Editing Michael Polanyi (section)

===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>