Editing Michael Polanyi (section)

==Work==
===Physical chemistry===
Polanyi's scientific interests were extremely diverse, including work in [[chemical kinetics]], [[x-ray diffraction]], and the [[adsorption]] of gases at solid surfaces. He is also well known for the [[Polanyi potential theory|potential theory of adsorption]], which was disputed for quite some time. In 1921, he laid the mathematical foundation of [[fibre diffraction]] analysis. In 1934, Polanyi, at about the same time as [[Geoffrey Ingram Taylor|G. I. Taylor]] and [[Egon Orowan]], realised that the [[plasticity (physics)|plastic]] [[deformation (mechanics)|deformation]] of [[ductile]] materials could be explained in terms of the theory of [[dislocation]]s developed by [[Vito Volterra]] in 1905. The insight was critical in developing the field of [[solid mechanics]].

===Freedom and community===
In 1936, as a consequence of an invitation to give lectures for the Ministry of Heavy Industry in the [[USSR]], Polanyi met [[Bukharin]], who told him that in socialist societies all scientific research is directed to accord with the needs of the latest [[Five-year plans for the national economy of the Soviet Union|Five Year Plan]]. Polanyi noted what had happened to the study of [[genetics]] in the Soviet Union once the doctrines of [[Trofim Lysenko]] had gained the backing of the State. Demands in Britain, for example by the Marxist [[John Desmond Bernal]], for centrally planned scientific research led Polanyi to defend the claim that science requires free debate. Together with [[John Baker (biologist)|John Baker]], he founded the influential [[Society for Freedom in Science]].

In a series of articles, re-published in ''The Contempt of Freedom'' (1940) and ''The Logic of Liberty'' (1951), Polanyi claimed that co-operation amongst scientists is analogous to the way [[Agent (economics)|agents]] co-ordinate themselves within a [[free market]]. Just as consumers in a free market determine the value of products, science is a [[spontaneous order]] that arises as a consequence of open debate amongst specialists. Science (contrary to the claims of Bukharin) flourishes when scientists have the liberty to pursue truth as an end in itself:<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Polanyi |first1=Michael |title=The Republic of Science: Its Political and Economic Theory |journal=Minerva |date=1962 |volume=1 |page=54-74 |doi=10.1007/BF01101453 |url=https://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/students/envs_5100/polanyi_1967.pdf}}</ref>

{{blockquote|[S]cientists, freely making their own choice of problems and pursuing them in the light of their own personal judgment, are in fact co-operating as members of a closely knit organization.}}
{{blockquote|Such self-co-ordination of independent initiatives leads to a joint result which is unpremeditated by any of those who bring it about.}}
{{blockquote|Any attempt to organize the group ... under a single authority would eliminate their independent initiatives, and thus reduce their joint effectiveness to that of the single person directing them from the centre. It would, in effect, paralyse their co-operation.
}}

He derived the phrase [[spontaneous order]] from [[Gestalt psychology]], and it was adopted by the [[classical liberal]] economist [[Friederich Hayek]], although the concept can be traced back to at least [[Adam Smith]]. Polanyi unlike Hayek argued that there are higher and lower forms of spontaneous order, and he asserted that defending scientific inquiry on [[utilitarian]] or [[sceptical]] grounds undermined the practice of science. He extends this into a general claim about free societies. Polanyi defends a free society not on the negative grounds that we ought to respect "private liberties", but on the positive grounds that "public liberties" facilitate our pursuit of spiritual ends.

According to Polanyi, a free society that strives to be value-neutral undermines its own justification. But it is not enough for the members of a free society to believe that ideals such as truth, justice, and beauty, are not simply subjective, they also have to accept that they transcend our ability to wholly capture them. The non-subjectivity of values must be combined with acceptance that all knowing is fallible.

In ''Full Employment and Free Trade'' (1948) Polanyi analyses the way money circulates around an economy, and in a [[monetarist]] analysis that, according to [[Paul Craig Roberts]], was thirty years ahead of its time, he argues that a free market economy should not be left to be wholly self-adjusting. A [[central bank]] should attempt to moderate economic booms/busts via a strict/loose monetary policy.

In 1940, he produced a film,  "Unemployment and money. The principles involved", perhaps the first film about economics.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Beira|first=Eduardo|date=2019|title=pol1b – ebeira|url=https://sites.google.com/site/ebeira/pol1b|access-date=2020-08-31|website=sites.google.com}}</ref> The film defended a version of Keynesianism, neutral Keynesianism, that advised the State to use budget deficit and tax reductions to increase the amount of money in the circulation in times of economic hardship but did not seek direct investment or engage in public works.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Biro|first=Gabor|date=2020|title="Michael Polanyi's Neutral Keynesianism and the First Economics Film, 1933 to 1945," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2020.|journal=Journal of the History of Economic Thought|volume=42|issue=3|pages=335–356|doi=10.1017/S1053837219000476|s2cid=225260656|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-history-of-economic-thought/article/michael-polanyis-neutral-keynesianism-and-the-first-economics-film-1933-to-1945/3013E469C730D7A95B9E1715D9860E3A}}</ref>

===All knowing is personal===
{{main|Post-critical}}
In his book ''Science, Faith and Society'' (1946), Polanyi set out his opposition to a [[positivism (philosophy)|positivist]] account of science, noting that among other things it ignores the role personal commitments play in the practice of science. Polanyi gave the [[Gifford Lectures]] in 1951–52 at Aberdeen, and a revised version of his lectures were later published as ''Personal Knowledge'' (1958). In this book Polanyi claims that all knowledge claims (including those that derive from rules) rely on personal judgments.<ref>''Personal Knowledge'', p. 18</ref> He denies that a [[scientific method]] can yield truth mechanically. All knowing, no matter how formalised, relies upon commitments. Polanyi argued that the assumptions that underlie [[critical philosophy]] are not only false, they undermine the commitments that motivate our highest achievements. He advocates a [[fiduciary]] [[post-critical]] approach, in which we recognise that we believe more than we can know, and know more than we can say.

A knower does not stand apart from the universe, but participates personally within it. Our intellectual skills are driven by passionate commitments that motivate discovery and validation. According to Polanyi, a great scientist not only identifies patterns, but also asks significant questions likely to lead to a successful resolution. Innovators risk their [[reputation]] by committing to a [[hypothesis]]. Polanyi cites the example of [[Nicolaus Copernicus|Copernicus]], who declared that the [[Heliocentrism|Earth revolves around the Sun]]. He claims that Copernicus arrived at the Earth's true relation to the Sun not as a consequence of following a method, but via "the greater intellectual satisfaction he derived from the celestial panorama as seen from the Sun instead of the Earth."<ref>Personal Knowledge p. 3</ref> His writings on the practice of science influenced [[Thomas Kuhn]] and [[Paul Feyerabend]].

Polanyi rejected the claim by [[British Empiricists]] that experience can be reduced into [[sense data]], but he also rejects the notion that "indwelling" within (sometimes incompatible) interpretative frameworks traps us within them. Our tacit awareness connects us, albeit fallibly, with [[reality]]. It supplies us with the context within which our articulations have meaning. Contrary to the views of his colleague and friend [[Alan Turing]], whose work at the [[Victoria University of Manchester]] prepared the way for the [[History of computing hardware|first modern computer]], he denied that [[mind]]s are [[Reductionism|reducible]] to collections of rules. His work influenced the critique by [[Hubert Dreyfus]] of "First Generation" [[artificial intelligence]].

It was while writing ''Personal Knowledge'' that he identified the "structure of [[Tacit knowledge|tacit knowing]]". He viewed it as his most important discovery. He claimed that we experience the world by integrating our subsidiary awareness into a focal awareness. In his later work, for example his [[Terry Lectures]], later published as ''The Tacit Dimension'' (1966), he distinguishes between the [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenological]], [[Instrumentalism|instrumental]], [[semantic]], and [[ontological]] aspects of tacit knowing, as discussed (but not necessarily identified as such) in his previous writing.

===Critique of reductionism===
In "Life's irreducible structure" (1968),<ref>{{cite journal|title=Life's Irreducible Structure|author=Michael Polanyi|journal=Science|date=June 1968|volume=160|pmid=5651890|issue=3834|pages=1308–12|doi=10.1126/science.160.3834.1308|bibcode=1968Sci...160.1308P}}</ref> Polanyi argues that the information contained in the [[DNA]] [[molecule]] is not reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry. Although a DNA molecule cannot exist without physical properties, these properties are constrained by higher-level [[Implicate order|ordering]] principles. In "Transcendence and Self-transcendence" (1970),<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41177772|title=Transcendence and Self-transcendence|journal=Soundings|volume=53|issue=1|year=1970|pages=88–94|author=Michael Polanyi|jstor=41177772|access-date=25 August 2020}}</ref> Polanyi criticises the [[Mechanism (philosophy)|mechanistic]] [[world view]] that modern science inherited from [[Galileo]].

Polanyi advocates [[emergence]] i.e. the claim that there are several levels of reality and of [[causality]]. He relies on the assumption that [[boundary conditions]] supply [[degrees of freedom (statistics)|degrees of freedom]] that, instead of being random, are determined by higher-level realities, whose properties are dependent on but distinct from the lower level from which they emerge. An example of a higher-level reality functioning as a downward causal force is consciousness – [[intentionality]] – generating meanings – [[intensionality]].

Mind is a higher-level expression of the capacity of living organisms for [[Discrimination learning|discrimination]]. Our pursuit of self-set ideals such as truth and justice transform our understanding of the world. The [[reductionism|reductionistic]] attempt to reduce higher-level realities into lower-level realities generates what Polanyi calls a moral inversion, in which the higher is rejected with moral passion. Polanyi identifies it as a pathology of the modern mind and traces its origins to a false [[conception of knowledge]]; although it is relatively harmless in the formal sciences, that pathology generates [[nihilism]] in the humanities. Polanyi considered [[Marxism]] an example of moral inversion. The State, on the grounds of an appeal to the logic of history, uses its coercive powers in ways that disregard any appeals to [[morality]].<ref>Personal Knowledge, Ch. 7, section 11</ref>

=== Tacit knowledge ===
[[Tacit knowledge]], as distinct from explicit knowledge, is an influential term developed by Polanyi in ''The Tacit Dimension''<ref>{{Cite book|title=The tacit dimension|last=Polanyi|first=Michael|date=2009 |orig-year=1966|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-67298-4|location=Chicago|oclc=262429494}}</ref> to describe among other things the ability to do something without necessarily being able to articulate it: for example, being able to ride a bicycle or play a musical instrument without being able to fully explain the details of how it happens. He claims that not only do practical skills rely upon tacit awareness, all perception and meaning is rendered possible by agents relying upon their tacit awareness. Every consciousness has a subsidiary and a focal awareness, and this distinction also has an ontological dimension, because a lower and a higher dimension is how emergence takes place.