Tag: Michael Polanyi

William Paley’s version of the teleological or design argument, pictures someone discovering a watch in a field and presuming that the watch was made by a watch-maker. So too, the universe displays a complexity that implies a universe-maker. If someone is walking over the heath and kicks up a stone, he might presume the stone has always been there, but if he kicks up a watch, he cannot make the same presumption. The watch is put together for the purpose of telling time through the motion of the hands, and all the gears and springs of the watch serve this purpose, and it all speaks of human artifice. Yet every manifestation of design found in the watch is displayed by the universe, with the universe far exceeding the complexity of the watch.

I mean that the contrivances of nature surpass the contrivances of art, in the complexity, subtlety, and curiosity of the mechanism; and still more, if possible, do they go beyond them in number and variety; yet in a multitude of cases, are not less evidently mechanical, not less evidently contrivances, not less evidently accommodated to their end, or suited to their office, than are the most perfect productions of human ingenuity. . . [1]

Notice the focus on “mechanical” and “mechanism” in Paley’s argument, which are very much interconnected with the rise of the clockwork universe and a deistic understanding of God (which will in turn give rise to a pervasive atheism). While Paley’s argument is a fine argument for limited purposes, his image of a clockwork universe had captured his age, not simply because of Paley but because the revolution in time surrounding the development of mechanical clocks reframing basic perceptions of time, the universe, and the role of God. As in the kalam argument, the implicit assumptions of the teleological argument (which are developing not simply due to the argument but arising with the beginnings of the industrial and scientific revolution) will have an impact on religion, science, and human experience, and it is in this context that Paley’s argument seems so convincing. God is the divine clockmaker who relates to his creation like a mechanical engineer, who may need to occasionally adjust the mechanism, but otherwise is a hands-off machinist.

This conclusion is driven by a scientific and social revolution which captured and included the best scientific minds (Galileo, Newton, Hooke, Leibniz, Huygens, and Pascal himself), the best mathematicians (the brothers Bernoulli, La Hire, and Leonhard Euler) and the finest master clock- and watchmakers (Solomon Coster in the Hague, Isaac Thuret in Paris, the Fromanteels and Thomas Tompion in London).[2] Meanwhile there is a shift, largely due to the watch, to a privatized sphere (no longer subject to the time kept by the church), to a separation between natural and mechanical time, and to a separation between perception and ultimate reality (the sun is not the ultimate timekeeper but time controls and exceeds the limitations of this natural marker).

Isaac Newton, who is very much involved in the developments of the mechanical clock (sitting as one of the judges who would award the 20,000 pounds to whoever could develop a timepiece which would work at sea, on the deck of a rolling ship) is also behind the revolution in science, in which the laws of the universe are perceived as absolute and independent entities. For Newton (an anti-Trinitarian) space is the “sensorium of God,” the organ through which he perceives the universe and flowing through space “equably without regard to anything external,” is time.[3] Newton’s entire science functioned like a teleological argument, but as with Paley’s watch, the implications outpaced the need for God. Within the next generation Pierre-Simon de la Place proposed a purely mechanical universe, making God superfluous. Napoleon is said to have asked Laplace, “Newton spoke of God in his book. I have perused yours, but failed to find His name even once. How come?’. To this came Laplace’s famous reply, ‘Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.”[4]

The next revolution in time, arising with Einsteinian relativity, brings in its wake two competing models of science and two very different notions of the universe, but also two very different notions of teleology. Michael Polanyi writes a groundbreaking work, and yet will spend most of his life in relative obscurity, compared to Thomas Kuhn, who borrows many of his ideas (though he is inconsistent in acknowledging his debt to Polanyi). Both left their work as scientists (Polanyi as a chemist, and Kuhn as a physicist) to take up philosophy of science. They both rejected Newton’s and Paley’s mechanical universe, with its positivist notions of “objectivity” and its refusal to recognize the biases which it allowed to foster. Polanyi had experienced both the fanaticism of National Socialism and Soviet Communism and he laid the blame directly on the doorstep of mechanical science. “The mechanical course of history was to bring universal justice. Scientific skepticism would trust only material necessity for achieving universal brotherhood. Skepticism and utopianism had thus fused into a new skeptical fanaticism.”[5] The lesson he learned was that science and human knowledge is not based on a detached impartiality, but is derived from an acknowledged “rootedness” in the universe. His picture of “tacit knowledge” is that we always know more than we can say. We recognize faces, we ask questions, we intuit understanding, in a way in which we are not fully aware. There is no positivist, impersonal, grounding to knowing.

Both Kuhn and Polanyi see the key role of persons and the personal in the scientific enterprise. Where the mechanical science of Newton counted the human observer out of the observation, relativity theory depended upon noting the location and perspective of an observer. Kuhn and Polanyi not only take the observer into account in the specific sense of Einstein, but both recognize that science as a whole depends upon human perspective, belief, culture, community, and intuition. Kuhn captures this in his notion of paradigms, as he traces the history of science through paradigms, with paradigm crises, paradigm shifts, and normative science, in which there is a reigning paradigm accepted by the majority. These paradigms are very much like worldviews, though it seems Polanyi recognized this and built upon it, where Kuhn did not account for his own worldview or even his notion of truth. Thus, though Kuhn will deny it, his theory seems to end in a kind of fideism, without any role for objective truth.  

The clear difference between the two thinkers concerns their basic understanding of the universe, with Polanyi acknowledging his theistic understanding, and Kuhn denying any objective ground for truth. Thus, Polanyi will found a new order of knowing, based on persons but also imagining a personal dimension to the universe. In the first instance there is the fittingness of the personal, as the only means of arriving at discovery.  “I have shown that into every act of knowing there enters a passionate contribution of the person knowing what is being known, and that this coefficient is no mere imperfection but a vital component of his knowledge.”[6] Polanyi finds the person and his insight as standing at the center of a literal Copernican revolution. Though the Copernican revolution is often read as a displacement of a man centered perspective, Polanyi takes the opposite tact. He acknowledges that Copernican theory is more objective, but not because it displaces the egocentric view of Ptolemaic theory. The Copernican theory is more intellectually satisfying, thus, “We abandon the cruder anthropocentrism of our senses-but only in favour of a more ambitious anthropocentrism of our reason.”[7] Human thought, embracing all of what it means to be human is enabled to comprehend the entire cosmic array, not through mere observation, but through a depth of consciousness.

His understanding of science and knowledge is grounded in a larger picture of meaning. In the book entitled, Meaning, he pictures freedom and meaning as contributing to intellectual freedom and perspective.[8] Scientific meaning takes part in a larger dimension of truth and meaning grounded in the eternal. Polanyi’s vision, partially shared by Kuhn, takes on a broader meaning, with Polanyi encompassing the whole of human life in his theory. He had experienced Nazi persecution, and the impingement of Soviet Communism upon freedom, and he saw scientific freedom as dependent upon an all-inclusive (political, intellectual, religious) understanding of human freedom.

In The Tacit Dimension, he tells of his encounter in Moscow with a Soviet scientist, soon to be executed, who said that pursuit of pure science “was a morbid symptom of a class society; under socialism the conception of science pursued for its own sake would disappear, for the interests of scientists would spontaneously turn to problems of the current Five Year Plan.”[9] A society built upon a presumed independent scientific thought had produced a “mechanical conception of man and history in which there was no place for science and history itself.”[10] Polanyi agrees that the pursuit of science for its own sake had ended badly in the fanaticism by which he was surrounded in Germany and the Soviet Union. So, he seeks to set science on a firmer foundation:

I SHALL re-examine here the suppositions underlying our belief in science and propose to show that they are more extensive than is usually thought. They will appear to coextend with the entire spiritual foundations of man and to go to the very root of his social existence. Hence, I will urge, our belief in science should be regarded as a token of much wider convictions.”[11]

As Polanyi writes in the conclusion to The Tacit Dimension,

Men need a purpose which bears on eternity. Truth does that; our ideals do it; and this might be enough, if we could ever be satisfied with our manifest moral shortcomings and with a society which has such shortcomings fatally involved in its workings.

Perhaps this problem cannot be resolved on secular grounds alone. But its religious solution should become more feasible once religious faith is released from pressure by an absurd vision of the universe, and so there will open up instead a meaningful world which could resound to religion.[12]

In this meaningful world, Polanyi, very much in the mindset of Origen and Maximus (in speaking of the meaningful particulates of logoi), describes the meaning of the universe reaching out to persons. “Potential discovery may be thought to attract the mind which will reveal it inflaming the scientist with creative desire and imparting to him a foreknowledge of itself; guiding him from clue to clue and from surmise to surmise.”[13] The conditions for discovery unfold or emerge slowly, not through the strained efforts of the scientist, but almost in spite of them. After giving up the frantic measurements and operative actions, during a cup of tea perhaps, things begin to emerge. “All the efforts of the discoverer are but preparations for the main event of discovery, which eventually takes place if at all by a process of spontaneous mental reorganization uncontrolled by conscious effort.”[14] Suddenly the climber finds himself elevated to the top of the mountain, after relinquishing his efforts, his mind transformed.

Nature, in Polanyi’s description calls out to be realized. “In this light it may appear perhaps more appropriate to regard discovery in natural sciences as guided not so much by the potentiality of a scientific proposition as by an aspect of nature seeking realization in our minds.”[15] As in Maximus’ doctrine of the logoi, which Dionysius had called “paradigms” and “divine wills,” Polanyi speaks as if the discoverer is not only looking into the world, but the world looks back and calls to him. The thoughts and will of God found in the logoi, in the Maximian notion of creation’s purpose found in incarnation, specifically identifies this beseeching presence with Christ. As Balthasar puts it in regard to Maximus, there is a “teleological structure to all being, and especially of conscious, finite intellectual being,” and in turn the transcendence of this teleology shows itself in all being, in the call to theosis.[16] As Balthasar clarifies, this is not a pantheism, but the realization of synthesis with God, an “incorporation and initiation of the Christian into him, Christ.”[17]

Where Kuhn had disparaged Polanyi’s “occult” like picture of intuition, Polanyi pictures this tacit dimension as the very substance of discovery. “The solution of riddles, the invention of practical devices, the recognition of indistinct shapes, the diagnosis of an illness, the identification of a rare species, and many other forms of guessing right seem to conform to the same pattern.”[18] In his list he includes “the prayerful search for God.” They all share the same “creative rhythm” shared by both artists and explorers. “It suggests that great discovery is the realization of something obvious; a presence staring us in the face, waiting until we open our eyes.”[19] The waiting presence seeks to make itself known, and seeks realization in our minds. It is a spiritual realization, which Polanyi connects to every mode of discovery, but particularly the natural sciences.

Polanyi notes that these significant “meanings” in the universe seem to reveal themselves simultaneously to a community or plurality of persons, with the interesting result that all may arrive at the same meaning, but may tend to portray it differently. In regard to quantum mechanics he says, “Thus we may think of Heisenberg and Schrodinger both penetrating to the same meaning but drawing different pictures of it; so different that they did not themselves recognize their identical meaning.”[20] In regard to electrons: “In 1923 de Broglie suggested that electrons may possess wave nature and in 1925 Davisson and Germer, not knowing of this theory, made their first observations of the phenomenon soon after to be recognized as the diffraction of these waves.”[21] He provides several examples, but one more must suffice: “And we may add the prediction of the meson by Yukawa’s theory of nuclear fields (1935) and its contemporaneous discovery in cosmic rays, finally established by Anderson (1938).[22] He concludes, “Could it be that the same intuitive contact guided these alternative approaches to the same hidden reality?”[23]

Polanyi, unlike Kuhn, anchored discovery to an external reality, but this reality is not simply external but extends into and appeals to the knowing subject. He recognizes with St. Augustine that all knowledge is “a gift of grace” and that depth of insight depends upon guidance through this antecedent belief (“Unless ye believe, ye shall not understand).”[24] Polanyi concludes, that belief must be acknowledged as the source of all knowledge. He concludes, “It says . . . that the process of examining any topic is both an exploration of the topic, and an exegesis of our fundamental beliefs in the light of which we approach it; a dialectical combination of exploration and exegesis. Our fundamental beliefs are continuously reconsidered in the course of such a process, but only within the scope of their own basic premises.” There is a continual dialectic occurring in exploration as we arrive at a proper exegesis. He claims,

We must now recognize belief once more as the source of all knowledge. Tacit assent and intellectual passions, the sharing of an idiom and of a cultural heritage, affiliation to a like-minded community: such are the impulses which shape our vision of the nature of things on which we rely for our mastery of things. No intelligence, however critical or original, can operate outside such a fiduciary framework.[25]

Michael Polanyi may have been too far ahead of his time, or too far behind, depending on one’s perspective. His deep insights into scientific method were overshadowed by the weak imitation of his thought found in Thomas Kuhn. As Martin X. Moleski puts it in contrasting Kuhn and Polanyi, “From my point of view, all that is good in Kuhn’s position is found in Polanyi, while there is no trace in Kuhn whatsoever of Polanyi’s orientation toward purposes which bear upon eternity. Polanyi’s worldview goes far beyond Kuhn’s in its orientation toward truth as a metaphysical prerequisite for the progress of science.”[26] In contrast, “Because of his empiricist outlook, truth is not something that can appear in Kuhn’s system—it is not something that can be ‘observed’ impersonally.”[27]

Polanyi would be obscured as Kuhn’s more postmodern notions were embraced in nearly every field of human endeavor. As Moleski writes, “After immersing myself in the story of Polanyi’s life, it seems to me that I can feel his anguish at seeing a limited and inadequate philosophy of science sweep the field, bring Kuhn the accolades and fame that Polanyi never enjoyed in his own lifetime.”[28] Polanyi wanted to change the worldview of his scientific peers in such a way that science could be carried out with a teleological purpose, which it often lacks, but Kuhn’s a-teleology has won the day.

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[1] William Paley. Natural Theology. Philadelphia: Parker, 1802.

[2] David S. Landes, Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983) 112.

[3] Query 31 of the Opticks (1718).

[4] Stephen D. Snobelen, Newton’s Heterodox Theology, 1.  https://isaac-newton.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/newtons-heterodox-theology-and-his-natural-philosophy.pdf

[5] Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1966) 4.

[6] Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, ( Routledge & Kegan Paul 1962) Preface.

[7] Ibid,  4-5.

[8] Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch, Meaning, (University of Chicago Press 1975), 3.

[9] The Tacit Dimension, 3.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Michael Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society, (London: Oxford University Press) 7.

[12] The Tacit Dimension, 92.

[13] Science, Faith, and Society, 19.

[14] Ibid, 20

[15] Ibid, 21.

[16] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, Translated by Brian E. Daley, S. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988) 148.

[17] Ibid, 283.

[18] Science, Faith, and Society, 20

[19] Ibid, 21.

[20] Ibid, 22.

[21] Ibid, 23.

[22] Ibid, 23.

[23] Ibid, 23

[24] Cited in David K. Naugle, “Michael Polanyi’s Tacit Dimension and Personal Knowledge in the Natural Sciences” Summer Institute in Christian Scholarship, 5. mp_eerdmansbook.pdf (dbu.edu)

[25] Personal  Knowledge, 267. Cited in Naugle, 6.

[26] Martin X. Moleski, “Polanyi vs. Kuhn: Worldviews Apart” in Tradition & Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical, 33:2, 21. https://polanyisociety.org/TAD%20WEB%20ARCHIVE/TAD33-2/TAD33-2-fnl-pg8-24-pdf.pdf

[27] Moleski, 22.

[28] Ibid.