Michael Polanyi, tacit cognitive relativist

Heythrop Journal - Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology

Volumn 42, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 463-479

  Jacobs, Struan ^a  

^a DEAKIN UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0041312841     PISSN: 00181196     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2265.00174     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. I document this claim in my 'Polanyi's Presagement of the Incommensurability Concept', forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science.
2. Avery Dulles, 'Faith, Church, and God: Insights from Michael Polanyi', Theological Studies 45 (1984), p. 537.
3. Other works by philosophers of religion and theologians informed by Polanyi include the following: T. F. Torrance (ed.), Belief in Science and in Christian Life: The Relevance of Michael Polanyi's Thought for Christian Faith and Life (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 1980);
4. Martin Moleski, 'Self-Emptying Knowledge: The Tacit Apprehension of Mysteries in Science and Religion' in R. Gelwick (ed.), From Polanyi to the 21st Century (Biddeford, ME: University of New England, 1997), pp. 414-34;
5. and see also the essays by Neidhardt, Crewdson and Apczynski in the same volume; and Echeverria's works as cited in note 6 below. The journals, Appraisal and Tradition & Discovery often include discussion of Polanyi's religious ideas and implications of his thought for theology. Several studies of religion drawing from Polanyi's thought are cited by Richard Allen, Polanyi (London: The Claridge Press, 1990), p. 78.
6. Paul Tillich, My Search for Absolutes (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1964), pp. 64-6;
7. and 124-43. Further indications of cognitive relativism's importance for religion appear in Michael Krausz (ed.), Relativism (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), pp. 18, 130-1, 264-5, 302-6, 322-3, and 381-2.
8. Maben Poirier, 'A Comment on Polanyi and Kuhn', The Thomist 53 (1991), pp. 259-79.
9. Andy Sanders, Michael Polanyi's Post-Critical Epistemology (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988).
10. Eduardo Echeverria, 'Polanyi on Truth and Justification' in R. Gelwick (ed.), From Polanyi to the 21st Century, pp. 830-40;
11. and Eduardo Echeverria, Criticism and Commitment (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1981), pp. 59ff. Echeverria concentrates on the Azande worldview or 'global' framework and its relation (or lack thereof) to science, whereas I also find striking evidence of Polanyi's implied cognitive relativism within the global system to which Polanyi devotes most attention, science itself.
12. Poirier, 'Comment' pp. 271-2;
13. cf. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), pp. 5-6, 64.
14. Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes, 'Introduction' in Hollis and Lukes (eds.), Rationality and Relativism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), pp. 8-11, emphasis added. Neither of these authors, it should be noted, is a cognitive relativist.
15. Richard Popkin, 'Relativism', The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 12 (New York: Macmillan, 1987), p. 274.
16. R. L. Cunningham, 'Relativism', New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), p. 223.
17. Michael Polanyi, 'The Stability of Beliefs', The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 3 (1952), pp. 217-32.
18. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, pp. 80, 94, 112, 287, 289.
19. Polanyi 'Stability of Beliefs', pp. 221-2.
20. Michael Polanyi, 'Scientific Beliefs', Ethics 61 (1950), p. 29.
21. also Personal Knowledge, p. 150.
22. Sanders, Post-Critical Epistemology, p. 186.
23. quoting Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 315
24. and also referring to Personal Knowledge, p. 245;
25. and Michael Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 71ff.
26. It is not entirely clear what Polanyi intends in describing the (entire) tradition of science as true, when he also indicates that not all frameworks in the history of that tradition are true. My best guess is that he means, at the minimum, that the tradition of science is cognitively superior to, has greater truth content than, other traditions.
27. quoting Echeverria, Criticism and Commitment, p. 75.
28. The underlying issue is well explained by Anthony O'Hear, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 68, 73-5.
29. See also John Preston, Feyerabend (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), pp. 74, 193ff.
30. As usual, my research owes a great deal to the efficiency with which members of the Deakin University Library, Geelong - particularly Christine Oughtred and the Inter-library-loans staff - have obtained essential works for me. I thank Dr Mike Leahy most sincerely for his detailed and acute comments on this article in draft, and for his having drawn my attention to some instructive secondary sources.