Personal Knowledge - by Michael Polanyi (Paperback)

About the Book

In Personal Knowledge, the distinguished physical chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi demonstrates that the scientist's personal participation in his knowledge, in both its discovery and its validation, is an indispensable part of science itself. Even in the exact sciences, "knowing" is an art, of which the skill of the knower, guided by his personal commitment and his passionate sense of increasing contact with reality, is a logically necessary part.
The tendency to make knowledge impersonal in our culture has split fact from value, science from humanity. Polanyi wishes to substitute for the objective, impersonal ideal of scientific detachment an alternative ideal which gives attention to the personal involvement of the knower in all acts of understanding. His book restores science to its rightful place in an integrated culture, as part of the whole person's continuing endeavor to make sense of the totality of his experience.
Polanyi expert Mary Jo Nye contributes an insightful new foreword to this expanded edition of Polanyi s landmark text. She offers an overview of Polanyi s life and career, discusses the controversial reception of the book and the subsequent intellectual debates it spawned, summarizes the work section by section and offers a list of key terms from the text, and finally makes the compelling case that Polanyi s view of knowledge creation is just as relevant to intellectual endeavors today as it was when it was first published in 1958.
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Book Synopsis

The publication of Personal Knowledge in 1958 shook the science world, as Michael Polanyi took aim at the long-standing ideals of rigid empiricism and rule-bound logic. Today, Personal Knowledge remains one of the most significant philosophy of science books of the twentieth century, bringing the crucial concepts of "tacit knowledge" and "personal knowledge" to the forefront of inquiry.

In this remarkable treatise, Polanyi attests that our personal experiences and ways of sharing knowledge have a profound effect on scientific discovery. He argues against the idea of the wholly dispassionate researcher, pointing out that even in the strictest of sciences, knowing is still an art, and that personal commitment and passion are logically necessary parts of research. In our technological age where fact is split from value and science from humanity, Polanyi's work continues to advocate for the innate curiosity and scientific leaps of faith that drive our most dazzling ingenuity.

For this expanded edition, Polyani scholar Mary Jo Nye set the philosopher-scientist's work into contemporary context, offering fresh insights and providing a helpful guide to critical terms in the work. Used in fields as diverse as religious studies, chemistry, economics, and anthropology, Polanyi's view of knowledge creation is just as relevant to intellectual endeavors today as when it first made waves more than fifty years ago.

Review Quotes

"Polanyi's monumental work, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, takes the shape of an orderly rejection of the false ideal of wholly explicit and wholly impersonal, so-called objective knowledge. The human mind, for him, is not an impersonal machine engaged in the manufacture of truth. In fact, Personal Knowledge represents a compelling critique of the positivist claim for total objectivity in scientific knowledge. . . . Polanyi, the scientist-philosopher, calls forth an enormous array of examples to show that the scientist himself is engaged in acts of personal acceptance and judgment in the very doing of science."-- "Philosophy Today"

"Rich in insights, groundbreaking in its interpretations, Personal Knowledge deserves to be better known."-- "Science and Education"

About the Author

Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) was a Hungarian-British chemist and philosopher, a fellow of the Royal Society, and a fellow of Merton College, Oxford. His many books include Science, Faith, and Society; Knowing and Being; and Meaning, all published by the University of Chicago Press.