Part I: Michael Polanyi

By Cynthia R. Nielsen

This is the first of a series of guest posts from a number of friends and colleagues. Each series will consist in I-III parts and will cover a wide range of topics within philosophy and theology. The first is a short series on Michael Polanyi by Dru Johnson[1].

First of all, for those who want the most clear and articulate understanding of Polanyi’s project, Esther Meek’s Longing to Know is the best way to get there. She is a Polanyi scholar and a student of Marjorie Grene (Polanyi’s philosophical confidant). It is the best primer on Polanyian thought in common language. Do not be deceived by its clarity; it is content rich, just not in an analytically traditional way. I am a disciple of Esther Meek and hence my reading of Polanyi is very Meekian.

Second, Michael Polanyi usually frustrates those trained in analytic philosophy. He begins with premises he cannot prove (as if anyone has ever proven anything, logically speaking). But his epistemology does sufficiently account for his presumptions and even for the structure of doubt that people bring to it.

Third, if you mention his name in most philosophy departments, you will either receive a blank stare or the token, “Oh yeah, he wrote that ‘personal knowledge’ stuff.” The effect of Polanyi and his contemporaneous circle of scholars is probably larger than we realize. Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a take-off (I won’t say “stolen”, although some have said that) of about four pages in Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge. The idea of science as a social fabric, not a clinical calculating machine, is driven forward by Polanyi in the mid-20th century (See his section titled “Scientific Controversy” in Personal Knowledge, 150f).

Michael Polanyi is best cast in the light of a scientist-philosopher of the mid-20th century who was opposed to much of Scientific Modernism. As a Nobel Prize winning chemist, he was personally familiar with the inner-workings of the scientific enterprise. As the quantification of the known world dangled like a carrot before Logical Positivists, Polanyi was dismayed with what he felt to be a hopeless pursuit.

What ensued was his tome Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. In it, he develops a view of epistemology that is rooted in non-propositional knowledge that can be expressed propositionally, though never fully expressed. This means that knowing, is fundamentally rooted in the knower and because a knower knows, he can attempt to articulate the content of his knowledge (This is reiterated through the historical-philosophical critique by Marjorie Grene in her book The Knower and the Known).

Anyone vaguely familiar with the current variegations of epistemology in the West will know that this is fundamentally ass-backwards. Epistemic projects are approaching knowledge as fundamentally propositional, while acknowledging that there are these other types of knowing; namely know-how and acquaintance knowledge. Most epistemologists see the non-propositional knowledge as not very useful for exploring what knowledge really is.

Polanyi takes know-how and acquaintance knowledge and makes them the centerpiece of his epistemology. As a note of commentary, this should seem right to us. Robust epistemologies should enfold everything we call knowing. So that “knowing my wife”, “knowing what it’s like to fly a plane” and “knowing the field of epistemology naturalized” fall under the same epistemological rubric.

This is mainly accomplished by changing our notion of knowledge-as-a-thing into the notion of knowing-as-an-act. There is no data out there (like a Platonic form), but rather people who know the world in a particular way; e.g. historically, personally, and socially. A fact does not exist as an entity, but is a shared concept in a cultural setting as an experience of reality. Knowing is an act which is fundamentally personal, thus historical and embodied. I like to think of knowers as movie cameras; spatio-temporal things that interact with reality from a created vantage point.

At this point, most people who are sensitive to the sin of relativism cry foul. Isn’t this just a culturally relativistic version of science and knowledge? No! The difference for Polanyi is that while all knowing happens in a social fabric (and is advanced thusly), there is a fundamental and fiduciary commitment to our interaction with reality. In other words, while you may have a different experience of the same reality I am experiencing, we are not rejecting that we are both experiencing the same reality. It is the acknowledgement of both reality as formative to our experience and the perspectival nature of our experience that makes Polanyi’s epistemology robust in its explication of the act of knowing.

So what is going on in our knowing, according to Polanyi? He is often remembered for what he calls “tacit knowing”. Tacit knowledge is that knowledge of which we have an inarticulate sense of and even confidence in but for which, we cannot give justificatory propositions. Further, we could never propositionally state that which we tacitly know. Tacit knowledge itself is incapable of being articulated. Most of our propositions turn out to be maxims, which are verbal tools that only make sense when one is embodying the act of knowing involved (Instead of Kantian notions of maxims, think of statements from a pitching coach to a pitcher or nursing coach to a mother. “Drop it in there” and “feel the let-down” have no contentful meaning outside of the embodied act of knowing what it’s like to throw a fast ball or breastfeed your child). What could this tacit knowledge be like? Well, for Polanyi, it includes most of what we know.

For instance, could you fully articulate what it is like to ride a bike successfully? No, you cannot. Even if you could write out the physical formulae of balance, force, inertia, and the likes, you could never hand it to someone and have them get on a bike and ride. There is an embodiment to the project of coming to know what it is to ride a bike. But it’s not just bike riding that Polanyi is interested in. If you feel the depth of the propositional problem via bike-riding knowledge, then you see that all knowing is a skill; including scientific knowing, kinesthetic knowing, mathematical knowing, and even breast-feeding knowing (I always include breast-feeding examples as an homage to Esther Meek : ).

Because most of what we know is tacit, we struggle to put words on what we know intimately at times. This is why we struggle to explain what a Platonic form is or how Nietzsche and Nazi fascism are not identical. Because we may know the particulars of a topic or skill and/or the narrative quite intimately, we struggle to articulate those very things we know so well. I am sure that many readers are raising objections to each one of these points in their minds, thus far. But unless we feel the depravity of modern views of propositional knowledge, Polanyi probably will not grab us and shake us.

In Part 2, I plan to lay down Polanyi’s structure of knowing as an act and his explanation of doubt. In Part 3, I will explain how Polanyi’s epistemology maps onto the biblical view of epistemology and I will endorse it to be adopted by Christian theology.

[1] Brief Biography: B.A. Industrial/Organizational Psychology (UM-St. Louis), M.Div. Covenant Theological Seminary, M.A. Philosophy (UM-St. Louis) Thesis: “Do we need a metaphysical conception of randomness?” Married 8 years, father of 4, full-time pastor for 5 years at Washington Park Fellowship in Saint Louis, adjunct professor of philosophy for 2 years at: UM-St. Louis, Covenant Seminary, and Trinity Bible College.