Contact with Reality: Michael Polanyi’s Realism and Why It Matters

By Esther Lightcap Meek

Is knowledge discovered, or just invented? Can we ever get outside ourselves to know how reality is in itself, independent of us? Philosophical realism raises the question whether in our knowing we connect with an independent reality--or only connect with our own mental constructs. Far from being a silly parlor game, the question impacts our lives concretely and deeply. Modern Western culture has been infected with antirealism and the doubt, skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, and atheism that attends it--not to mention distrust and arbitrary (mis)use of reality.
Premier scientist-turned-philosopher Michael Polanyi stepped aside from research to offer an innovative account of knowing that takes its cue from how discovery actually happens. Polanyi defied the antirealism of the twentieth century, sounding a ringing note of hope in his repeated claim that in discovery, we know we have made contact with reality because "we have a sense of the possibility of indeterminate future manifestations." And that sense marks contact with reality, because it is the way reality is: abundant, generous, and fraught with as-yet-unnameable possibilities.
This book examines that distinctive claim, contrasting it to the wider philosophical discussions regarding realism and antirealism in the recent decades. It shows why Polanyi's outlook is superior, and why that matters, not just to scientific discoverers, but to us all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: May 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781498239844

Esther Lightcap Meek

Esther Lightcap Meek (BA, Cedarville College; MA, Western Kentucky University; PhD, Temple University) is Professor of Philosophy emeritus at Geneva College and Senior Scholar at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. She is a Makoto Fujimura Institute Scholar, a member of The Polanyi Society, and an Associate Fellow with the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology. Esther is the author of Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People (2003), Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology (2011), A Little Manual for Knowing (2014), and Contact with Reality: Michael Polanyi's Realism and Why It Matters (2017). Her books and many publications express philosophical insights in every-day language for all of us. She also gives courses, workshops and talks for high schools, colleges and graduate institutions, as well as for businesses, churches, and other organizations. Visit her website

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Contact with Reality

Michael Polanyi’s Realism and Why It Matters

Esther Lightcap Meek

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Contact with Reality

Michael Polanyi’s Realism and Why It Matters

Copyright ©

2017

Esther Lightcap Meek. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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paperback isbn: 978-1-4982-3983-7

hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-3985-1

ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-3984-4

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Meek, Esther L.,

1953–

Title: Contact with reality : Michael Polanyi’s realism and why it matters / Esther Lightcap Meek.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,

2017

| Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers:

isbn 978-1-4982-3983-7 (

paperback

) | isbn 978-1-4982-3985-1 (

hardcover

) | isbn 978-1-4982-3984-4 (

ebook

)

Subjects: LCSH: Polanyi, Michael,

1891–1976

| Knowledge, Theory of

Classification:

B945.P584 M44 2017 (

paperback

) | B945.P584 (

ebook

)

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

05/22/17

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part 1: Early Consideration of Contact with Reality

Preface to Part 1

Chapter 1: Personal Knowledge

Chapter 2: The Structure of Knowledge

Chapter 3: Scientific Discovery

Chapter 4: Polanyi’s Realism

Chapter 5: The Reality Statement

Chapter 6: Contact with Reality

Chapter 7: Criteria of Reality

Chapter 8: Polanyi and Contemporary Realist Issues (I): Progress

Chapter 9: Polanyi and Contemporary Realist Issues (II): Truth, in Particular Correspondence

Chapter 10: Polanyi and Contemporary Realism

Chapter 11: Grounding Polanyi’s Realism: Merleau-Ponty

Part 2: Re-Calling Contact with Reality

Preface to Part 2

Chapter 12: Polanyi and Retrieving Realism

Chapter 13: The Current Conversation: The Difference Polanyi Would Make

Chapter 14: Recovering Reality

Bibliography

In this lively book, Esther Lightcap Meek does more than simply make a compelling case for Polanyi’s realism in the context of dominant epistemologies and philosophies of science; she also brings out a beautiful dimension of Polanyi’s thought that is not often seen, deepening its metaphysical underpinnings through creative engagement with contemporary thinkers. This book makes a much-needed contribution to the reception of Polanyi—and offers a fresh, new way to think about reason more generally.

—D. C. Schindler

Associate Professor of Metaphysics and Anthropology, 
Pontifical John Paul II Institute, Washington, DC

Justifiably renowned for her previous explorations of the knowing process, Meek here guides us expertly through Michael Polanyi’s epistemology and commends to us a renewed and humble appreciation of the generosity of reality itself. In an era of ‘post-truth’ and ‘alternative facts,’ this account of how we may discover what is real is very welcome indeed.

—Murray Rae

Professor, Department of Theology and Religion, University of Otago, New Zealand

In this inspiring work, Meek brings us back to the most fundamental point of all: ‘the natural trust and communion with reality that lies at the heart of humanness.’ This book is a philosophical celebration of that relation, in the idiom of Michael Polanyi, and all who are drawn to this topic will find it a compelling read.

—Oliver Davies

Professor of Christian Doctrine, King’s College London

Meek’s fans will welcome this extension of her covenant epistemology to the metaphysics of realism, in careful conversation with contemporary philosophy. Polanyi’s claim that knowing always bears indeterminate future manifestations is her theme, and it reaches an exciting climax in her comparison of Polanyi with Catholic thinkers Schindler and von Balthasar. This is an original, important contribution to preserving Mystery and furthering hope in the modern age, and deserves the widest readership. Take and read.

—David Rutledge

Pitts Professor Emeritus of Religion, Furman University; Past President, The Polanyi Society

For my mother, Edith Harvey Lightcap

—gratefully.

For the Polanyi Society

—convivially.

We can account for this capacity of ours to know more than we can tell if we believe in an external reality with which we can establish contact. This I do. I declare myself committed to the belief in an external reality gradually accessible to knowing, and I regard all true understanding as an intimation of such a reality which, being real, may yet reveal itself to our deepened understanding in an indefinite range of unexpected manifestations.

—Michael Polanyi

Acknowledgements

In bringing this work to publication, I am grateful to the following institutions: Temple University, Geneva College, and the Polanyi Society. The following persons deserve my gratitude: Edith Lightcap, my mother, for leading me into philosophy, for any inherited capacity for articulation, and for (literally) typing the dissertation; James Meek, for early encouragement; my children, for amicable coexistence with my philosophical preoccupation over the years; my colleagues and friends in the Polanyi Society; my editor, Robin Parry, for his commitment to this project since 2004 ; (the galactic) Andrew Calvetti, editorial assistant on this project; Zac Hummel, indexer; and my Geneva Philosophy Program colleague and friend Robert Frazier, for sustaining the vision of this work with me.

Introduction

Michael Polanyi was a premier scientist-turned-economist-turned-philosopher whose career spanned the first decades of the twentieth century. A Hungarian of Jewish descent, his life story is deeply marked by the tumultuous ravages of Europe in those years. Born in 1889 in Budapest to a wealthy industrialist and mother whose living room salons were filled with intelligentsia of Hungary’s gilded age, Polanyi’s career moved him to and through Berlin to Britain, where he died in 1976 .

He was a prominent physical chemist, to whose lab scientists came from around the world to apprentice and collaborate, whose work involved him in interchanges with Albert Einstein (to name only the most generally known of a cadre of great scientists), whose discoveries contribute to many fields, including the technology of X-rays, and whose efforts spawned Nobel Prize winning scientists—including his own son, John Polanyi. Turning to philosophy in the 1940s, Polanyi gave the prestigious Gifford Lectures in Natural Religion in the early 1950s. These became his magnum opus, Personal Knowledge, in 1958. He traveled to the U.S. repeatedly to give lectures and seminars at prestigious universities. With the help of American philosopher Marjorie Grene, he oversaw study groups which included premier philosophers such as Charles Taylor, Hubert Dreyfus, and Alasdair MacIntyre. His work played a major, misrepresented, role in the thought of influential historian of science Thomas S. Kuhn. Polanyi was among the first in modernity to identify key dimensions of inquiry and knowing that now have come to be more widely appreciated—for example, tradition, apprenticeship, and connoisseurship, and the vision of a society of explorers.¹

Public intellectual Wilfrid McClay deems Polanyi the greatest underrated public intellectual of the twentieth century.² Despite his greatness, Polanyi’s insights and even influence are little remembered or identified. Those who do keep his work alive wonder at this and lament it. How can this be? Various factors are commonly cited. Polanyi, a polymath, over his career contributed work in multiple areas, offering a wider interdisciplinary vision that it would be misrepresentative to reduce to—and perpetuate in—a single area of study. Further, in philosophy and philosophy of science, he contributed a wider epistemic vision that was fundamentally innovative. The vision was so deeply challenging that his work was unheard and dismissed in a time dominated by the presumptions and detail of analytic philosophy. Additionally, Polanyi did not write like an analytic philosopher—nor would he have cared to. His work is characterized, someone has said, by strings of quick, creatively brilliant insights.³ On a positive side, precisely because his writing is so lustrous, efforts in secondary literature—such as this one—pale in comparison. That makes it a challenge to disseminate it. And my own personal theory regarding Polanyi’s partial eclipse: Polanyi’s epistemology is so personally liberating that the recipient is freed to be him- or herself—and tends to forget the liberator in the conviction that the work is his or her own.

This book concerns one of those creatively brilliant insights: Polanyi’s idea of contact with reality. At the heart of what Polanyi was about, especially in his stepping away from science to do philosophy, was his concern to offer a fundamentally different epistemology that, rather than undercutting science (not to mention all of Western culture)—as he felt the prevailing paradigm was doing—would save it and enhance it. It was as a premier scientific discoverer that he offered an account of knowing that accords with discovery. This is in contrast to a prevailing epistemology that remained preoccupied, instead, with explanation or justification. Now, over fifty years since the publication of Personal Knowledge, his proposals remain innovative and healing. They ring true to what we actually do when we come to know—when we know, that is, not only in frontline scientific research and discovery, but throughout all the byways of ordinary life. Polanyi’s distinctive epistemology is featured throughout his philosophical writings. Also lacing those discussions is a frequently repeated insight regarding the making of a discovery. How do we know that we have made contact with reality? We know because our discovery is accompanied, and therein attested to, by a sense of unspecifiable future prospects of what we have found. In this the inquirer experiences the characteristic signature of reality as she or he contacts it: the real is that which manifests itself indeterminately and inexhaustibly in the future. It is this repeated, tantalizing, reality statement that I examine in this book, along with the distinctive realist stance that Polanyi therein maintains.

The first part of this book is my until-now unpublished 1985 Ph.D. dissertation. I found Polanyi’s work around 1978 during my graduate studies. I had been a kind of skeptic even as a child: unreasonable though it seemed, I felt that I had no proof that reality existed outside my mind—that it was there, independently of my knowing it.⁴ This was the seemingly unsolvable concern that drove me into philosophy as a teenager. Truth to tell, Polanyi’s distinctive, repeated utterance of this remarkable notion about contact with reality, when I first heard it some years later, struck me as the one glimmer of hope, the one hint of water in a desert, of something I desperately needed. Contact with reality was the very thing that I longed for. Thus, eventually, in the dissertation I was trying to develop a viable response to my urgent childhood question, which remained, to me, the most critical question there could be.⁵

The approach of the dissertation to this problem of realism was as follows: to explore and analyze all of Polanyi’s frequent expressions of the reality statement, to endeavor to connect his work with prevailing contemporary discussion of realist issues, such as progress in science, the realism vs. anti-realism debate, and truth (required by my dissertation supervisor, philosopher Joseph Margolis at Temple University), and then to craft a fuller defense of what Polanyi was offering by drawing on the resources of the convergent work of contemporary Continental phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In this last component I was following the personal guidance of Dr. Marjorie Grene, at that time a visiting professor to my philosophy department.⁶

At the time of its completion, I felt that the dissertation was only partially successful in proving realism. For one thing, it was timidly offered in the acerbic atmosphere of a highly analytic philosophy department. The dissertation lacked both confidence and conclusions. But neither did the dissertation make a believer of me, the young Cartesian skeptic—a believer in the real. I felt that Polanyi didn’t provide exhaustive—or even any—justification of his realism. Then, although Merleau-Ponty’s work expanded and joyously corroborate key aspects of Polanyi’s vision, one could walk away from it feeling both that it lacked a key Polanyian insight and that it ultimately fell short of the hoped-for proof of realism.

In spite of that, through the decades from then until now, through long-lived reflection on Polanyi’s realism, it turns out that I have grown to embrace it. This lived reflection has leavened my epistemology, and it is continuing now further to leaven my sense of reality. Out of it has grown my own epistemic proposals, which I call covenant epistemology.⁷ I have moved from child skeptic to seasoned intoxicated realist. Because of this, I believe that publishing the dissertation only now, with the addition of fresh chapters and an overall reframing, allows me to convey a felt sense of the very transformation in outlook that Polanyi’s contact with reality has brought about—and can bring about for readers.

From this vantage point, I can finally see that the dissertation, driven as it was by the prevailing agenda of analytic philosophy and the artificial structures of a dissertation project, not to mention my own inherited modernist epistemic default, took what is perhaps fundamentally an informal Polanyian insight and endeavored to formalize and systematize it, and seek its exhaustive justification. In this, the dissertation—by definition an analysis—partly defaces the very insight that has brought me life and hope of reality. That is precisely why the dissertation, now reframed, can that much more effectively address the need of the day.

The problem of realism is driven by presumptions so deep that we cannot entirely see how they are playing out in our best efforts to respond to it. Presenting my early systematization affords the reader a felt sense of the ultimate unsuitability of analysis to the endeavor to lay hold of this brilliant informal insight of Polanyi’s. Key to the mismatch of Polanyian insight and early Meekian treatment of it is the matter of indwelling—itself a brilliant insight of Polanyian epistemology. Simply put: if you are to contact reality, you must be subsidiarily indwelling its clues. If you are staring at them focally—as in a formalized presentation—you are therein prevented from the insight that is making contact with reality. Just as, to see the moons of Jupiter, you can’t look at the telescope but must rather give yourself to it to look through it, the committed posture of indwelling alone sidesteps the problem. The problem of realism proves to be not so much answered as obviated.

So why resurrect this dissertation? For one thing, as Polanyi stipulated, analysis is destructive only if you permanently ensconce it focally. Temporary reversion to focus on what should be indwelt subsidiarily is both necessary and helpful. It is only permanent reversion to the focal which blinds—and which futilely typifies modernist epistemology, to be frank. Contexting my focal analysis of Polanyian realism with the wider vision it is meant subsidiarily to support appropriately accredits the analysis, while enabling us in the future to indwell it with greater expertise and artistry. As we will see in the early chapters, this is just how knowing works, according to Polanyi.

The dissertation is studiously full of the many dimensions and prospects of Polanyi’s remarkable notion of contact with reality, as well as of my sustained endeavor to set these alongside major claims of the prevailing philosophical discussion of realism. Even apart from the recent updating and reframing, the dissertation’s focus beams life and hope. This idea of contact with reality needs to be heard and taken deeply to heart.

Additionally, I have deliberately preserved the dissertation with only minor revisions, out of respect for my colleagues in the Polanyi Society. It was this dissertation which, even though unpublished, in 2000 led them to draw me into their convivial communion. I continue to value their criticism as much as I value their affirmation. I commend their Polanyian conviviality to others: Polanyi Society conferences are the most delightful professional meetings to attend.

But the most critical reason that I resurrect the dissertation is that I am not alone in tending to be a skeptic regarding contacting reality. Modernity has deeply marked us all in the West, cutting us off from the natural trust and communion with reality that lies at the heart of humanness. People need not have raised the question in the form it took for me in eighth-grade: how do I know that reality exists outside my mind? Distrust of reality figures in decisions regarding life, time, nature, and culture. Modernity itself is centrally characterized by the Baconian vision of human mastery over nature. This outlook tacitly implies a distrust of reality, pitting us against it in our unceasing effort to triumph over it for entirely utilitarian purposes of self-aggrandizement. Postmodernity so utterly distrusts it and dismisses it that it is common to feel that we can make reality however we want it—and that we must. In this we also deface our own humanness. I offer this book—the dissertation freshly reframed—not only as the critical backdrop to all my other work, but as a healing, hope-filled challenge to modern culture quite generally.

This work submits the thesis that Polanyi’s innovative notion of contact with reality and related claims render Polanyi an epistemic realist, a position especially surprising and intriguing given his celebrated but misunderstood commitment to the personal dimension of knowledge. Given that his philosophy challenges fundamental parameters of the philosophical debate, then and now, regarding realism and anti-realism in philosophy of science and in epistemology, it is both unsurprising that his position is not widely entertained or engaged, and it is difficult to attempt to do so. For all that, it is a telling and valuable exercise to identify Polanyi’s potential contributions to that conversation.

Further, this book endeavors to develop, in the apparent absence of his own concern to provide one, a thorough justification for Polanyi’s realist claims. To this end, I examine Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception to elucidate the area of prethetic or subsidiary contact of our lived bodies with the world. In the final analysis, however, I conclude, as I have suggested above, that Polanyi’s own realism is both the best realism to hold and contains the best justification for it.

The book ends with a foray along a different path perhaps more accordant with Polanyi’s vision: I raise the question of whether the characteristic indeterminate future manifestations that signify our having made contact with reality are such because reality itself is characterized by indeterminate future manifestations. An affirmative answer to this presents the culminating claim that reality itself justifies realism. Taken together, these theses offer hope of restoration to truly human knowing and being, in healing challenge to the recalcitrant, deadening themes of modern Western thought and culture.

The work consists of two parts. Part I is the 1985 dissertation, minimally revised to supply the conclusions and coherence it lacked, but also modestly framed with opening and closing comments to link it to my current understanding. In addition to an extended systematization of Polanyi’s notion of contact with reality, it includes a lengthy effort to relate Polanyi’s theses to the then-current discussions in philosophy of science surrounding realism. This engagement of an earlier era of the ongoing realist vs. anti-realist debate nevertheless remains valuable, for it attends to the thought of philosophers still deemed to be giants in the area, and it proceeds along the lines of fundamental presumptions that continue to hold sway as the debate continues.

Part 2 is fresh and current work, representing the vantage point from which the entire project may be apprehended. It contains three chapters which together serve to update the contemporary realist debate, to assess afresh Polanyi’s continuing potential contribution to it, and to offer what I now feel to be a better resolution to the problem of realism. This resolution is one that opens out into future prospects for me personally and, I hope, for others. Reality solves the problem of realism. In this, it is true to the very notion of contact with reality itself: the real is that which promises to manifest itself indeterminately in the future. And just as it took some centuries, according to Polanyi, to uncover some of the hints that Copernicus sensed in his vision of the planetary system as heliocentric, it is appropriate that it be the work of decades to display earlier proposals at the time only felt to be insightful.

In my recent early reading of the work of contemporary Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, I find that he has uncannily and aptly portrayed the philosophical trajectory of my life—and possibly yours.

No philosophical question can be simply resolved, definitively settled, and then left behind. The same basic questions keep coming back, at a new level, as we wind higher around the spiral, or as we drill more deeply into the mysterious abyss of being. One of these questions is the question: Does truth in fact exist? . . . Our very inquiry into the essence of truth throws us back upon our starting point, which lies in the naked, unassured question of whether truth or being exists at all.

And yet there is an elemental wonderment over the sheer fact of existence, essence and truth that, for the genuine thinker, does not decrease but only steadily increases in the course of his research. But this astonishment, this ever more reverent, ever more amazed marveling at the stupendousness of the object of his knowledge, indeed, of his knowledge itself, looks less and less like the schoolboy’s abstract and fruitless doubt of the existence of being and truth. His intellectual life may have begun with such doubt, when, as a freshman, he made his first tentative efforts at thinking with the help of an epistemology textbook, but this starting point now seems touchingly naïve measured against the sheer weight of so many years lived in company with the truth . . . .

That is why, when the novice hesitates before the problem of truth, not knowing where to begin, he should take the advice of those philosophers who urge him to start by diving into the current, to find out what water is and how to make headway in it through direct, physical contact with the flowing stream. They will tell him, and rightly so, that . . . the man who does not dare to jump into the truth will never attain the certainty that truth in fact exists.⁸

In other words, over time, life—and hopefully this book as part of it—should make philosophers and realists of us all.

Aliquippa, Pennsylvania

Summer, 2016

1. Scott and Moleski, Polanyi: Scientist and Philosopher is the definitive biography of Polanyi. See also Breytspraak and Mullins, Polanyi and the Study Groups.

2. Personal conversation,

2006

.

3. Amartya Sen’s assessment in his foreword to the

2009

edition of Polanyi’s Tacit Dimension. Sen, Foreword, in Polanyi, Tacit Dimension, xv.

4. Born into a faithfully practicing Christian family, I also asked, how do I know that God exists? But it was obvious to me that the questions were related—in fact, crucial each to the other.

5. Polanyi never seems to have posed the skeptical question, even though I took what he was saying as hope for mine. His posture, as evidenced in any expressions of the reality statement, was unquestioned and presumptively confident. I will explore this presently.

6. See her own work on this: Grene, Tacit Knowing and the Prereflective Cogito, in Langford and Poteat, eds., Intellect and Hope; see also her Philosophical Testament, ch.

4

.

7. See Preface to pt.

2

for a brief summary of covenant epistemology. Meek, Longing to Know; Loving to Know; Little Manual. One way I came to express it in Longing to Know was to say that reality doesn’t answer your questions so much as explode them—or to start questioning you (ch.

16

). I must note that having children and living life ought to make a realist out of you. As Grene quipped of her revised take on Kant as a result of her life as a farmer: My first ten years farming I found I had lost any ear for the sacred text. We had a great gray Percheron mare named Kitty; I couldn’t look at her and ask, was she an appearance or a thing in herself. . . . Come to think of it, I don’t know why one’s offspring don’t have the same effect: babies are not just phenomenal either (or not in the Kantian sense!) (Philosophical Testament,

35

.)

8. Balthasar, Theo-Logic, I,

24

–

25

. Balthasar’s work abounds with phrases consonant with the Polanyian vision of contact with reality with its inexhaustible indeterminate future manifestations. Ch.

14

of this work features an analysis of D. C. Schindler’s Balthasar-inspired proposals.

Part

1

Early Consideration of Contact with Reality

Preface to Part 1

⁹

The purpose of this inquiry is to examine and evaluate a little-known and probably not seriously enough considered aspect of Michael Polanyi’s thought: his realism. Polanyi is known best for his contribution to philosophy of science and epistemology, specifically, for his advocacy of the role of personal commitment and appraisal in knowledge, and his development of the subsidiary-focal structure of knowledge. Polanyi’s realism—that is, in part, his conviction that reality exists independently of any knowledge of it, and confidence that human knowers are generally successful in establishing contact with reality in their acts of learning and discovery—is less well known, even though it lies close to the heart of his theory of knowledge.

At least one legitimate reason for its comparative obscurity is the fact that Polanyi nowhere gives his realism systematic treatment. His realism is evident and often explicit throughout his works, but these passages are for the most part short, and the subject is often introduced and disposed of without the kind of logical development and the explanation of concepts that the reader would like. Polanyi’s realism is also obscured by the great popularity (or notoriety) of his fiduciary program, such that it is probably difficult to believe that a philosopher so concerned with presenting the ultimately fiduciary character of the foundation of knowledge could also be concerned about any sort of contact with extramental reality—let alone that if he had such a concern, his proposals could possibly be considered successful.

In this work, I propose to make the case for Polanyi being called a realist. I will offer a systematization of his idea of contact with reality and a demonstration of his realism. Then, I will endeavor to bring his ideas into the arena of contemporary discussion of the matter. It must then be determined whether Polanyi has in fact substantiated his claim: whether the knower does in fact lay hold of the real in his epistemic activity. These are the questions that I hope to address in the coming chapters. The very first chapters are for the most part introductory, offering a sketch of Polanyi’s fiduciary program and his structure of knowledge that will provide the important context for the realism discussion. Special attention will be given to Polanyi’s analysis of the process of discovery, for it is closely tied to his realism.

It shall be seen that reality for Polanyi is epistemically independent, and that even so, it is substantially accessible to the knower. We shall see that Polanyi defines reality as that which inexhaustively manifests itself. For him successful contact with reality is attested to by virtue of its accompanying intimations of an indeterminate range of future manifestations, as well as by virtue of the experience of a sudden and far-reaching integration. These theses not only reveal the character of Polanyi’s realism but also bear implications for questions of truth and correspondence.

In comparing Polanyi’s thought with that of other contemporary philosophers of science with respect to the issues of realism, we will gain a better sense of the nature of Polanyi’s realism as I piece together his position on such issues as progress and rationality in science, the nature of truth, and various current realist theses. It will be seen that, although Polanyi would espouse key doctrines of contemporary realism, the peculiar character of his realism is such that he would give a qualified and fresh interpretation to each.

The concluding chapter of this part explores the Polanyian notion of indwelling in its attempt to ground and justify as well as amplify Polanyi’s realism. This is done by way of a short excursus into the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenologically portrayed concepts of preobjective experience, and the lived body in particular, closely parallel Polanyi’s ideas. As a result, it is hoped that Merleau-Ponty’s fuller development of these notions will provide Polanyi’s realism with fuller justification. It becomes apparent that realism is a viable option by virtue of the fact that the knower, as a physical being, is already rooted in and part of the world prior to any distinction between subject and object. What is more, he constantly reaches beyond himself to something else—this by reason of his very nature.¹⁰ Human knowledge, then, is rooted in the tacit and hence rooted in the world, but is integrative in character and hence always reaches beyond the knower to incorporate the known.

The reader unfamiliar with Polanyi may find it helpful at this juncture to be given some sense of Polanyi’s relative position with respect to contemporary philosophy of science, even though a more expansive analysis appears in chapters 8–10. Harold I. Brown, in his 1977 Perception, Theory and Commitment: The New Philosophy of Science, considers Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge to be one of the founding works of a new approach to science: a movement that has been united in its attack upon the methods and conclusions of logical empiricism.¹¹ Subsequent exponents of this new image of science, according to Brown, include Stephen Toulmin, Thomas S. Kuhn, and Paul Feyerabend. In the new approach, study of the history of science replaces formal logic as the primary tool for analysis of science. The concern is less with the logical structure of completed theories and more with the rational basis of scientific discovery and theory change. The central claim is that a presupposed theoretical framework is more fundamental to scientific knowledge than is a group of data (which can no longer be considered theory-independent). The framework itself guides the determination of the nature and significance of data as well as the choice and solution of problems. The framework is modified only from within, especially in the event of a major discovery. Brown deems Karl Popper a transitional, in fact, an equivocal, figure. On one interpretation Popper conforms to the principles of logical empiricism despite his proposing falsificationism, and on another interpretation (Imre Lakatos among others) he attempts to embrace some of the motivating concerns of the new movement.

Let us add to Brown’s assessment the following: Polanyi’s critique of empiricism compares favorably with that of Feyerabend’s, differing from it primarily because of Feyerabend’s disregard of any questions of rationality—something Polanyi fervently maintains in a revised form. In contrast to Kuhn, Polanyi does not concern himself with a structure of scientific revolutions or with a distinction between normal and abnormal science. The fact that Polanyi is concerned with the process of a scientific discovery allows Kuhn’s developments to be brought into line with his. Although Kuhn develops the Polanyian notion of the scientific community and acknowledges in particular the foundational role of tacit knowing, Kuhn’s proposals contain no epistemological structure like Polanyi’s. Finally, there are hints of what may turn out to be a fundamental difference of characterization of reality and truth—a topic to be discussed more fully in chapter 9. Some similarity exists between Popper and Polanyi, especially on the more recent interpretation of Popper. Lakatos, who is deeply critical of Polanyi’s proposals, has himself nevertheless emphasized the role of human judgment in intellectual performances, in his development of Popper’s position; nor does he consider his own position to be any the less rational for it.

In concluding this introduction, I make two disclaimers. First, Polanyi’s concern with the real extends beyond the issue of the possibility of contact with it. It somewhat naturally involves him in the consideration of what sorts of things are real, and his conclusions concern a whole spectrum of things from atoms and physical objects to minds, works of art, concepts, and universals. Polanyi also attempts to develop a metaphysical doctrine of emergent levels of being, the connection of which to his theory of knowledge is, in my opinion, problematic. Neither of these topics will given a full-fledged exposition in this work.¹²

Secondly, the philosopher who reads Polanyi’s work is liable to find that it fails to live up to the rigorous standards of reasoning, explanation, and critique that are generally held within philosophical circles; it does not manifest the philosophical formality that we might be used to. He introduces terms and topics without reference to the standard discussions; the evidence and rationale that he proffers for his peculiar concepts seem inadequate, not to mention unphilosophical. For all that, we would be foolish to write off his work without further consideration. It is helpful to realize that, in contrast to most philosophers, Polanyi’s early and formative training was in science—not even philosophy of science, but science. His interests then expanded over the range of social studies, including political science and economics. Finally, he turned his hand to more philosophical questions as a result of his dissatisfaction with the reigning philosophical interpretation of the nature of scientific inquiry. In this philosophical venture, what he was attempting to do was to replace what he felt was an inadequate, misleading, in fact false, epistemology with one that rang true to the scientific enterprise as he knew it to be. Thus, at least to some extent, we would do well to put up with seemingly shoddy philosophical analysis for the sake of fresh and expert insight resulting from his scientific perspective. Indeed, his concepts, perhaps rough-hewn and flawed, are seminal, elegant, significant, and profound, not to mention useful.

Further, it is helpful to realize that Polanyi claims that his ideas represent a radical rejection of the status quo, especially in philosophy of science, but also in philosophy. In an upcoming chapter, we will consider the issue of incommensurability of theories. To whatever extent there exists a core of truth in this notion, incommensurability apparently pertains when we compare Polanyi’s claims with the wider conversation in philosophy of science, and philosophy in general. To some extent, the thinker who would develop a radical approach in philosophy or science is barred from doing so within the principal methodological medium of the system(s) that he rejects. Polanyi is self-consciously aware of this state of affairs; in fact he preaches it enthusiastically. He tells us that as a result, the one who would understand a new way of thought must trust his teacher, not blindly, but truly, purposefully bringing himself under that teacher’s authority. Such a move does not inhibit either criticism or rationality, to Polanyi’s way of thinking; it is rather a move that is absolutely essential if there is to be any comprehension whatsoever. Thus, my basic stance throughout this work has been first of all sympathetic with respect to Polanyi. This is not meant as a prejudicing preacceptance, but so as to allow him extra time to speak in order to compensate for the initial dullness of our hearing with respect to Polanyian themes. Yet, comparison and criticism are not impossible, as the reader will see. In fact, since the time of Polanyi’s writing, the general shift of thought in philosophy of science has been in the direction of his concepts, thus rendering his early message more commensurable with respect to contemporary thinking.

9. This Preface stood as the Introduction to Meek, Contact With Reality: An Examination of Realism in the Work of Michael Polanyi (PhD diss, Temple University,

1983

). The dissertation’s chapters were grouped in parts: Part I: Polanyian Epistemology; Part II: Contact With Reality; Part III: Polanyi and Realism in Contemporary Philosophy of Science; Part IV: Grounding Polanyi’s Realism. I have erased these part divisions for purposes of the current publication, using part headings to denote my

1983

and

2016

work.

10. In preparing this for publication, I have opted to retain masculine pronouns in the body of the

1983

text, as in all quotations in which it occurs. In the body of the

2016

text in Part II, I will use exclusively feminine ones, attempting a balance meant to honor all persons while maintaining the integrity of different eras.

11. Brown, Perception, Theory and Commitment.

12. However, I do return to consider reality in the final chapter of this book. But that chapter does not work closely with Polanyi’s specific metaphysical claims.

1

Personal Knowledge

In order to accurately portray Polanyi’s realist claim, we must locate it in the larger context of his overarching proposal that knowledge is personal. This chapter will show what Polanyi means by personal knowledge, and why he thinks we should understand knowledge this way. The demonstration of the personal character of all of knowledge is Polanyi’s consuming concern in his magnum opus and thus is where he himself begins. ¹³ Tacit knowing and subsidiary-focal awareness are concepts that pervade Personal Knowledge more or less implicitly. Polanyi later recognized their importance and explicated them more fully as part of his structure of tacit knowing in several essays. ¹⁴ In Personal Knowledge, however, his concern is to state in general the case for recognizing the personal root of all knowledge, in condemnation of what he takes to be the prevailing, presumed to be impersonal, approach in epistemology. His development of the notion of the personal culminates most explicitly in his discussion of his notion of commitment and in his fiduciary programme. ¹⁵ Along the way it encompasses a whole range of ideas, such as tacit knowing, subsidiary awareness, indwelling, and the bodily rootedness of all thought—all terms that this introductory section will introduce. The sketch in this chapter patterns itself roughly after that development.

This overarching context of the personal character of knowledge has often been viewed