Personal Knowledge by Michael Polanyi

Week 2: Personal factors in science, and a wholistic approach to knowledge Overview of Personal Knowledge Personal knowledge is a middle ground between objective and subjective knowledge. Polanyi claims that knowing is an activity, by which particular facts are subordinated to an achievement of knowing. Or, the particulars are attended to subsidiarily while achievement is attended to focally. The subjective component of knowing makes it a risky activity: it carries the risk of being mistaken. Polanyi develops an unusually holistic philosophy of science (and other things). Key quote: I believe that in spite of the hazards involved, I am called upon to search for the truth and state my ndings. (p. 299) Tacit knowledge Like many others, Polanyi notes that most of our knowledge is tacit. We are either unaware of it, it is inexpressible, or both. This is true of almost any motor activity, for instance: walking, playing the piano, swimming, etc. It is true of craftsmanshiphence apprenticeships rather than technical manuals. It is also particularly true in situations of connoisseurship (wine tasting, aesthetics, etc.) Maxims Aspects of tacit knowledge can be expressed as maxims. But maxims never fully describe ones knowledge. Some maxims of typography: There should be no more than 66 characters in a line of text. Use no more than two typefaces in a document. Dont hyphenate across a page boundary. These are rules-of-thumb, not absolutes. Describing a skillful activity with maxims produces a caricature. Passions in science Polanyi points to the passionate inuences in the scientic endeavor. Passions are not incidental or peripheral to science. They have functions in science. 1. Selective function 2. Heuristic function 3. Persuasive function Selective function of passions Not every fact is a scientic fact; in fact, scientic facts are by far the minority of facts. He gives three criteria for classifying a fact as scientic: 1. Certainty (accuracy) 2. Systematic relevance (profundity) 3. Intrinsic interest A scientic fact should be accurate. Nobel prizes are awarded for advancements in measurement. A scientic fact should have systematic relevance rather than incidental relevance. He cites a physicist Kohlrausch, who claimed that he would scientically study the speed of water rushing down a gutterbut this was nonsense, of course. Scientists are interested in general results. (This is why research in the Annals of Improbable Research is funny rather than typical.) A scientic fact should be intrinsically interesting. Pasteur was discouraged from studying spontaneous generation because the answer was so obvious as to be uninteresting. A single fact need not satisfy all of these criteria; indeed, a shortcoming in fullling one criterion can be made up for by a strength in another. Examples: economics, neo-Darwinism, psychology. What determines price? Worth. How much is something worth? Whatever someone wants to pay for it. (Circular, but the theory has intrinsic interest.)

 Only the ttest reproduce. What is tness? Whatever helps an organism reproduce. Psychological studies have much lower expectations for explaining variance than do studies in the hard sciences. But humans are more interesting than atoms. Even selection of the facts to be explained is based on passionate appraisals. The French Academy of Science denied the existence of meteorites because of superstitions attached them them. Museums discarded their collections of meteorites on this basis. Evidence for witchcraft was accumulating up through the time that rationalism precluded witchcraft as an explanation. The facts were discarded, not explained. Heuristic function of passions Heuristic passion serves as the impetus for creative scientic studies. A passionate impulse compels a researcher to leave one framework, to explore a new one. Shifting paradigms involves crossing a logical gap. One cannot arrive at a new paradigm by working in an old one. E.g. heliocentrism does not derive from geocentrism. Consequently, discovery of a new paradigm is not a logical activity. It is creative. Further, choosing to work within that paradigm is a pre-critical decision, a passionate decision. One anticipates the potential of the paradigm, and recognizes the truth within it. Persuasive function of passions Given the logical gap, one cannot persuade the scientic community to accept a new paradigm from within the old paradigm. (Recall also that theoretically inexplicable facts are frequently just discarded.) Persuasion is involved. (Amply demonstrated in history; often messy.) One must persuade the community to accept new empirical facts as relevant, and to accept a way of explaining them. Passions in proper context The foregoing does not imply that empirical facts have no role in science. But they are clearly not the only consideration. Polanyi says that criteria such as falsiability, elegance, and predictive power are maxims. The guide the scientic endeavor, but do not fully determine it. Maxims are not the sum of knowledge Polanyi brings up the example of Clever Hans (a.k.a. Hans the Wonder-Horse) For Polanyi this is not a story about experimental design. Pfungsts problem was that he was unaware of his tacit knowledge of the situation. His perception that he was not inuencing the problem continued because he always inadvertently supplied the horse with the proper informationtacit knowledge lled in the cracks. Proponents of objectivism likewise unconsciously ll in the cracks when they talk about science. Criteria such as falsiability are good maxims, but are not absolute rules. Signicance Polanyi has achieved (what I believe to be) a successful synthesis of objective and subjective knowledge. One the one hand, we do not lose the tether to reality. The maxims of scientic practice prevent this (to a certain extent, and not always entirely successfully, as the historical record indicates). On the other, we are not forced into the absurd claim that subjective factors are unimportant. Polanyis ideas permit a radical contiguity in our understanding of knowledge. Previously, we had different ideas of what it was for a connoisseur to identify a ne wine, a doctor to diagnose an illness, and a scientist to discover a new truth. Now, these can all be understood as skilled activities, (1) dependent on training and apprenticeship, (2) guided by (but not dened by) self-set maxims, (3) bearing the risk of being incorrect. Coming up Some combination of... What can we say about evolution? How does personal knowledge bear on religious faith? Why is astronomy better than astrology?