of nominalism, which argued that general terms are simply names denoting certain collections of objects. Thus, Wittgenstein says that the statement “I do not know whether I feel pain or not” has no meaning. Meanwhile, pediatricians are well aware that children often doubt whether something hurts them or whether they are experiencing discomfort because of something else. Here the false nature of replacing things with words is obvious, since it entails an erroneous statement. If Wittgenstein had said: “It is the nature of pain that I can always say whether I feel it or not,” this would be an error of fact.
Disagreements concerning the nature of things cannot be reduced to disputes over the use of words. It is possible to deal with such controversial issues only if we use language as it exists to direct our attention to the subject itself. It is interesting to recall that legal documents and government regulations, carefully worded to achieve maximum precision, are notorious for their incomprehensibility.
Although I thought through all the steps of the formal proof of Gödel’s theorem many times, one after another, this did not give me anything, because I was never able to understand their sequence as a whole (I also could not figure out the proof, although I think I understood the essence of the theorem . – Note Baguzina).
Any animal that is in a waking state is characterized by some purposeful activity, characterized by a readiness to perceive and act or, more simply put, to relate meaningfully to the situation. In these initial efforts to maintain control over ourselves and our environment, we see the beginnings from which the process of problem solving emerges. It appears when this effort can be divided into two stages: the first, the stage of confusion, and the second, the stage of action and perception, which dispels this confusion.
We can claim that the animal has “seen” the problem if its confusion continues for a certain time, during which it clearly tries to find a solution to the situation that has puzzled it. By doing this, the animal looks for a hidden aspect of the situation, guessing its presence; searches, using obvious features of the situation as tentative guidelines or tools. To see a problem (just like to see a tree, or to understand a mathematical proof, or to understand a joke) is to add something specific to vision.
If an animal that has solved a problem is again placed in the original situation for this task, it will not hesitate to apply the solution that it had previously discovered at the cost of great effort.
The situation before and after a solution is characterized by a “logical gap,” the magnitude of which can be judged by the degree of ingenuity required to solve the problem. In this case, "insight" is a leap through which a logical gap is overcome. And a scientist must rely on such risky steps all the time, throughout his professional activity. The width of the logical gap overcome by the inventor is subject to legal assessment. It is the function of patent offices to decide whether the ingenuity put into a proposed technical improvement is sufficient to justify its legal recognition as an invention; or is it simply an ordinary improvement achieved by applying rules already known in the industry.
There are three main areas of knowledge in which discoveries are possible: science, technology and mathematics. The fact that teaching mathematics relies heavily on practical skills shows that even this most highly formalized branch of knowledge can only be mastered by mastering a kind of art.
Obsession with a problem is essentially the mainspring of any creative activity. When the students jokingly asked I.P. Pavlov, what should they do to become “the same as him?” he answered them quite seriously that for this they should, getting up in the morning, have their own problem in front of them, have breakfast with it, go with it to the laboratory, there before and after lunch, also keep it in front of you, go to bed with this problem in your mind and also dream about it.
Chapter 6. PASSION OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
Passion in science is not just a subjective psychological side effect, but a logically integral element of science. The passion of the scientist making a discovery has an intellectual character, which indicates the presence of intellectual, and in particular scientific, value. The affirmation of this value is an integral part of science.
The function which I here attribute to scientific passion is the ability to distinguish between facts that have or do not have scientific interest. Only a small part of the known facts is of interest to scientists; and scientific emotions serve, in particular, as a guide for assessing what is of greater interest and what is of lesser interest, what is of great importance for science and what is relatively small.
A paradigm of science that meets the ideal of absolute impartiality, in which the world is described by accurately specifying all its details, was put forward by Laplace. He wrote that “a mind that knew for any given moment all the forces that animate nature, and the relative positions of all its constituent parts ... would embrace in one formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the Universe on a par with the movements of the lightest atoms: there would be nothing left , which would be unreliable for him, and the future, just like the past, would appear before his eyes.”
Laplace's imagination raised the specter of some gigantic intellectual achievement, and this device diverted attention from the main trick by which he replaced the knowledge of all experience with the knowledge of all atomic data. The general tendency in science to strive for accuracy of observations and systematicity at the expense of the substantive side of the matter continues to be inspired by the ideal of strictly objective knowledge, which was contained in the Laplace paradigm.
Scientific pedantry, with its inflexible determination to dissect the vital facts of our existence, still maintains this conflict, which may yet result in a general reaction against science as a perversion of the truth. This had happened before in the fourth century, when St. Augustine began to deny the value of natural science, which did not provide anything for the salvation of the soul. By rejecting science, he destroyed interest in it throughout Europe for a whole millennium.
Scientific disagreements never remain entirely within science. When it comes to a new system of thinking about a whole class of (supposedly) factual data, the question arises whether this system should be accepted or rejected in principle. Those who reject it on grounds that are irrefutable to them will inevitably regard it as the product of complete incompetence. Take, for example, such subjects of modern scientific debate as Freud's psychoanalysis, Eddington's a priori system, or Raine's The Limits of the Mind.
Each of the authors mentioned had his own conceptual scheme by which he identified facts and within which he constructed his evidence; each expressed his concepts using terminology unique to him. Each such scheme is relatively stable, because it can explain most of the data it recognizes; and it is consistent enough to justify, to the joy of its supporters, the neglect of those real or apparent facts which it is not yet able to interpret. Accordingly, this scheme is isolated from any actual or supposed knowledge based on other ideas about experience.
The two conflicting systems of thought are separated from each other by a logical gap in the same sense in which a problem is separated from the discovery that solves it. Formal operations based on one interpretive scheme cannot prove any statement to someone starting from another scheme. Adherents of the first scheme will not even be able to get adherents of the second to listen to them, since for this they must first be taught a new language, and no one will learn a new language until they believe that it means something.
Intellectual passion contains a moment of active affirmation. In science, it asserts the scientific interest and value of certain facts, while at the same time emphasizing the lack of such interest and value in relation to other facts. I am not enthusiastic about outbursts of this kind of emotion. It gives me no pleasure to see a scientist try to make his opponent an object of intellectual contempt or silence him in order to draw attention to himself. However, I acknowledge that such means of arguing are perhaps tragically inevitable.
To identify the assumptions underlying statements of fact, particularly scientific ones, it is necessary to take a definite position on controversial issues. I refuse to subscribe to the tradition and authority of science when it strives for an objectivist ideal in the fields of psychology and sociology. I accept the existing scientific opinion as a competent authority, but it is also necessary for any analysis of the historical progress of science. For to limit the term “science” to applying it only to those judgments that we consider reliable, and to apply the term “premises of science” only to such premises that we consider as true, means to completely distort the subject of our research. A reasonable concept of science must include conflicts between views within it and allow for changes in the fundamental beliefs and values held by scientists.
It is believed that discussions about the nature of fermentation, hypnotism or extrasensory perception, focus entirely on the question of factual evidence. However, if you take a closer look at these disputes, it turns out that in them both sides do not consider the same “facts” to be facts, and especially do not accept the same “evidence” as evidence. These terms are ambiguous precisely to the extent that both opposing opinions are different from each other. Because within the framework of two different concepts, the same set of experimental data takes the form of different facts and different evidence.
The most dramatic case of self-deception caused by the interference of the unarticulated abilities of the observer occurred in the story of Clever Hans. This was a horse that could tap out with its hooves the answers to all sorts of mathematical problems, which were written on the slate board in front of it. Skeptical experts in various branches of knowledge came and strictly examined the horse, but each time its infallible intellectual abilities were only confirmed again and again. However, finally the idea occurred to Oskar Pfungst to ask the horse a question to which he, Pfungst, himself did not know the answer. This time the horse clattered its hooves without stopping. It turned out that all the strict skeptical experts involuntarily and unconsciously signaled the horse to stop tapping, having reached exactly the number at which it should have stopped (as they expected, knowing the correct answer). This is how they ensured that their answers were invariably correct, and this is exactly the same way that philosophers ensure that their descriptions of science or their formalized procedures of scientific inference turn out to be correct. They never use them to solve any scientific problem that has arisen in the past or present and is still open, but use them only to analyze those scientific generalizations that they consider to be established beyond doubt.
Science is a belief system to which we are attached. Such a system cannot be explained either on the basis of experience (as something visible from another system), or on the basis of a mind alien to any experience.
Part III. JUSTIFICATION OF PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE
Chapter 7. LOGIC OF STATEMENT
If a statement contains criticism, then its subject is always the adoption of a certain articulated form. Thus, I do not agree with the opinion of A. M. Turing, who reduces the problem “Can a machine think?” to the experimental question: is it possible to design a computer in such a way that, like a person, it can mislead us about its structure? (for Turing, see).
The terms “critical” and “non-critical” should not be used in relation to implicit thinking. We are not talking about the critical or non-critical nature of dance or high jumps.
The process of studying any topic includes both its actual study and the interpretation of those fundamental beliefs in the light of which we approach its study. This thesis encapsulates the dialectic of research and interpretation. In the course of such activities, we constantly reconsider our fundamental beliefs, but do not go beyond some of their most important premises.
Chapter 8. CRITICISM OF DOUBT
Throughout the entire critical period of philosophy, it was taken for granted that accepting unspoken opinions is a direct road to the darkness of ignorance, while the truth can only be approached by the honest and difficult path of doubt. Descartes declared that universal doubt should clear the mind of all opinions accepted simply on faith and open it to knowledge firmly based on reason.
Since there is no rule that tells us, at the moment of deciding the next step in the investigation, what is truly bold and what is simply rash, there is no rule how to distinguish between the doubt that restrains rashness (and therefore is defined as true prudence) and the doubt that fundamentally undermining initiative (and therefore condemned as unimaginative dogmatism).
There is no principle of doubt, the application of which would reveal to us which of two systems of implicit beliefs is true; does not exist except in the sense that we will accept as conclusive evidence against a system the truth of which we do not believe, but will not do so in relation to one in which we believe. Here again, the admission of doubt is just as clearly an act of faith as its avoidance.
Chapter 9. SELF-DEFERENCE
I tried to show that every act of knowledge includes the silent and passionate contribution of the individual who knows everything that becomes known, and this contribution is not just some kind of imperfection, but represents a necessary component of all knowledge in general.
Postponing decisions on the grounds that they might be wrong would inevitably forever block all decisions altogether, with the result that the risk associated with hesitation would increase indefinitely.
– historical development of organisms. In biology, phylogeny examines the development of a biological species over time.
Latency (from Latin latentis - hidden, invisible): the property of objects or processes to be in a hidden state without manifesting themselves explicitly; delay between stimulus and response.
Proprioception (from Latin proprius - “own, special” and receptor - “receiving”; from Latin capio, cepi - “accept, perceive”), muscle sense - a sense of the position of parts of one’s own body relative to each other and in space.
This is probably why I am distrustful of TRIZ - the theory of solving inventive problems. – Note Baguzina
Michael Polanyi
Polanyi Michael (1891–1976). British philosopher, one of the founders of postpositivism. He sought to constructively overcome the idea of the possibility of a depersonalized representation of scientific knowledge, which is wrongfully equated with the objectivity of the latter. In the structure of orientation and cognitive activity - in sensorimotor skills, perception, use of language, diagnostic and experimentation methods, acts of scientific creativity, etc. – Polanyi distinguished explicit and implicit components. The latter are mastered by a person in practical actions, in joint scientific work and serve as the basis for his purposeful activity. In science, explicit knowledge is presented as interpersonal knowledge (in concepts and theories), tacit - as personal knowledge, woven into the art of experimentation and theoretical skills of scientists, into their passions and beliefs. Tacit knowledge does not allow for complete explication and is transmitted through direct (“hand to hand”) training in the skill of scientific research and personal contacts of scientists. Scientific experience, according to Polanyi, is internally experienced, caused by the passionate desire of the researcher to achieve truly scientific truth, and is personally colored. He introduced the concept of “scientific community” into scientific circulation. In a number of works he emphasized the need for certain sociocultural conditions to maintain free scientific communication and preserve scientific traditions.
A. Akmalova, V. M. Kapitsyn, A. V. Mironov, V. K. Mokshin. Dictionary-reference book on sociology. Educational edition. 2011.
Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) - British philosopher, one of the founders post-positivism, a native of Hungary, employee (since 1923) of the Institute of Physical Chemistry (Berlin), in exile since 1933, professor of physical chemistry (then social sciences) at the University of Manchester (since 1933). In the main works on philosophy and sociology of science: “Personal knowledge. On the way to post-critical philosophy” (1958), “Disrespect for freedom” (1940), “Foundations of academic freedom” (1947), “The logic of freedom” (1951), “Implicit knowledge" (1962), "Knowledge and Being, essay" (1969), etc. in the 1940s criticized the basic principles of logical positivism, in the 1950s he developed the concept of "implicit knowledge" (according to Polanyi, "there are things about which we know, but cannot say"). He sought to constructively overcome the idea of the possibility of a depersonalized representation of scientific knowledge, which is wrongfully equated with the objectivity of the latter.
In the structure of orientation and cognitive activity - in sensorimotor skills, perception, use of language, diagnostic and experimentation methods, acts of scientific creativity, etc. - Polanyi distinguished explicit and implicit components. The latter, according to Polanyi, are mastered by a person in practical actions, in joint scientific work and serve as the basis for his purposeful activity. In science, explicit knowledge is presented as interpersonal knowledge (in concepts and theories), tacit - as personal knowledge, woven into the art of experimentation and theoretical skills of scientists, into their passions and beliefs.
From Polanyi’s point of view, there are “two types of knowledge that always jointly enter into the process of cognition of comprehensive integrity. These are: 1. Cognition of an object by focusing attention on it as a whole; 2. Cognition of an object based on our ideas about what purpose it serves as part of the integrity of which it is a part. The latter can be called implicit... The mutually exclusive nature of these two types of knowledge can be expressed in terms of logical disjunction."
Tacit knowledge, according to Polanyi, does not allow for complete explication and is transmitted through direct ("hand to hand") training in the skill of scientific research and personal contacts of scientists. Polanyi's scientific experience is internally experienced, due to the passionate desire of the researcher to achieve truly scientific truth, and is clearly personally colored. Polanyi introduced the concept of “scientific community” into scientific circulation. In a number of works he emphasized the need for certain sociocultural conditions to maintain free scientific communication and preserve scientific traditions.
A.A. Gritsanov
The latest philosophical dictionary. Comp. Gritsanov A.A. Minsk, 1998.
Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) - British scientist and philosopher, known for his work in the philosophy and sociology of science. Born in Budapest, he studied medicine and chemistry. In 1919 he moved to Germany, and from 1923 he worked at the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Berlin. After the Nazis came to power, he emigrated to England, and from 1933 - Prof. physical chemistry, from 1948 - social sciences at the University of Manchester, from 1959 at Oxford, also lectured in the USA. In the field of chemistry, Polanyi was one of the pioneers of the application quantum mechanics to calculate the rates of chemical reactions. In the 1930s he visited the USSR, discussed with N. Bukharin on problems of centralized planning of science, defending freedom of scientific research. Polanyi owns a number of original works on the philosophy and sociology of science, of which the most famous is the book “Personal Knowledge. Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy" (1958). Along with K. Popper , S.E. Toulmin , T. Kuhn, Polanyi is considered to be the founder of post-positivist philosophy of science. They were united by a critical attitude towards the legacy of Neopositivism, but in many aspects their positions are very different. Thus, K. Popper, developing the concept of critical rationalism, polemicized not only with neopositivism, but also with Polanyi’s concept of “personal knowledge,” accusing him of irrationalism. The very title of Polanyi’s book is polemically directed against the “criticism” of K. Popper and his theory of “objective knowledge.” Other post-positivists assessed Polanyi’s position as completely rational, because its main pathos was to overcome the dubious ideal of a dereified representation of scientific knowledge, identified with its objectivity. According to Polanyi, there is a significant and very important “implicit dimension” in science that is not articulated or objectified in textbooks and scientific articles. Its core is the mastery of cognitive activity, the techniques and subtleties of which cannot be learned from textbooks and other texts. It is transmitted and mastered only through direct communication and joint work in the laboratory of a student and a master scientist. As a result, people who actually do science have a large stock of tacit knowledge, which distinguishes them from mere scholars. In his works, Polanyi argued that a similar situation is typical for other types of skill - in art, in craft activities, etc. In them, too, we “know more than we can say.” Polanyi applied the concept of tacit, unarticulated knowledge to problems of nature scientific discovery, the role of traditions and schools in science. He opposed the distinction between the “context of discovery” and the “context of justification” of knowledge, the dichotomy of facts and values, emphasizing the role of personal factors in knowledge, imagination, and the passionate interest of scientists in the search for scientific truth.
Modern Western philosophy. Encyclopedic Dictionary / Under. ed. O. Heffe, V.S. Malakhova, V.P. Filatov, with the participation of T.A. Dmitrieva. M., 2009, p. 216.
Essays: Personal knowledge. On the way to post-critical philosophy. M., 1985; Science, Faith and Society. L., 1946; The Logic of Liberty. L., 1951; The Tacit Dimension. L., 1966; Knowing and Being. L., 1969.
Polanyi Michael (March 12, 1891, Budapest - February 22, 1976, Northampton, England) - British scientist, a prominent specialist in the field of physical chemistry, one of the founders of the “historical” trend in the philosophy of science. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Budapest and studied physical chemistry at the Technical High School in Karlsruhe (Germany). He worked at the Institute of Chemical Fibers (1920), then at the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Berlin (1923). Professor at the Max Planck Institute (1926). With the coming to power Nazis emigrated to England (1933). Professor of Physical Chemistry and Social Sciences at the University of Manchester. Member of Merton College, Oxford (1959), Max Planck Society (1949), foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, member of the International Academy of Philosophy of Science (1962), honorary doctor of many universities around the world.
Since the 1930s Polanyi criticized totalitarianism and its destructive influence on culture. In the 1950s he formulated a number of fundamental principles of the philosophy of science. Science and other types of human cognition, according to Polanyi, have a commonality consisting in the fundamental irreducibility of the subject from all possible reconstructions of cognitive processes. Thus, Polanyi’s philosophy of science, adhering its ideas and methods to the sociology of knowledge, turned out to be an alternative to both positivism and “critical rationalism”, i.e. the most influential trends in the philosophy of science of the 1960s and 70s. Polanyi criticized the main provisions of the positivists: the program of “empiricism”, i.e. elimination of “theoretical” (not having an adequate translation in the language of observation) terms from the structure of scientific theories; inductivism and cumulativeism as principles of the logic of scientific knowledge and reconstruction of the history of science; demarcationism (a statement about the possibility of drawing a clear dividing line between science and philosophy). At the same time, Polanyi opposed K. Popper’s “epistemology without a knowing subject,” i.e. against the idea of the possibility of a logical-rational reconstruction of the cognitive process in abstraction from its cultural, historical, social determination. According to Polanyi, factors of the sociocultural context have a major impact not only on the organization of scientific research work of scientists, but also on the content scientific activity.
To evaluate scientific theories, “tacit knowledge” is of utmost importance, which is acquired and mastered only in direct communication between scientists. This knowledge is practically not expressed in explicit form - in the form of descriptions, diagrams, instructions or texts in textbooks; it always remains “behind the scenes” of the stage on which intellectual discussions take place, but significantly influences their content and character. Polanyi and his followers called this idea of scientific knowledge “post-critical rationalism,” which meant an orientation toward the search for a more flexible understanding of scientific rationality, focused on the organic unity of culture and its intellectual components.
The rationality of scientific knowledge cannot be reduced to a certain formal logic of research and discovery; the actual content of scientific knowledge and its logical structure are not identical. Scientific knowledge would not be possible if there were no rationality of cognizable objects - the internal rationality of the world. But it cannot be assumed that deductive or inductive procedures sufficiently reveal this objective rationality. Scientific knowledge allows us to correlate the latter with the human world; Intuition, a sense of beauty, and productive imagination are involved in this process. The information obtained in cognitive processes is always richer than that which passes through consciousness and can be verbalized. The meanings of terms are determined by the context of their use and therefore always involve “tacit knowledge”; understanding these meanings presupposes the direct inclusion of the subject in a given context. Polanyi's semantic views were close to functional and contextual theories of meaning (Ogden, Richards, Malinowski, etc.).
Polanyi believes that the most important condition for understanding is trust in the conceptual means of knowledge that the scientific community has at its disposal. Therefore, initiation into science presupposes a deep restructuring of the individual, a readiness to think as follows from the recommendations of the scientific elite, whose authority in the mind of the subject is indisputable. Conflicts between authoritative opinions and changes in fundamental beliefs are a normal condition of scientific growth, but it cannot be thought that this process can end with the victory of one of the competing opinions, which will present itself as the ultimate truth. The progress of science does not consist in moving towards some kind of universal “impersonal” knowledge, but in increasing the opportunities for personal participation in cognitive processes, expanding educational systems and professional research activities. This understanding of science brought Polanyi’s concept closer to the ideas of L. Fleck, T. Kuhn, S. Toulmin, P. Feyerabend and other critics of traditional concepts of scientific rationality.
V.P. Porus
New philosophical encyclopedia. In four volumes. / Institute of Philosophy RAS. Scientific ed. advice: V.S. Stepin, A.A. Guseinov, G.Yu. Semigin. M., Mysl, 2010, vol. III, N – S, p. 267.
Michel Polani (1891-1976) - English philosopher, economist, politician and epistemologist, specialist in the problems of philosophy of psychology.
Biography. He received his medical education at the University of Budapest. During the First World War he served as a medical officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army. Since 1923 - Privatdozent at the University of Berlin. His rejection of Nazism led him in 1933 to the decision to accept an offer to work in England at the Department of Physical Chemistry at the University of Manchester. In 1933-1948. - Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Manchester; from 1945 to 1958 - professor of social sciences. Research. In 1916, he created the theory of gas absorption on the surface of solids, and in parallel, an alternative theory was created, which in 1932 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. But after 5 years it turned out that M. Polanyi’s theory was correct. This case of biography determined the main theme of M. Polanyi’s thoughts. This theme was the contradiction between the fact that all knowledge is personal, and the fact that the movement of science is determined by communities of scientists. This can lead to the suppression of activities that may later prove valuable and the promotion of unhelpful ones. From the point of view of M. Polanyi, there is no reason to declare that this or that scientific theory is true or that this or that object of art is of unconditional aesthetic value, since it is impossible to prove that the corresponding position is the only correct one. But although it is impossible to know the truth, you can be convinced that you know. All constructs in science, art or religion are ultimately based on belief. This belief is based primarily on tacit knowledge. For example, a beginning biology student examining a drop of blood through a microscope for the first time will see very little. It takes practice to see the cells in this sample. But it is quite difficult to determine exactly what a student needs to know in order to distinguish between cell types in what at first appears to be an undifferentiated mass. However, this occurs as a result of learning that is largely based on tacit knowledge. According to M. Polanyi, any thought contains components that we are poorly aware of in the main context of our thinking. On this basis, he developed a theory of scientific research, going back to Gestalt psychology. The main thesis was that it is necessary to distinguish between “focal”, or conscious, perception of a person and things, on the one hand, and “peripheral”, or “instrumental” knowledge, on the other. In such peripheral knowledge, individual elements are not realized in themselves, but only through their contribution to the comprehension of the object on which attention is focused. The introduced concept of “tacit knowledge” designated a layer of human experience that is unarticulated and not amenable to full reflection. This peripheral knowledge is similar to the “edge awareness” of the sensations that are caused by the tool in the hand (for example, a hammer), which arise when hammering a nail and without which this entire process is impossible. The “tools” used (including the ability to ride a bicycle or a car, wield a hammer or scalpel, etc.) become, as it were, an extension of the human body and are clearly not realized. According to M. Polanyi, science is done by people who have mastered the appropriate skills and abilities of cognitive activity, which cannot be exhaustively described and expressed by means of language. This is tacit, or personal, knowledge; it corresponds to the experience of experimentation, classification, diagnostics, and use of theoretical apparatus gained by scientists over the years of practical research. Such tacit knowledge does not allow full expression in textbooks; it is passed on “from hand to hand” - in the joint laboratory work of an experienced scientist and his students, in personal contacts of researchers. On the other hand, explicit, articulated scientific knowledge, in particular that which is presented in the texts of scientific articles and textbooks (that is, it exists in clear concepts and operationalized theories), is only a small part of knowledge. Such knowledge exists as interpersonal knowledge. At the same time, the process of constructing scientific statements has two levels. Firstly, this is an internal, i.e. for oneself, reading of the emerging text, which is determined by the implicit context of hidden knowledge, which has the instrumental nature of “knowing how”, knowledge-skill, which is fundamentally given by the entire bodily organization of a person as a living being. Secondly, these are attempts to articulate a given text externally, through the language system. In such attempts at articulation, instrumental knowledge remains symbolically unarticulated, that personal confidence in the truth that serves as the basis for the judgment proclaimed by the scientist.
Kondakov I.M. Psychology. Illustrated Dictionary. // I.M. Kondakov. – 2nd ed. add. and processed – St. Petersburg, 2007, p. 431-432.
Essays: The Logic and Liberty. Routledge, 1951; Personal knowledge. Routledge, 1958; in Russian Transl.: Personal knowledge. On the way to post-critical philosophy. M., 1985; Science, Faith and Society (2nd edn). Chicago University Press, 1964; The Tacit Dimension. Routledge, 1966; Logic and Psychology // American Psychologist. 1968, 23, 27-43; Knowing and Being. Routledge, 1969; Meaning. Chicago University Press, 1975 (with H. Prosch).
Literature: Arshinov V.I. Polani // Modern Western Philosophy: Dictionary / Comp. V. S. Malakhov, V. P. Filatov. M.: Politizdat, 1991; M. Polanyi // Psychology: Biographical Bibliographical Dictionary / Ed. N. Sheehy, E. J. Chapman, W. A. Conroy. St. Petersburg: Eurasia, 1999.
Read further:
Philosophers, lovers of wisdom (biographical index).
Essays:
The Contents of Freedom: The Russian Experiment and After. L., 1940, Full Employment and Free Trade. L., 1945;
Science, Faith and Society. L., 1946;
The Logic of Liberty: Reflections and Rejoinders. L., 1951;
The Study of Man. L., 1959;
Beyond Nihilism. L., 1960;
The Tacit Dimension. L., 1967;
Knowing and Being. L., 1969;
Personal knowledge. On the way to post-critical philosophy. M., 1985.
Michael Polanyi(1891-1976) - British scientist and philosopher, originally from Hungary. Since 1923 He worked in Berlin at the Institute of Physical Chemistry. After the Nazis came to power in Germany, he emigrated to Great Britain, where from 1933. worked as a professor at the University of Manchester. In 1940 His work “Disrespect for Freedom” was published. He develops this theme in his works “Basic Academic Freedoms” (1947) and “The Logic of Freedom” (1951). In the 40s, Polanyi criticized the basic principles of logical positivism. His own concept lies in line with the idea of the relativity of norms of scientific and cognitive activity, which replaced the previous normative-rational issues in the philosophy of science.
Since the 50s, M. Polanyi has been developing his concept of personal knowledge, which caused sharp criticism from K. Popper, who accused the author of irrationalism. Nevertheless, the work of M. Polanyi “Personal knowledge. Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy" (1958) became a significant event in the history of post-positivist philosophy of science. M. Polanyi declared that he strives to constructively overcome the idea of the possibility of a depersonalized representation of scientific knowledge. It is necessary, according to Polanyi, to overcome this false ideal, which is wrongfully identified with objectivity. “The ideal of impersonal, impartial truth is subject to revision,” he writes, “taking into account the deeply personal nature of the act through which truth is proclaimed.”
Explaining the phrase “personal knowledge” in the title of his book, Polanyi notes: “These two words may seem to contradict each other, because true knowledge is considered impersonal, universal, objective. For me, knowledge is the active comprehension of knowable things, an action that requires special art.” According to Polanyi, the term “personal knowledge” well describes this peculiar fusion of the personal and the objective.
Since science is done by people, the knowledge obtained in the process of scientific activity, like this process itself, cannot be depersonalized. This is exactly what M. Polanyi wants to emphasize. Personal knowledge captures both the cognizable reality and the cognizing personality herself with her interested (and not indifferent) attitude towards knowledge, with her personal approach to its interpretation and use. Moreover, personal knowledge is not only explicit knowledge expressed in concepts, judgments, theories, but also tacit knowledge, unarticulated in language and embodied in some bodily skills, perception patterns, practical mastery.
Polanyi’s concept of tacit knowledge is one of the fruitful attempts to comprehend the integrity of everyday practical knowledge (including the experience of visual perception, bodily motor skills and instrumental activity), natural science, socio-humanitarian and artistic knowledge. At the same time, it deals a blow to previous ideas that separate (and contrast) subjectivity and objectivity in science.
“The most widespread concept of science now,” he writes, “based on the separation of subjectivity and objectivity, seeks ... to exclude from the picture of science this phenomenon of passionate, personal, purely human creation of theories or, in extreme cases, to minimize it, reducing it to a background that can be ignored into account. For modern man has chosen as an ideal of knowledge such a representation of natural science in which it looks like a set of statements, “objective” in the sense that their content is entirely determined by observation, and their form can be conventional. To eradicate this idea, which has deep roots in our culture, we must recognize intuition, inherent in the very nature of rationality, as a legitimate and essential part of scientific theory." Therefore, the researcher’s intuition is an important and irreducible component of the cognitive process.
In the epistemology of M. Polanyi, the anthropological orientation, which can be reduced to the following provisions:
– science is done by people who have a calling, experience, and skill;
– scientific and cognitive activity cannot be mastered from a textbook (since tacit knowledge does not allow for complete explication and presentation in educational literature); therefore, direct communication between the novice scientist and the master is required, which ensures the transfer of his experience “from hand to hand,” i.e. personal contacts of researchers are necessary;
– people doing science cannot be replaced by others and separated from the knowledge they produce;
– in scientific and cognitive activity, the motives of personal experience, experiences, inner faith in science, in its value, as well as the interest of the scientist and his personal responsibility are very important.
M. Polanyi emphasizes the enormous importance of the phenomenon of faith in the cognitive process. According to him, “faith has been discredited so much that, in addition to a limited number of situations related to the practice of religion, modern man has lost the ability to believe, to accept with conviction any statements, that the phenomenon of faith has received the status of a subjective manifestation that does not allow knowledge to achieve universality.” .
The time has come, Polanyi believes, to once again recognize that faith is the source of knowledge. It is on this that mutual trust in society is built. Consent (explicit and implicit), intellectual passion, inheritance of culture - all this is closely related to faith. The human mind relies on faith as its ultimate foundation, but is always capable of questioning it. The appearance and existence in science of sets of axioms, postulates, and principles also has its roots in our belief that the world is a perfect, harmonious whole that we can know.
Researchers of M. Polanyi’s creativity identify three areas (or variants) of the relationship between thinking and speech in his concept of personal knowledge. The first area is tacit knowledge, the verbal expression of which is difficult or insufficiently adequate. It can be called the realm of the “inexpressible,” because in it the component of tacit tacit knowledge dominates to such an extent that its articulated expression is essentially impossible. This area covers knowledge based on experiences and life experiences. This is deeply personal knowledge and it is very difficult to transmit and socialize.
The second area of knowledge contains information that is quite well conveyed through speech. Finally, in the third area of “difficulty understanding” there is an inconsistency between the non-verbal content of thinking and speech means, which prevents us from conceptualizing the content of thought. This is an area in which tacit knowledge and formal knowledge are independent of each other.
The volume of personal, tacit knowledge also includes the mechanism of familiarization with an object, as a result of which the latter is included in the process of life activity. Skills and abilities to communicate with it are formed. Thus, acquaintance with an object as initial knowledge about it, turning into a skill, into the ability to handle a given object, becomes a person’s personal knowledge. At the same time, skills (for all their similarity in the pattern of activity) are different and individual. The task of copying someone else's skill generates its own layer of personal knowledge. “Written rules for skillful action,” M. Polanyi is sure, “can be useful, but in general they do not determine the success of activity; these are maxima that can serve as a guide only if they fit into a practical skill or mastery of an art. They cannot replace personal knowledge.”
Polanyi’s scientific experience is internally experienced, determined by the passionate desire of the researcher to achieve truly scientific truth, i.e. clearly personal. This is the main conclusion from Polanyi's concept.
The fundamental innovation of M. Polanyi’s concept also consists in indicating that the very meaning of scientific propositions depends on the implicit context of hidden knowledge. At the same time, Polanyi argues that meaning is inseparable from the personal confidence that is invested in the proclaimed scientific judgment. “Science is a system of beliefs to which we are initiated,” writes Polanyi. – Such a system cannot be explained either on the basis of experience (as something visible from another system), or on the basis of a mind alien to any experience. However, this does not mean that we are free to accept or not accept this system; it simply reflects the fact that science is a system of beliefs to which we are privy and which therefore cannot be represented in other terms.”
In conclusion, we note that M. Polanyi was the first to introduce the concept of “scientific community” into scientific circulation. In a number of works, he emphasized the need for certain sociocultural conditions to maintain free scientific communication and preserve scientific traditions.
Biography
Born into a secular Jewish family, the grandson of the Chief Rabbi of Vilnius on his mother's side. Polanyi's mother, Cecilia Wohl, was born in Russian Empire. Cecilia Wohl was sent first to Zurich and then to Vienna by her rabbi father, who tried to distance her from Russian socialist leaders and prevent her arrest. Father - Mikhail Pollachek - was born in Uzhgorod (Ungvar) and was a representative of the big bourgeoisie associated with the railways. Michael Pollacek married Cecilia Wohl in 1880 in Vienna. In accordance with their social status, the couple owned houses in Vienna and Budapest. Michael Polanyi was born in 1891 in Budapest, becoming the fifth child in the family. Although Polanyi's father was involved in the construction of much of Hungary's railway system, he went virtually bankrupt in 1899. Michael's older brother, Karl Polanyi, is a famous political economist and social philosopher.
In his youth he was close to left-wing socialist circles. After graduating from the University of Budapest, he became a doctor of medicine in 1913. He published his first scientific article at the age of 19. After the “Aster Revolution” in October 1918, he served as secretary to the Minister of Health in the government of Mihaly Károlyi; after the proclamation of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, he returned to medicine. Due to repression by the regime, Horthy was forced to emigrate to Germany. In 1923 he converted to Christianity, marrying Magda Elizabeth Kemeny according to the Roman Catholic rite. In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, he left for Great Britain.
Philosophy of science
During a visit to the USSR in 1936 to give a lecture to the Ministry of Heavy Industry, Bukharin told Polanyi that the distinction between fundamental and applied science was a mistake of capitalism, and that in a socialist society all scientific research was carried out in accordance with the needs of the latest Five-Year Plan. Polanyi drew attention to what happened to genetics in the Soviet Union in connection with state support theories of Trofim Lysenko. Calls for central planning of scientific research in Britain by scientists such as John Desmond Bernal led Polanyi to advocate the position that gains in scientific knowledge were achieved through conclusions reached after free discussion by a community of experts rather than by a governing body.
Polanyi argued that the interaction between scientists is similar to the interaction between economic agents in a free market. Just as consumers in a free market, in conditions of competition between producers, set the prices of goods, scientists, without centralized leadership, determine the truth of theories.
Epistemology
In Science, Faith and Society (1946), Polanyi outlined his objections to the positivist understanding of science, pointing out that positivism underestimated the role that erroneous personal views play in scientific practice. In Personal Knowledge (1958), Polanyi argues that absolute objectivity is a false ideal, since all inferences are based on personal judgments. He refutes the idea of mechanically establishing truth through the use of the scientific method. All knowledge is personal and for this reason is based on individual judgment. Rejecting critical philosophy, Polanyi advocates a fiduciary post-critical approach, according to which we believe more than we can prove and know more than we can express in words.
Notes
Bibliography
- Polanyi M. Personal knowledge: On the way to post-critical philosophy / Transl. from English M. B. Gnedovsky. - M., 1985.
- Polanyi M. Personal knowledge. On the way to post-critical philosophy / Ed. V. A. Lektorsky, V. A. Arshinov; lane from English M. B. Gnedovsky, N. M. Smirnova, B. A. Starostin. - M., 1995.
- Polanyi M. Personal knowledge. On the way to post-critical philosophy. - [Blagoveshchensk?]: BGK Im. I. A. Baudouin De Courtenay, 1998. - 344 p. - (Humanities Corps.) ISBN 5-8015-7123-X
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Polanyi Michael- Polanyi, Polanyi (1891 1976), English philosopher and physical chemist, one of the founders of postpositivism. Born in Hungary. Since 1933 in Great Britain. In the 40s criticized the basic principles of logical positivism. In the 50s... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary
Polanyi Michael- Michael Polanyi Michael Polanyi (often Polanyi; English Michael Polanyi, Hungarian Polányi Mihály; March 11, 1891 February 22, 1976) was an English physicist, chemist and philosopher. Originally from Hungary; since 1933 he lived in Great Britain. Representative of post-positivism. Polanyi... ...Wikipedia
POLANI Michael- POLANYI (Polanyi) Michael (1891 1976) English philosopher and scientist, one of the founders of postpositivism. Born in Hungary. Since 1933 in Great Britain. In the 40s criticized the basic principles of logical positivism. In the 50s developed... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
POLANI MICHAEL- (1891 1976) - British scientist, chemist by profession, known for his work in the field of philosophy of science. He comes from Hungary, graduated from the University of Budapest and became a doctor of medicine in 1913. He published his first scientific article at the age of 19. In... ... Philosophy of Science and Technology: Thematic Dictionary
Michael Polanyi- (often Polanyi; English Michael Polanyi, Hung. Polányi Mihály; March 11, 1891 February 22, 1976) English physicist, chemist and philosopher. Originally from Hungary; since 1933 he lived in Great Britain. Representative of post-positivism. Polanyi is the author of the concept... ... Wikipedia
Michael Polanyi- Michael Polanyi Michael Polanyi (often Polanyi; English Michael Polanyi, Hungarian Polányi Mihály; March 11, 1891 February 22, 1976) was an English physicist, chemist and philosopher. Originally from Hungary; since 1933 he lived in Great Britain. Representative of post-positivism. Polanyi... ... Wikipedia - Michael Smith Date of birth: April 26, 1932 Place of birth: Blackpool, UK Date of death: October 4, 2000 Place of death: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Citizenship ... Wikipedia
