Reconsidering Michael Polanyi's 'Personal Knowledge' Eva-Maria Jung

Knowledge, Practice, and the Problem of Relativism – Reconsidering Michael Polanyi’s ‘Personal Knowledge’ eva-maria jung Introduction The concept of tacit or implicit knowledge is widely used in many fields of sciences, such as psychology, philosophy, cognitive and neurosciences, or knowledge management.1 Particularly during the last decades, the interest in the implicit dimension of cognition has grown steadily. By empha- sizing that a variety of tacit processes shape our knowledge, the ideal of a wholly explicit knowledge expressible and transformable by language has been challenged. In the light of these recent developments, it is remark- able that the British-Hungarian philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) who introduced the concept of tacit knowledge in the middle of the twen- tieth century is relatively unknown, especially within European philosophy of science and epistemology.2 Neither the backgrounds of Polanyi’s approach to knowledge nor his intentions for referring to the tacit dimension have come into focus. In this paper, I will focus on the question of how Polanyi’s theory faces the problem of relativism. I will argue that although Polanyi explicitly rejects relativism his discussion of scientific controversies yields certain relativist conclusions. Moreover, his theory threatens to become incon- sistent due to a tension between these relativist tendencies and his epis- temic and scientific realism. The paper is divided into three parts. First, 1 See, for example, Baumart 1999, Collins 2010, Reber 1996 and Sternberg & Horvath 1999, just to name a few recent books. 2 For an overview of the reception of Polanyi’s work see Mitchell 2006, pp. 137 ff. | 215 216 | eva-maria jung I will give a general overview of Polanyi’s approach to knowledge and its background. Second, I will discuss Polanyi’s theory in relation to the problem of relativism. Third, I will highlight some major similarities and differences between Polanyi’s view and recent accounts of tacit and explicit cognition. Polanyi’s “Personal Knowledge” Polanyi: Life and Times Polanyi had been working as a scientist for more than three decades when he decided to devote his academic life to philosophy and the social sciences.3 Born in Hungary in 1891, he studied medicine and received a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Budapest in 1917. Three years later, Polanyi moved to Berlin where he took a position at the Kai- ser-Wilhelm-Institute for Fiber Chemistry until he was invited by Fritz Haber to head a department at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute for Physical Chemistry in 1923. During his research time in Germany, Polanyi got in contact with a circle of highly prominent scientists including Albert Ein- stein, Max Planck and Erwin Schrödinger. He was widely considered as an extraordinary, headstrong talent and as a leading candidate to win a Nobel Prize. In the face of the political changes in Germany during the early 1930s, Polanyi decided to move to Britain where he accepted the Chair of Physical Chemistry at the University of Manchester. Since his interests had shifted from natural science towards economy, sociology, philosophy and theology, the University of Manchester created for him a Chair of Social Sciences in 1948. Although some of his scientific peers deeply regretted his change of interest, Polanyi himself claimed to have found his true vocation as a philosopher; he regarded his turn to philosophy as an “afterthought”4 to his career as a scientist. Polanyi’s contributions to the humanities and the social sciences cover a wide range of issues, addressing various questions about science and society. In particular, many authors from different fields have adopted his concept of tacit knowledge which lies at the core of his work. According to Polanyi, the question of how to appropriately analyze knowledge is 3 For Polanyi’s biographical details see Wigner & Hodgkin 1977 and Mitchell 2006. 4 Polanyi 1966, p. 3. knoWledge, practice, and the proBlem of relativism | 217 not only important for epistemology and philosophy of science but also has far-reaching implications for ethics and political philosophy.5 Since his arguments are usually based upon a variety of sources from different scientific and non-scientific disciplines and even include personal expe- riences, Polanyi’s work is rather complex and idiosyncratic. In the next sections, I will summarize the main ideas of his approach to knowledge including the theoretical background. Establishing a Post-Critical Philosophy Within Polanyi’s philosophy, tacit knowledge is inextricably linked to the concept of personal knowledge which lies at the core of his plea for a new ideal of knowledge and science. He explicitly attacks what he calls “objectivism” – the tendency to think of knowledge as wholly explicit, impersonal and objective.6 Thus, Polanyi’s theory of knowledge has been considered as strongly opposed to Karl R. Popper’s7 who expressly defends an ideal of knowledge as “usually independent of anybody’s claim to know”,8 as “knowledge without a knower”.9 In contrast, Polanyi argues that the concept of knowledge should be strongly related to the knowing subject. The idea that science is guided by an ideal of wholly objective findings and scientific methods is, according to him, totally misleading and yields a problematic consequence, namely the split of fact and value. He claims that objectivism which is said to be tied to a “critical philosophy”10 has gone too far: the attempt to avoid unjustified dogmas and prejudices has led to an ideal of knowledge totally context-independent and impersonal, thereby ignoring the real nature of knowledge and its roots in society and tradition.11 Therefore, Polanyi’s declared aim is to establish a “post- critical philosophy” by focusing on a principally new concept of knowledge. As he puts it in the foreword of his magnum opus “Personal Knowl- edge” (1958): 5 Cf. Polanyi 1946, pp. 7–19 and Polanyi 1958, pp. vii–viii. 6 Cf. Polanyi 1958, pp. 15 ff. 7 For the dispute between Polanyi and Popper see, for example, Hall 1982. 8 Popper 1972, p. 109. 9 Ibid., italics in original. 10 Polanyi 1958, p. 169. 11 Cf. ibid., p. 264 ff. 218 | eva-maria jung I want to establish an alternative ideal of knowledge, quite generally. Hence the wide scope of this book and hence also the coining of the new term I have used for my title: Personal Knowledge. The two words may seem to contradict each other: for true knowledge is deemed impersonal, universally established, objective. But the seeming contradiction is resolved by modifying the conception of knowing.12 The turn to a post-critical philosophy shall be based upon our relat- ing the concepts of belief and knowledge to a new framework that Po- lanyi traces back to Saint Augustine. In this framework, belief cannot be explained in terms of a wholly rational attitude towards the world, but is rather considered as manifesting a “fiduciary act”13 which lies beyond empirical observation and reason. It shall express a personal, non-rational attitude without which any manifestation of intelligence is impos- sible.14 According to Polanyi, post-critical philosophy aims to overcome both medieval dogmatism and modern positivism by acknowledging the fiduciary programme, i. e. by reconsidering all cognitive phenomena against the background of a new theory which accounts for the personal, historical and socio-cultural preconditions of cognition: This then is our liberation from objectivism: to realize that we can voice our ulti- mate convictions only from within our convictions – from within the whole system of acceptances that are logically prior to any particular assertion of our own, prior to the holding of any particular piece of knowledge.15 Thus, Polanyi’s argument against objectivism is mainly based upon the claim that knowledge cannot be detached from its roots and that an ideal of a wholly explicit and impersonal knowledge is therefore unten- able. Rather, knowledge is said to be analyzable only within a “fiduciary framework”16 which includes our adherence to a particular culture and tradition. Knowledge Beyond Language Polanyi’s starting point for the construction of this new conception of knowledge is the claim that knowledge goes beyond language – “we can know more than we can tell”.17 Referring to perceptual knowledge as a 12 Polanyi 1958, p. vii. 13 Ibid., p. 294. 14 Cf. ibid., p. 264 f. 15 Ibid., p. 267. 16 Ibid., p. 266. 17 Polanyi 1966, p. 4. knoWledge, practice, and the proBlem of relativism | 219 paradigm case, he emphasizes the everyday presence and importance of this insight: if we try to explain how we are able to recognize faces, we might formulate criteria concerning the nose, the mouth, the eyes, etc. But our capacity to recognize the face concerned at a glance cannot be explained by what we have to tell about the face, how long and how de- tailed the list of criteria might be. In this case, and in many other kinds of capacities and skills, our knowledge can neither be formalized nor com- municated by language or even by pictures.18 According to Polanyi, findings of Gestalt psychology which mainly focus on perceptual knowledge serve as a main source for understanding our inexpressible, tacit knowledge. In particular, the distinction between a focal awareness, on the one hand, and a subsidiary awareness, on the other hand, is said to provide an explanatory basis. By referring to the skill of using tools, Polanyi shows how the two different modes of awareness are related to each other: When we use a hammer to drive in a nail, we attend to both nail and hammer, but in a different way. We watch the effect of our strokes on the nail and try to wield the hammer so as to hit the nail most effectively.

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