Anthropological Materials in the Making of Michael Polanyi's Metascience

Anthropological Materials in the Making of Michael Polanyi’s Metascience

Struan Jacobs Deakin University

Phil Mullins Missouri Western State University

1. Introduction Anthropological discussions were important for Michael Polanyi in the middle phase of his intellectual career, in which he articulated in some detail his understanding of science, culture and society. This middle period commenced with his 1946 Riddell Memorial Lectures at Durham Univer- sity in early 1946, published as Science, Faith and Society later that year, and extended through the publication of Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post- Critical Philosophy in 1958, based on Polanyi’s 1951 and 1952 Gifford Lec- tures (Scott and Moleski 2005, p. 203ff.). The Riddell Lectures gave Polanyi’s most robust working out of his constructive theory of science to date, although some of the ideas developed in Science, Faith and Society can also be found in writing done a few years before his Riddell Lectures. Polanyi explained in his 1964 “Background and Prospect,” a retrospective introduction to a new edition of Science, Faith and Society, that the book had been catalyzed by the need to answer fundamental questions about the nature and justiﬁcation of science raised by Marxist theory and, in the thirties and early 1940s, the Marxist-inﬂuenced “planned science” movement in the UK. Such questions concerned not only matters about the organization of science but what Polanyi ([1946] 1964, p. 17) called the Marxist- Leninist denial of “the intrinsic creative powers of thought.” His critique of “planned science” and his rejection of the Marxist perspective on knowledge and applied science have been well covered in the scholarly literature.

For permission to use archival material in this article, we thank the University of Chicago Library Department of Special Collections which holds the Michael Polanyi Papers (MPP) and the Edward Shils Papers (ESP). We also thank the Karl Popper Library, Klagenfurt, and Sir Karl Popper Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.

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This article takes a different tack and focuses on Polanyi’s developing interest in anthropology in his middle period. We document Polanyi’s growing familiarity with anthropological literature and show that this serves as one of the important resources from which he constructed his own account of science and society.1 Some passages in Science, Faith and Society suggest that by 1946 Polanyi already was interested in anthropology, and the evidence of this interest becomes clearer in the years soon after 1946. We argue that Polanyi’s increasing interest in and exploration of anthropological work—particularly that of Lucian Lévy-Bruhl and Edward Evans-Pritchard—helped Polanyi (1) formulate his criticisms of contemporary accounts of science, and (2) develop what he came to call his “fiduciary philosophy,” the constructive “post-critical philosophy” he articulated in his middle period as an alternative to the modern critical tradition in philosophy. Polanyi’s “fiduciary philosophy” affirms the pervasiveness and importance of belief and commitment in scientific and cultural practices.2 Polanyi used what he learned from Evans-Pritchard and other anthropologists to help articulate his “fiduciary” account, and to highlight differences between his view of science and Karl Popper’sfalsificationism which Polanyi regarded as the current popular embodiment of the critical tradition in philosophy.

2. Awakening of Polanyi’s Interest in Anthropology

2.1. Social order, Anthropological Ideas and Polanyi’s Involvement intheMootintheForties The earliest evidence of Polanyi taking a direct interest in anthropological literature is a two-page set of quotations extracted from Malinowski’s Crime and Custom in Savage Society (1926), dated 29 October 1942.3 The quotations concern Malinowski’s thinking about laws and sanctions in Melanesian

1. Scholars have not traced historically Polanyi’s interest in anthropology nor have they carefully considered how anthropological perspectives are one of the resources Polanyi draws upon in articulating his criticisms of modern philosophy of science and his alternative constructive philosophical views. The recent biography of Polanyi by William Scott and Martin Moleski (2005, p. 224) and Mary Jo Nye’s Michael Polanyi and His Generation (2011, p. 234) are cases in point (also Blum 2010). 2. See Mullins, “An Introduction to Michael Polanyi’s Gifford Lectures” on the Polanyi Society web site. http://polanyisociety.org/Giffords/Intro-MP-Giffords-9-20-16.pdf (accessed September 21, 2016) for a concise discussion of Polanyi’s frequent references to and expla- nations of his “ﬁduciary philosophy” and his “post-critical” philosophical stance which he proposed as a counter to modern critical philosophy. 3. Box 24, Folder 8, Michael Polanyi Papers, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library (hereafter MPP).

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society, a topic that is only indirectly related to the later development of Polanyi’s “fiduciary philosophy.” His interest in Malinowski was loosely related to matters discussed in an important 1941 article (Polanyi 1941) out- lining the foundations of a stable but dynamic social order in which science as well as the legal system, the economy and other cultural practices could flourish. In the early 1940s Polanyi was particularly interested in the foundations of legal systems, and this led him to Malinowski.4 Not long after his reading of Malinowski, Polanyi came to be affiliated with J. H. Oldham and his circle of intellectual friends where there was a lively interest in reform of the social order as well as appreciation for anthropological literature. In November 1943, Oldham, an influential religious intellectual and ecumenical Christian activist who convened the British discussion group called the Moot, wrote a letter introducing himself to Polanyi.5,6 Oldham requested Polanyi’s permission to republish excerpts from his recent essay “The English and the Continent” (1943) as a “Christian News Letter” Supplement (a widely circulated publication that Oldham and others affiliated with the Moot published). Polanyi’s historically oriented essay, which caught the attention of several Moot members, praised the English reliance on traditional practices and gradual reform through religious ideas rather than Enlightenment philosophy and criticized the Continent for following the opposite course for social reform. On May 2, 1944, Oldham invited Polanyi to participate in a meeting of theMootonJune23–25, 1944.7 At a second Moot meeting Polanyi attended in December 1944, he, along with Karl Mannheim, was invited to respond to a paper by T. S. Eliot on the role of the “clerisy” in society. Polanyi’s short written comment discussed the important function of tradition in the scientific community (Jacobs and Mullins 2006). Polanyi

4. See also Polanyi’s eight pages of extracts from C. K Allen’s Law in the Making (1939), dated 17 February 1942, Box 23, Folder 1, MPP. 5. 12 Nov. 1943, Box 15, Folder 3, MPP. 6. The Moot, which began meeting in 1938, included a number of influential academic, literary and religious thinkers—for example, T. S. Elliot, Karl Mannheim, Walter Moberly, John Middleton Murry, Alec Vidler, and John Baillie—interested in shaping post war society in terms of Christian values (Kojecky 1971, pp. 163–97; Collini 2006. p. 316ff; Steele and Taylor 2010). Keith Clements (2009, p. 1) summarizes the interests and discussion of the Moot as concerned with “the nature of modern society, the relationship between social planning and freedom, and the role of religiously-based values in shaping society” (Clements 2009, pp. 12, 17) suggests that Mannheim was the central figure around which much discussion revolved in the Moot, and following his death in early 1947 Oldham set up and convened other groups modelled after the Moot, and Polanyi was often the central figure. For a discussion of Polanyi’s participation in Oldham-led groups, see Mullins (1997). 7. Oldham to Polanyi, 2 May, 1944, Box 15, Folder 3, MPP.

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participated in meetings of the Moot and later Moot-like intellectual discussion groups, convened by Oldham, from 1944 until about 1960. He acknowledged that only his experience as a research scientist was more important than Oldham and his circle in the development of his ideas (Gelwick 1965, p. 11n8). Oldham became a close friend of Polanyi who made reading suggestions for Polanyi and also read and criticized many of the things Polanyi wrote.8 By the late 1940s, he often made Polanyi’s essays and books the topic treated in sessions of his discussion groups (Clements 2009, p. 17, cf. Clements 1999, p. 462). Oldham took a keen interest in the findings of British anthropologists, supporting what Jack Goody (1995, pp. 17, 18–9) describes as “the acqui- sition and diffusion of scientific knowledge (in the widest sense) about Africa with a view to social amelioration.” On friendly terms with Bronislaw Malinowski and other anthropologists, Oldham was the key figure who helped lay the foundations of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures in 1926 and, serving as its administrative director, he gained extensive knowledge about African anthropological research from the 1920s (Bennett 1960; Goody 1995, p. 17–21). Polanyi’sinvolvementwithOldham and his circle, beginning in 1944, brought him into contact with a remark- ably literate intellectual network that possibly encouraged Polanyi in the late 1940s to explore anthropological literature more fully.

2.2. Polanyi’sRiddellLectures No anthropological literature or anthropologists’ names are cited in Science, Faith and Society, but it seems likely that Polanyi’s way of setting up his discussion was directly or indirectly informed by his acquaintance with anthropological sources. The second section of the opening chapter “Sci- ence and Reality” focuses on generalizations that seem obvious to Western people (e.g., that all human beings die), but Polanyi ([1946] 1964, p.15) argued this only shows Westerns are inclined to regard their own “particular convictions as inescapable.” He went on to discuss the “rival claims of the magical and the naturalistic interpretations of events” and noted a “similar competitive conﬂict” between the medieval Christian and the sci- entiﬁc outlooks ([1946] 1964, pp.15–6). The matter of competing interpretations of the world—science, magic, astrology, mythology, occultism and religion—Polanyi came back to repeatedly in Science, Faith and Society.9

8. Oldham, for example, was one of ﬁve readers of the draft of Polanyi’s Personal Knowl- edge (1958) and his criticisms led Polanyi to rewrite its concluding chapter (Mullins 1997, pp. 185–87). Polanyi’s The Study of Man (1959) is dedicated to Oldham. 9. For religion see ([1946] 1964, pp. 26, 34, 65–9, 75, 83–4; for magic see [1946] 1964, pp. 25–6, 28, 42, 69, 89); astrology ([1946] 1964: pp.66, 89; mythology ([1946] 1964, pp. 42, 89 and occultism ([1946] 1964, p. 66.

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Each such interpretation is a worldview incorporated in language with distinctive “premises” (presuppositions). Children acquire their worldview as they learn their society’s language:

The children of primitive natives whose parents are inveterately conﬁrmed in their magical interpretation of things, can be brought up without difﬁculty to a naturalistic view of nature…The reverse would no doubt be just as easy to achieve; and Europeans brought up to believe in an elaborate system of magic could be made as impervious to science as are primitive natives to-day. The naturalistic view held by scientists as by other modern men to-day has its origin in their primary education. (Polanyi [1946] 1964, p. 42)

According to Science, Faith and Society (Polanyi [1946] 1964, p. 66), dis- agreements within a worldview over, for example, the truth of scientiﬁc theories or the validity of different interpretations of the Bible, “can usually be brought to a deﬁnite test” by their “respective professional opinions” (a view Polanyi rescinded by 1958 in Personal Knowledge), whereas a religious outlook may have no test implications in common “with a naturalistic view” that could be used for determining which is the better account. Polanyi contrasted the magical and naturalistic interpretations of experience to illustrate the extent to which worldviews diverge. He ob- served how “primitive peoples” deny the idea of death as naturally caused,

their general belief [being] that events which are harmful to man are never natural, but always the outcome of magic wrought by some malevolent person. In this magical interpretation of experience we see some causes which to us are massive and plain (such as a stone smashing a man’s skull) regarded as incidental or even irrelevant to the event, while certain remote incidents (like the passing overhead of a rare bird) which to us appear to have no conceivable bearing on it are seized upon as its effective causes. (Polanyi [1946] 1964, p. 25)

Factual arguments cannot logically dictate that people prefer naturalism to the magical or any other worldview. Primitive peoples, Polanyi explained ([1946] 1964, p. 25), find their magical beliefs fully agreeing with their everyday experience, and Europeans’ use of their experience to criticize magic does nothing to dint the confidence of followers of magic. Our naturalistic “terms of interpretation” and experience cannot show other interpretations of “external reality” to be unsatisfactory (Polanyi [1946] 1964, p. 25). Believers in the magical interpretation of things are as un- impressed with our naturalistic-scientific worldview as we are with their

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interpretation. Evans-Pritchard’s Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, rated by Werbner (2015, p. 28, quoting Beidelman 1974, p. 163) as “the greatest single monograph ever written on an African people and one of the truly great books in anthropology,” is replete with contrasts of naturalistic-scientific and magical worldviews (see the discussion below of Polanyi’s later citations of this material), suggesting the possibility that, directly or indirectly, perhaps it influenced Polanyi’s thinking in Science, Faith and Society. In his 1946 book, Polanyi used the anthropological case of magic in relation to the naturalistic-scientific interpretation of the world to raise an epistemological question that has come to attract a good deal of attention in anthropology and the philosophy of science and social science since the 1960s. If so-called simple fact and logic cannot prove the naturalistic- scientific worldview true nor show it to be better than other worldviews, on what basis is a scientist to prefer his or her perspective as more deserv- ing of credence than that of believers in magic? In Science, Faith and Society, Polanyi indicated the scientist’s “competent” decision in favor of science is based on his or her trained intuitions, conscience, and mental needs, as well as the tradition of science and the premises it embodies ([1946] 1964, pp. 25ff., 61, 66ff., 71ff., 82–3). Citing St. Augustine’s writing, Polanyi commented on the “mental satisfaction” with which worldviews provide their adherents ([1946] 1964, pp. 66–7), and pointed out that when supporters of one worldview challenge another, They will try to expose the general poverty of their opponent’s position and to stimulate interest for their own richer perspectives; trusting that once an opponent has caught a glimpse of these, he cannot fail to sense a new mental satisfaction, which will attract him further and finally draw him over to its own grounds. The process of choosing between positions based on different sets of premises is thus more a matter of intuition and finally conscience, than is a decision between different interpretations based on the same or closely similar sets of premises. It is a judgement of the kind involved in scientific discovery. (Polanyi [1946] 1964, p. 67)

3. Lévy-Bruhl, Evans-Pritchard, and Max Gluckman In May 1947, Polanyi received an invitation from Sir William Hamilton, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, to give the Gifford Lectures for 1949–1950. As his biographers suggest, Polanyi recognized this invitation as an “opportunity for his wider piece of work in philosophy” (Scott and Moleski 2005, p. 204). This “wider piece of work” grew out of

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Polanyi’s Riddell Lectures and other writing from the middle and late 1940s. In his Gifford Lectures, Polanyi aimed to articulate more fully his growing criticisms of certain Enlightenment ideas that he believed have misrepresented science and eventually promoted nihilism, violence, and totalitarianism in contemporary culture. Polanyi also aimed to set forth his own alternative constructive philosophical perspective that drew on significantly reformed Enlightenment ideas. This alternative philosophical account, which Polanyi first termed in his Gifford Lectures a “fiduciary philosophy” and “post-critical philosophy,” emphasizes the pervasiveness and importance of belief and commitment. In his sixth 1951 lecture, “Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy” Polanyi contends, “The rehabilita- tion of overt belief … may restore the balance between observation and moral judgment in…human affairs” allowing human beings “to envisage without self contradiction the social rootedness and social responsibility of our beliefs concerning man and society.” (1951)10 “Fiduciarism,” Polanyi argues “must learn to express belief in a way which will countenance beliefs as belief without reducing their content or the act of affirming them to the status of mere subjectivity.” Due to a variety of problems, including the dif- ficulties of working out details of his “fiduciary philosophy,” Polanyi failed to have his Gifford Lectures ready for delivery in 1949–50 and he delayed them several times until 1951 (the first series) and 1952 (the second series).11 In the period in which he was preparing the lectures, Polanyi excerpted passages he found interesting in the writings of the French philosopher- anthropologist Lévy-Bruhl. There are five different sets of notes dated February 1948 to 1951 (not all notes are dated) from three different Lévy-Bruhl books.12 The typed excerpts, dated February 1948, are from four pages (16, 19, 69 and 93) of Lévy-Bruhl’s The “Soul” of the Primitive (1928), including Lévy-Bruhl’s observation (p. 16) that the “primitive,” like the child, distinguishes neither himself nor others “from the beings and objects of the world around.” Polanyi prepared a second seven-page set of excerpts, dated 31 January 1949, of material from this same Lévy-Bruhl book.13 A review of some of these excerpts reflects the tendency of Polanyi’s interests. One excerpt

10. http://polanyisociety.org/Giffords/Syllabus-S1-c2-reduced.pdf (accessed 16 October 2016) 11. An early revised version of Polanyi’s Gifford Lectures (there were 20 lectures in all) is posted on the Polanyi Socety web site: http://polanyisociety.org/Giffords/Giffords-web- page9-20-16.htm. Mullins’“An Introduction to the Michael Polanyi’s Gifford Lectures” (also accessed from this webpage) summarizes Polanyi’s many problems getting his lectures together. 12. Box 24, Folder 6, MPP. 13. The excerpts are from the following pages of Lévy-Bruhl’s book: 20, 27, 40, 43, 44– 5, 52, 55, 59, 62, 65, 69, 71, 76, 85, 93, 94, 96, 102, 105, 107, 109, 110, 112, 113.

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relates a story about magic that Lévy-Bruhl took from L. Magyar; Polanyi included it in an article of 1952 discussed below (1928, pp. 44–5). The excerpt from page 62 Polanyi titled “Argument on Animism”; it includes a quotation from a text of 1634: “Whenever I laughed at them and told them that the beavers did not know what happened to their bones they used to say: ‘You don’t know how to trap beavers, and yet want to tell us about them’.” From page 110, Polanyi took a passage:

Hence arise two causes of error, both equally difficult to avoid: either we have to be satisfied with confused and contradictory notions (which are not so for primitive mentality), and by this apparent fidelity give a false idea of its representations—or else we must endow it with a clarity and inner coherence of which it feels no need, and thus betray it in another way.

Another page of notes, dated simply as 1949, consists of excerpts from four pages (57, 92, and 111–12) of Lévy-Bruhl’s 1936 book, Primitives and the Supernatural. From page 57, (Chapter: Good and Bad Luck), Polanyi’s quotation included in their eyes the supernatural world is inextricably bound up with nature, and as a consequence the invisible powers intervene at all times in what we call the natural course of events. Hence anything unfortunate, or merely unusual, that may happen is never perceived solely as an event, for they at once interpret it as a manifestation of these powers. On a page of notes dated 1951, Polanyi excerpted material from pages 93, 94, and 105 of The Soul of the Primitive, referring at the top left corner “(To Gifford III. p.7).” Polanyi’s Series I, Gifford Lecture 3, provides a brief discussion of the identiﬁcation of “primitive individuals” with the group, in relation to fratricide and parricide, and has a citation of Levy Bruhl’s discussion on page 105.14 Finally, there is an undated page of notes with a short extract from another of Lévy-Bruhl’s works, How Natives Think (1910). The text quoted reads, “Page 73: ‘To natives,’ says Pechuël-Loesche [333], ‘there is no such thing as chance. Occurrences which are close together in point of time, even if widely removed in space, readily appear to them to be linked by a causal relation’.” In sum, the several Lévy-Bruhl excerpts he carefully

14. Polanyi’s Series I, Gifford Lecture 3, titled “The Necessity of Philosophy: (c) The Validation of Social Lore” is online at http://polanyisociety.org/Giffords/Gifford-S1-3-NecssityPhil-Validition- Soc-Lore-R-opt.pdf. See page 7 for the citation. http://polanyisociety.org/Giffords/Gifford-S1-3- NcssityPhil-Validition-Soc-Lore-R-opt.pdf

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recorded make clear Polanyi’s interest in the disjunction between Western naturalistic thought and the worldview of the “primitive.” Further evidence of Polanyi’s deepening interest in anthropology during the period he was preparing his Gifford Lecture is afforded by two letters Polanyi wrote to his friend Edward Shils. In March of 1948, Polanyi ex- changed his chair in chemistry for an appointment as Professor of Social Studies (Scott and Moleski 2005, p. 204). After the exchange, he apparently acquired some new duties concerned with enhancing Manchester University programs in social science. On 16 November 1948, he wrote to Shils at The London School of Economics for “advice in filling our Simon Visiting Professorships,” noting the university sought “eminent men in the field of Social Sciences.”15 Polanyi was “particularly keen on getting someone to represent social anthropology, which is not very ac- tively pursued at the moment in this country.” He also asked “to consult” Shils “about the filling of a Readership in social anthropology which we are going to establish here.” Shils replied to Polanyi on 24 November 194816, naming anthropologists he considered “to be the best that the United States can offer”: Robert Redfield, Ralph Linton, Clyde Kluckhohn and Margaret Mead. In a letter of 18 February 1949, Polanyi asked Shils to consider moving from his primary domicile, The University of Chicago, to fill the Reader position at Manchester as a stepping stone to a chair in sociology that “We are trying to establish … here.”17 In 1949, Max Gluckman (1972, p. x) was appointed the inaugural professor of Social Anthropology at Manchester, coming from Oxford where he had been a colleague of Evans-Pritchard. Gluckman recalled giving a public lecture, “Social beliefs and individual thinking in primitive society,” to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society in 1949 (1972, p. xi). Largely based on Evans-Pritchard’s book on the Azande, Gluckman’slecture added illustrations from his own research and some of his own particular emphases. “The strength of Evans-Pritchard’s insight into the specific logic of Azande beliefs in witchcraft and magic, and into the relation between this logic and both empirical reality and social morality, made an immediate impression on all my colleagues” at Manchester, he noted (1972, p. xi). In his public lecture, Gluckman generalized that all people are shaped by their society’s culture, including perceptions and their description, emotional responses to, and complex ideas concerning, social relations, “ideas of the causes of events,” etc. (1949–50, p. 75). He focused on a

15. Box 1, Correspondence, 1948, Series 3, Edward Shils Papers Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library (hereafter ESP). 16. Box 1, Correspondence, 1948, Series 3, ESP. 17. Box 4, Michael Polanyi Folder, Series 3, ESP.

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specific aspect of Evans-Pritchard’s work, “the form which skepticism takes in primitive society” (1949–50, p. 73). For example, when a member of a primitive society believes himself to be wrongly accused of witchcraft, he expresses his “doubts in the dogma of the system,” drawing from other facets of it, confirming “his own acceptance of the system as a whole” (1949–50, p. 86). “Africans reason quite logically and sensibly, and show psychological insight as penetrating as our own” (1949–50, p. 88). Gluckman was sure witchcraft rests on unsound “premises,” rejecting its view “that misfortunes are caused by witchcraft or sorcery,” but he doubted whether the belief system could be disproven (1949–50, p. 89). The various elements of Azande witchcraft theory reinforce one another. He (1949–50, p. 90) recalled that Evans-Pritchard regarded “faith and skepticism” as elements of the tradition of Azande witchcraft: “Skepticism explains failures of witch-doctors, and being directed towards particular witch doctors even tends to support faith in others” (1949–50, p. 90, quoting Evans- Pritchard 1937, page uncited by Gluckman). Again, in this web of belief every strand depends upon every other strand, and a Zande cannot get out of its meshes because this is the only world he knows. The web is not an external structure in which he is enclosed. It is the texture of his thought and he cannot think that his thought is wrong. Nevertheless, his beliefs are not absolutely set but are variable and fluctuating to allow for different situations and to permit empirical observation and even doubts. (Gluckman 1949–50, p. 90; Evans-Pritchard 1937, page uncited by Gluckman). Evans-Pritchard referred to these as “secondary elaborations of belief. Failures can be interpreted within the system by invoking other beliefs” (1949–50, p. 91, Evans-Pritchard, 1937, page uncited by Gluckman). Apparent echoes of Evans-Pritchard in Science, Faith and Society notwith- standing, Gluckman (1972, pp. xii–xv) seemed to think Polanyi had not read Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande before he gave his 1949 inaugural lecture. He described Evans-Pritchard’s book as exerting a “con- centrated influence” on Polanyi and other Manchester colleagues: The strength of Evans-Pritchard’s insight into the specific logic of Azande beliefs in witchcraft and magic, and into the relation between this logic and both empirical reality and social morality, made an immediate impression on all my colleagues. It led Professors Ely Devons [Economics], Dorothy Emmet [Philosophy], Bill Mackenzie [Politics], and Michael Polanyi [Social Studies] to read his great book, to extend their reading in the subject, and to attend seminars in our subject, as we attended seminars in theirs. (Gluckman 1972, p. xi; emphasis added)

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Gluckman’sreflections on his 1949 public lecture, its reception and stimulation of study at Manchester of Evans-Pritchard’s writing confirm that by 1949 at the latest Polanyi had become deeply interested in Evans-Pritchard’swork.Thereisatwo-pagesetofextractsinarchival Polanyi materials, dated February, 1950, from Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande, recording eight passages, most of them lengthy.18 These apparently helped Polanyi prepare the essay “Scientific Beliefs.”19

4. “ScientificBeliefs” 1950 “Scientific Beliefs” is the first publication of Polanyi (1950, pp. 32–3, 37) that actually cites anthropologists. He agreed with Lévy-Bruhl’s supposition that we members of modern society “acquire a clear subject-object relationship and the idea of natural causes, a corollary to which is the conception of accident,” adding “Lévy-Bruhl has shown that this supposition forms the logical basis of the naturalistic outlook, according to which events affecting human fate may be purely accidental, i.e., entirely mean- ingless” (1950, p. 32).20 In its summary of his understanding of Azande culture, “Scientific Beliefs” shows Polanyi’s debt to Evans-Pritchard extends well beyond merely providing magic as an illustrative example of a worldview. Evans-Pritchard provided Polanyi with significant epistemological insight as well. “Scientific Beliefs” argues against what Polanyi held to be a wide- spread misconception of science as “demonstrable” and free from “doubtful beliefs” (1950, p. 27). In Polanyi’s alternative depiction, science includes deep-seated “beliefs” (“fiducial elements”). The object of his article was to replace the positivistic model by a more adequate reference to science. We must openly declare the beliefs which we hold about the

18. Box 23, Folder 10, MPP. 19. In 1951 and 1952, Polanyi’s note-taking also included the following. There is an excerpt on anthropology, dated 1951, from a 1944 essay by anthropologist Ralph Linton (Box 22, Folder 7, MPP). The essay apparently is Linton’s “The Scope and Aim of Anthro- pology” in the collection he edited, The Science of Man in the World Crisis (1945). There is an excerpt, dated 1951, from R. H. Lowie’s 1920 book, Primitive Society (Box 24, Folder 7, MPP). There are three pages of excerpts from essays by sundry anthropologists in a 1937 collection edited by Margaret Mead, Cooperation and Competition among Primitive Peoples (Box 24, Folder 8, MPP). There is a short, undated excerpt (Box 24, Folder 8, MPP) from S. F. Nadel’s The Foundations of Social Anthropology (1951). Polanyi thus continued to read anthropological literature in the years he gave his Gifford Lectures. 20. Lévy-Bruhl argued that “primitives” have a “pre-logical mentality.” Evans-Pritchard did not accept this, writing “the Zande mind is logical and inquiring within the framework of its culture and insists on the coherence of its own idiom” (1937, p. 42). Polanyi also rejected Lévy-Bruhl’s proposition, so much so that his discussion underlined similarities between the logic of scientists and the manoeuvres of the Azande, about which more below.

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nature of things, which guide our pursuit of science. We must admit that these beliefs are acquired by us uncritically in the course of our early education or subsequent apprenticeship to science and that no succeeding critical examination of these basic beliefs can ever eliminate all fiducial elements of our thinking. (Polanyi 1950, p. 30)21 By the time he published “Scientific Beliefs,” Polanyi was at work piecing together his “fiduciary philosophy,” emphasizing “personal knowledge” with its feature of commitment made with “universal intent” (1950, p. 33). A number of the main ideas in “Scientific Beliefs,” Polanyi directly or indirectly drew from Evans-Pritchard’s text, and most of these ideas resonate with Gluckman’s comments in his lecture of 1949. (i) The law-like statements of science are unverifiable, and often, scientific theories cannot “be strictly contradicted by experience,” being expandable so as to cover any experience…This is not to say that a theory cannot sometimes be flatly contradicted by observation. But the current positivistic story that a scientist immediately drops a hypothesis the moment it conflicts with experience is a pure myth…Scientists will often tolerate such contradictions to their theory, regarding them as anomalies which may be eliminated in the course of time by an amplification of the theory. (1950, pp. 29–30) There is no rule instructing scientists on whether to reject their hypothesis or to reject the observations contradicting it. (ii) The “most general belief” of science—the “naturalistic view of the universe”—guides the scientist in rejecting observations that seem to confirm “the reliability of predictions from horoscopes, for the potency of magic or the powers of witchcraft” (1950, p. 31). (iii) The naturalistic outlook is acquired in the course of learning to speak the mother tongue by “uncritically absorbing the idiom of our elders.” We are “born into” both our society’s language and its beliefs about the world. Society is “constituted by” its members’ shared commitment to naturalistic beliefs. Parallel points apply to people who have been raised in a culture of “magic, witchcraft, and oracles” (1950, p. 32). (iv) Evidence is only evidence within a cultural framework. What we count as evidence exposing the “worthlessness of their oracles” believers in oracles would brush aside as inconsequential. Polanyi quoted Evans- Pritchard’s view that Azande observations of the activities of their oracles

21. By 1948, “ﬁduciary” (and variations of the term) and “post-critical” are terminology found in letters, lectures and essays. See the discussion in Mullins, “An Introduction to Michael Polanyi’s Gifford Lectures at http://polanyisociety.org/Giffords/Intro-MP-Giffords- 9-20-16.pdf

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are always subordinated to their beliefs and are incorporated into their beliefs and made to explain them and justify them. Let the reader consider any argument that would utterly demolish all Zande claims for the power of the oracle. If it were translated into Zande modes of thought it would support their entire structure of beliefs. (Polanyi 1950, p. 32, quoting Evans-Pritchard 1937, page uncited) (v) Systems of belief are uncriticizable from within. Evans-Pritchard opined that the Azande “reason excellently in the idioms of their beliefs, but they cannot reason outside, or against, their beliefs because they have no other idiom in which to express their thoughts” (Polanyi 1950, p. 32, quoting Evans-Pritchard 1937, p. 338). (vi) The Azande may doubt some details of their system but they “express their dissent in alternative Zande beliefs,” effectively reinforcing Zande beliefs and their commitment to them. Likewise, with the naturalistic- scientific worldview, but “this is not to say our beliefs are immutable,” rather they undergo constant remoulding “in the course of being applied to new objects” (Polanyi 1950, p. 33). By making extensive use of Lévy-Bruhl and Evans-Pritchard, Polanyi outlined, in “Scientific Beliefs,” a framework view of knowledge, including scientific knowledge. Each cognitive framework, he emphasized, is re- markably stable, but not impervious to change. He did not rule out the possibility of people relinquishing their framework, noting that our beliefs may be “shake[n]” by others, but only if our beliefs “are already losing ground for other reasons” (Polanyi 1950, p. 33). Polanyi regarded shifting a deep-seated coherent system of beliefs as akin to learning a new language through which to see and understand the world. Although his article outlined this perspective concerning the character of “scientific beliefs,” Polanyi also affirmed, here and in other writing, that scientists making contact with reality and truth is a standard or transcendent ideal that scientists must serve. He also affirmed that scientific beliefs rooted in a ratio- nal and naturalistic Western cultural framework are superior to beliefs rooted in other frameworks like that of the Azande; nevertheless, he recognized there is growth and change in scientific beliefs over time. For some of his contemporaries, the affirmations as well as the tensions among different affirmations in Polanyi’s heterodox views pointed in the direction of the relativity of truth.

5. “TheDoubtingofImplicitBeliefs,” Polanyi’sSeriesI, Eighth Gifford Lecture In May and June of 1951, Polanyi delivered the ten lectures of his Series I Gifford Lectures and followed in November 1952 with ten additional

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Series II lectures. The general title for these lectures was “Commitment: In Quest of a Post-Critical Philosophy.” Polanyi’s “post-critical” philosophy emphasized commitment and belief as central to knowledge in a way that the modern turn initiated by Descartes and variously elaborated by his modern philosophical successors had not done. Descartes had led modern thought to value critical doubt, method, and clear and distinct explicit ideas. Polanyi’s “post-critical” philosophy aimed searchingly to criticize the critical tradition and replace it with a “fiduciary philosophy,” which focused on “personal knowledge,” as the title of his 1958 book based on his Gifford Lectures emphasizes. Part of Polanyi’s program in the final lectures of Series I was to examine the generally accepted modern philosophical notion that doubt is heuris- tic. He called into question assumptions about the importance of doubt, which he held to broadly underlay the modern ethos and much modern thought, and in particular contemporary philosophy of science. The lecture titled “The Doubting of Implicit Beliefs,” which Polanyi delivered 30 May 1951, covers much the same ground as his article “Scientific Beliefs.” The lecture (Series I, Lecture 8) again drew on Lévy-Bruhl, and especially on Evans-Pritchard’s study of the Azande. He argued that the Azande take their conceptual framework for granted, and that Western scientists, including anthropologists studying the Azande, take for granted a very different framework in which there are embedded certain fundamentally different beliefs about rationality and nature. As in “Scientific Beliefs,” Polanyi’s eighth Gifford Lecture envisaged belief systems as social through and through, and as strongly resistant to change.

5.1. “The Stability of Beliefs”: The 1952 London Lecture and Karl Popper In June 1952, Polanyi read a paper titled “The Stability of Beliefs” before The Philosophy of Science Group of the British Society for the History of Science, meeting in London.22 The paper, a revised form of his “The Doubting of Implicit Beliefs” lecture, appeared later the same year in

22. There is some confusion as to the date the paper was read. The published version of the paper indicates 6 March 1952 (Polanyi 1952, p. 217, and see Watkins 1997, p. 668), whereas the Philosophy of Science Group’s list of meetings appearing in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (1952 no. 11: iii and 297) indicates Monday 9 June 1952. Recent examination of archival material of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science by Peter Vickers on the present authors’ behalf indicates the meeting was postponed until 9 June 1952. The committee of the Group comprised Karl Popper (Chairman), J. H. Woodger (Vice-Chairman), E. H. Hutten, L. L. Whyte, J. O. Wisdom, and A. C. Crombie (Honorary Secretary) who also served as the managing committee for the Group’sjournal.

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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. Polanyi’s paper did not explicitly mention Karl Popper but it included criticism of ideas Popper articulated in Logik der Forschung (1934), “The Poverty of Historicism” (1944a, 1944b, 1945a), and The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945b). The paper greatly displeased Popper, and J. W. N. Watkins recalled that Polanyi in turn “was gravely offended by the treatment that Popper, as chairman, meted out to him when he read a paper (on ‘The Stability of Beliefs’, 6 March 1952 [sic.])” (Watkins 1997, p. 668). Popper followed the presentation with a terse letter to Polanyi indicating he construed Polanyi’s formal comparisons of Azande culture with science as a betrayal of reason in science.23 The undated letter may be incomplete since it is missing point 5. It read as follows:24 Dear Michael, If you are interested in what I now think concerning the matter we discussed in the very interesting meeting when you addressed The Philosophy of Science Group, here it is. (1) The parallelism between Zandi [sic] religion and modern science is admittedly far reaching and interesting. (2) There are structural differences. These can be explained away, of course, by epicyclical arguments. (That epicyclical arguments are always possible as has been pointed out by me in my Logik der Forschung I call them there: “Konventionalistische Wendung” [con- ventionalist strategies].) (3) Indeed, we need a faith—“faith in reason,” I called it in the “Open Society.” But this faith consists, fundamentally, in the realisation of (2), i.e. [recognition] of the existence of structural differences between Zandi and us; and therefore in the abstention from applying epicyclical method used to explain away these differences. (4) If, seduced by the obvious possibility of explaining away these differences, the structural identity of Zandi and our science is asserted, then faith in reason is abandoned. This leads to relativism, or skepticism, or mysticism.

23. Box 339, Folder, Sir Karl Popper Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University. http://www.hoover.org/library-archives 24. Numbered points 1 and 2 are on the ﬁrst page, 3 and 4 are on the second page, and points 6 and 7 are each on a separate sheet, with the last sheet consisting of a closing sen- tence. There is no point 5. The original letter possibly included a point 5 on another separate sheet, however the Hoover Institution Popper archives has found no misﬁled page containing a point 5. Alternatively, Popper may have been careless in numbering his points.

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(6) The common basis of the relativistic or sceptic or mystic position is always the same. It is disappointment with a rationalism from which more was demanded than it can give, viz. certainty or demonstration where we have to be content without these. (7) For example, we can never/usually not be certain that a certain argument is not used epicyclically and cannot demonstrate that it is not so used. But why should we? I suppose you will consider all this useless, and not to the point. However here it is. We all enjoyed your paper very much and we should love to publish it in the Journal as quickly as possible. Yours ever, K Popper’s letter makes clear that in his view, Polanyi’s interpretation of Azande thought and practice implied a relativistic theory of knowledge. He must have been speaking through clenched teeth in suggesting he “enjoyed” Polanyi’s paper and would “love to publish it.”25 Polanyi commenced “The Stability of Beliefs” by asserting that beliefs can be held explicitly as “articles of faith” or “implicitly by reliance on a particular conceptual framework by which all experience is interpreted” (1952, p. 217). The “principle of doubt” (of questioning and criticism) is entrenched in modern culture and widely approved of as a solvent of dogmatism (Polanyi 1952, p. 217). In the modern period, the unrelenting “application of doubt seems to have converted all forms of faith into implicit beliefs, ensconced in our conceptual framework, where they elude the edge of our scepticism” (Polanyi 1952, p. 217). Holding beliefs dog- matically as explicit items of faith has come to be seen as irrational, the modern mind having worked hard at eliminating them. Polanyi (1952, p. 218) cited Marxism and Freudian psychoanalytic theory as beliefs their supporters implicitly hold and use to interpret experience, being “doubt- proof beliefs,” refractory to experience. But it was the belief systems of science and Azande witchcraft and magic that received most attention in “The Stability of Beliefs.”

25. This kerfufﬂe recalls an earlier one, in which Popper riled Wittgenstein at King’s College, Cambridge in 1946. For details see Edmonds and Eidinow 2001. See Jacobs and Mullins 2012 for discussion of Polanyi and Popper’s long term relationship, detailing their interactions and philosophical differences. By the time of his Gifford Lectures, Polanyi was sharply critical not only of Popper’s ideas about science but also Popper’s brand of liberal- ism linked to the “open society.” This letter, probably written in the summer of 1952, commenting on “The Stability of Beliefs” marks the beginning of the acrimonious ﬁnal phase of a relationship that had begun in the thirties. See also Jacobs 2010.

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Polanyi’s immediate aim in the article was to illustrate the means “by which a conceptual framework retains its hold on the mind” of the believer. He considered his argument as “a conscious affront … to the critical tradition of modern thought” and as “bound to shock some readers” (1952, p. 218). The propositions of science, Polanyi argued, “can neither be ver- ified nor falsified by experience according to any definite rule” (1952, p. 218). “Discovery, verification and falsification proceed according to” vague maxims that scientists apply, exercising “personal judgment.” The “maxims and the art of interpreting them” are scientific premises or beliefs that are incorporated in “the tradition of science” (1952, p. 219). Conceiv- ing of science in this way, and accepting it “as true, I must call science a belief which I share,” (1952, p. 219), and this belief is a personal convic- tion that factual statements can never prove. He was explicitly asserting his faith (belief) in the truth of science. There are various frameworks or worldviews, Polanyi explained, each one reflected in the language used by members of a community. The language used to express a conceptual framework, he described as “an idiom of belief” (1952, p. 220):

A particular vocabulary of nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives thus appears to constitute a deﬁnite theory of all subjects that can be talked about. It postulates that these subjects are all constituted of comparatively few recurrent features, to which the nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives refer. (Polanyi 1952, p. 221)

Polanyi explained this position as having been developed ﬁrst by Lévy- Bruhl, and then elaborated by Evans-Pritchard. He noted how struck Evans-Pritchard had been by the tenacity of the Azande in supporting their “belief against evidence which” Europeans saw as refuting it (1952, p. 220). So long as we use a certain language, all questions that we can ask will have to be formulated in it and will thereby conﬁrm the theory of the universe which is implied in the vocabulary and structure of the language. It follows that we cannot state without self- contradiction within a language any doubt in respect to the theory implied by the language. The only way to dissent from the theory of the universe implied in a language is to abandon some of its vocabulary and to learn to speak a new language instead. (Polanyi 1952, pp. 221–22) Commitment to one framework, Polanyi suggested, begins to weaken when attraction to a new framework grows stronger. There are never any

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facts existing independently of frameworks that can be used to decide between them. Polanyi abstracted from Evans-Pritchard’s discussion three broad “defense mechanisms” by which users of an “an idiom of belief” can maintain faith in it in the teeth “of adverse evidence” (1952, pp. 222, 225). One defense mechanism the Zande use to defend their beliefs and keep them stable in the face of contrary evidence relies on “objections to them … [being] met one by one,” the system of belief having a “circularity” whereby each part of the system meshes with and gains support from the others. Giving a convincing explanation of some new idea, the framework is sup- ported by all its past successful applications to “other topics not now under consideration” (1952, p. 222). Polanyi quoted Evans-Pritchard on the “Zande beliefs in mystical notions: ‘The contradiction between experience and one mystical notion is explained by reference to other mystical notions’” (1952, p. 222; Evans-Pritchard, 1937 no page number cited). In considering an objection to one aspect of it, the believer in the system draws from its other departments that are not in doubt at the time. As each objection is answered, belief in the system strengthens. Circularity also operates by way of “divided roles” which Polanyi explained in terms of “a number of persons holding the same set of pre-suppositions [that] mutually conﬁrm each other’s false interpretation of experience” (1952, pp. 222–23). He cited the story about the “South African explorer, L. Magyar” which Lévy-Bruhl described “as typical” (to which we adverted earlier in this article). Two African natives went searching for honey, one native (S) ﬁnding plenty of it and the other (K) very little, K bemoaning his lot. Returning to collect his honey, S “was attacked by a lion and torn to pieces.” Relatives of S sought out the community’s soothsayer to identify the person responsible for his death. After consulting with the oracle, the soothsayer informed the relatives that K, “jealous of S’s rich harvest of honey, assumed the form of a lion to avenge himself.” K denied the allegation, prompting the village chief to arrange for the case “to be settled by the ordeal of poison.” The ordeal told against the accused who “confessed and suc- cumbed to torture” (Polanyi 1952, p. 223). To everyone involved (soothsayer, prince, crowd of bystanders, and K himself)—with the exception of “the European who happens to be present”—the accusation that K had been turned into a lion was perfectly natural (Polanyi 1952, p. 223). K was presented “with an overwhelming case” to show that he had been trans- formed. The “interpretative framework which he shares with his accusers” indicated that death in a case such as S’s happens for a reason, the framework excluding the possibility “of accidental death” (Polanyi 1952, p. 223). K therefore is “an obvious suspect and when the oracle, which he [K] has always

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trusted, confirms the suspicion,” the evidence of his guilt proves irresistible and he “confesses having turned into a lion and having devoured S.” Closure of the circle of reasoning “confirms the magical framework in which … [the procedure] was conducted,” bolstering the capacity of the framework to absorb the next case to come before it (Polanyi 1952, p. 223). Another stabilizing mechanism of an interpretative framework is its capacity to provide “secondary elaborations to its beliefs which will cover almost any conceivable eventuality” (Polanyi 1952, p. 224; see Evans-Pritchard 1937, p. 330). In the case of scientific theories, this self-expanding capacity, Polanyi noted, has been called their “epicyclical” capacity (1952, p. 224). He ([1946] 1964, p. 93) earlier discussed this feature (as well as other noteworthy features) of scientific theories in Science, Faith and Society in the Appendix’s section titled “Significance of New Observations” ([1946] 1964, pp. 90– 4). Evans-Pritchard noted eight types of secondary/epicyclical elaborations whereby the Azande could explain self-contradictory statements expressed by an oracle (Polanyi 1952, p. 224). The third mechanism the Azande used to stabilize their beliefs concerns the fact that any new alternative conception would have to be built up on a series of supporting facts which can only be adduced one by one. A new conception like that of natural causation would require numerous relevant instances for its proper understanding. But these instances cannot accumulate in the minds of people if each of them is disregarded in its turn for lack of the concept which would lend significance to it. The behavior of Azande whom Evans-Pritchard tried to convince that benge was a natural poison which owed none of its effectiveness to the incantations customarily accompanying its administration, illustrates the kind of contemptuous indifference with which we normally regard things of which we have no conception. (Polanyi 1952, pp. 224–25) Polanyi thus distinguished as the “principle of suppressed nucleation.” It and the principle of circularity together with a stock of “epicyclical elaborations” support each other in stabilizing a conceptual framework. “Circulation protects an existing system of beliefs against doubts arising from any adverse piece of evidence, while suppressed nucleation prevents the germination of any alternative concept on the basis of any single new piece of evidence” (1952, p. 225). On what basis, asked Polanyi, do Europeans credit science with being true and reject salient Zande beliefs as “superstitions”? (1952, p. 225). One answer given suggests that science, more than any other system of belief, obeys the principle of doubt, of “scientific caution,” with scientists being “harder to convince than are” non-scientists (1952, p. 227). Polanyi disputed

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this claim. Exercise of “special caution” is “not peculiar to” the art of scientific discovery but occurs in “every art” (1952, p. 227). Science depends on a balance being struck between boldness and caution and there is no “principle of doubt” for scientists to follow in deciding when boldness is called for and when caution is needed (1952, p. 227). Contradictions of a scientific theory do not show it to be false. More often than not, scientists treat contradictions of scientifictheoriesas“anomalies,” being “among the most handy assumptions in the epicyclical reserve that is available for the adaptation of any theory, in the face of adverse evidence” and the Azande use this same method (1952, p. 228).

6. Personal Knowledge Polanyi’s major work, Personal Knowledge, is based on his Gifford Lectures, but was published only after six years of further work on ideas in the lectures.26 As with his Gifford Lectures, Personal Knowledge emphasized the pervasiveness and importance of belief and commitment in his account of science and society. Polanyi set forth an account of knowing, focusing on “personal knowledge,” which he sharply distinguished from the whim- sically subjective (1958, pp. xiii–xiv). The book’ssubtitle,“Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy,” is reminiscent of the title of his Gifford Lectures, “Commitment: In Quest of a Post-Critical Philosophy.” He noted that his book worked “to establish an alternative ideal of knowledge” (Polanyi 1958: xiii). “Post-critical philosophy” he explained in terms of his “fiduciary program” (Polanyi 1958, pp. 265–68). In short, Polanyi presented the same framework perspective as in “Scientific Beliefs,”“The Sta- bility of Beliefs,” and in his Gifford Lectures. He drew on what he had learned from the anthropological work of Lévy-Bruhl and Evans-Pritchard and incorporated much of the content of “The Stability of Beliefs” into Personal Knowledge (Polanyi 1958, pp. 287–94). Polanyi, of course, in addition to anthropological literature drew on an array of material bearing on scientific practice and the history and philosophy of science in making his case for a “post-critical” philosophy. As Mary Jo Nye notes in her new Foreword to a recently reprinted edition of Personal Knowledge, the book was intended by Polanyi “to serve as provo- cation and prophylactic” for professional philosophers in the 1950s (Nye 2015, p. xi).

26. Polanyi apparently remained quite interested in the work of Evans-Pritchard after the 1952 publication of “The Stability of Beliefs” as he began the work of transforming his Gifford Lectures into Personal Knowledge. Scott and Moleski (2005, p. 224) report that in 1953 Polanyi used some money in a Rockefeller Foundation grant at his disposal to bring Evans-Pritchard to Manchester.

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In the Torchbook edition Preface of Personal Knowledge, Polanyi noted that, “the life of the scientific community consists in enforcing the tradition of science and assuring at the same time its continuous renewal” (1964, p. ix). He linked this view with that articulated in Science, Faith and Society while noting Personal Knowledge is more directly focused on “the task of justifying the holding of unproven traditional beliefs.” Perhaps Polanyi’s growing awareness in the fifties about how far his heterodox views were from ideas of mainstream epistemologists and philosophers of science led him to focus more directly in Personal Knowledge on the question of justification. A further noteworthy development in Polanyi’s framework account that appears in Personal Knowledge is his extension of ideas about the function of frameworks into his account of the operation of science itself, further evidenc- ing Lévy-Bruhl and Evans-Pritchard’s effect on his thought. Science, Faith and Society explained that it is possible for scientists to make an informed choice between ideas in tension within a scientific/naturalistic framework whereas choosing between fundamentally different worldviews may be confounding: A controversy between two fundamentally different views of the same region of experience can never be conducted as methodically as a discussion taking place within one organized branch of knowledge. While clashes between two conflicting scientific theories or two divergent biblical interpretations can usually be brought to a definite test in the eyes of their respective professional opinions, it may be extremely difficult to find any implications of a naturalistic view of man on the one hand and of a religious view on the other, in which these two can be specifically contrasted in identical terms.” (Polanyi [1946] 1964, p. 66)

In Personal Knowledge, Polanyi contended that theories in science are idioms each with its own peculiar concepts, questions, claims and evidence. Personal Knowledge thus moved away from the view in Science, Faith and Society that conflicts between scientific theories can be brought to a definite test. Personal Knowledge covers the matter in a section titled “Scientific Con- troversy” where Polanyi referred to conflicting “conceptual frameworks” being separated by a “logical gap” (Polanyi 1958, pp. 150–60). Pairs of conflicting frameworks—one representing orthodoxy the other hetero- doxy—offer rival “visions of reality.” Each framework has facts peculiar to it; arguments are produced within the framework and conceptions are expressed in its terminology (Polanyi 1958, p. 159). A framework in science “is relatively stable” in the sense of accounting “formostofthe

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evidence which it accepts as well established, and it is sufficiently coherent in itself to justify to the satisfaction of its followers the neglect for the time being of facts, or alleged facts, which it cannot interpret” (Polanyi 1958, p. 159). The “logical gap” between conflicting frameworks in science en- tails that propositions generated in one of the frameworks cannot be dem- onstrated to the satisfaction of supporters of the other framework. The antagonists share no common language, and they will not learn the language of the other framework unless they consider the existence of the things it affirms as credible. Supporters of each framework “think differ- ently, speak a different language, live in a different world” than their op- ponents (Polanyi 1958, p. 160). Each framework underlies its followers’

scientiﬁc beliefs about the nature of things and the proper method and purpose of scientiﬁc enquiry. These beliefs and valuations have indicated to their adherents the kind of questions which seem reasonable and interesting to explore. They have recommended the kind of conceptions and relations that should be upheld as plausible, even when some evidence seemed to contradict them. (Polanyi 1958, p. 170)

A new framework “represents a new way of reasoning, [and] we cannot convince others of it by formal argument, for so long as we argue within their framework, we can never induce them to abandon it” (1958, p. 160).

7. Conclusion This essay has presented direct and indirect evidence that twentieth century anthropological work was an important resource contributing to Polanyi’s understanding of key features of science. Polanyi was a figure who in the early 1940’s developed ideas about the role and importance of tradition in science and society. By the time of his 1946 Riddell lectures, he was keenly interested in differences between magical, medieval Christian, and modern scientific outlooks and attempted to describe how a scientificworldview arose. As he began, in the late 1940s, to prepare his Gifford Lectures, Polanyi paid particular attention to the anthropological writing of Lévy-Bruhl and Evans-Pritchard, applying it in his lectures to challenge the critical philosophical tradition, which he held had significantly shaped modern thought and especially mid-century accounts of science. Polanyi’s “post-critical” or “fiduciary” philosophy, his constructive philosophical alternative to the critical philosophy, worked out in his middle period, drew on the work of Lévy- Bruhl and Evans-Pritchard to focus attention on frameworks and emphasize the importance of belief and commitment in scientific practice.

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