Personal Knowledge Quotes

“as human beings, we must inevitably see the universe from a centre lying within ourselves and speak about it in terms of a human language shaped by the exigencies of human intercourse. Any attempt rigorously to eliminate our human perspective from our picture of the world must lead to absurdity.”
― Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-critical Philosophy

“So far as we know, the tiny fragments of the universe embodied in man are the only centers of thought and responsibility in the visible world. If that be so, the appearance of the human mind has been so far the ultimate stage in the awakening of the world; and all that has gone before, the striving of myriad centers that have taken the risks of living and believing, seem to have all been pursuing, along rival lines, the aim now achieved by us up to this point. They are all akin to us, for all these centers - those which led up to our own existence and the far more numerous others which produced different lines of which many are extinct - may be seen engaged in the same endeavor towards ultimate liberation. We may envisage then a cosmic field which called forth all these centers by offering them a short-lived, limited, hazardous opportunity for making some progress of their own towards an unthinkable consummation. And that is also, I believe, how a Christian is placed when worshiping God.”
― Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge : Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy

“Christianity sedulously fosters, and in a sense permanently satisfies, man's craving for mental dissatisfaction by offering him the comfort of a crucified God.”
― Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge : Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy

“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.”
― Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy

“In so far as a theory cannot be tested by experience—or appears not capable of being so tested—it ought to be revised so that its predictions are restricted to observable magnitudes.”
― Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-critical Philosophy

“This difference between a probability statement on the one hand, and the probability of a statement, or the degree of belief in a statement on the other, may seem elusive, but is actually quite obvious.”
― Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy

“Personal knowledge is an intellectual commitment, and as such inherently hazardous. Only affirmations that could be false can be said to convey objective knowledge of this kind. All affirmations published in this book are my own personal commitments; they claim this, and no more than this, for themselves. Throughout this book I have tried to make this situation apparent. I have shown that into every act of knowing there enters a passionate contribution of the person knowing what is being known, and that this coefficient is no mere imperfection but a vital component of his knowledge. And around this central fact I have tried to construct a system of correlative beliefs which I can sincerely hold, and to which I can see no acceptable alternatives. But ultimately, it is my own allegiance that upholds these convictions, and it is on such warrant alone that they can lay claim to the reader’s attention. M. P. Manchester August 1957”
― Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy

“Polanyi writes that there exists unspecifiable and unarticulated knowledge among scientists that is not susceptible to language and usually is dismissed in philosophy of science.”
― Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy

“I believe that in spite of the hazards involved, I am called upon to search
for the truth and state my findings. This sentence, summarizing my
fiduciary programme, conveys an ultimate belief which I find myself
holding. Its assertion must therefore prove consistent with its content by
practising what it authorizes. This is indeed true. For in uttering this
sentence I both say that I must commit myself by thought and speech, and
do so at the same time. Any enquiry into our ultimate beliefs can be
consistent only if it presupposes its own conclusions. It must be
intentionally circular.”
― Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge : Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy

“I regard knowing as an active comprehension of the things known, an action that requires skill. Skilful knowing and doing is performed by subordinating a set of particulars, as clues or tools, to the shaping of a skilful achievement, whether practical or theoretical. We may then be said to become ‘subsidiarily aware’ of these particulars within our ‘focal awareness’ of the coherent entity that we achieve.”
― Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy

“He argued that science is social in its very essence in the ways in which skills, standards, and tacit understandings are transmitted from person to person in an institutional system in which members act freely but work within mutual consensus.”
― Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy

“Polanyi describes the informal and tacit elements essential to science. These include transmission of skills from master to apprentice, the development of “connoisseurship,” and the inculcation in a student of a disciplinary tradition and interpretive framework. These tacit components of knowing account for the process of problem solving or discovery: the art of understanding the whole by intuitively combining an internalized subsidiary awareness of particular things with a focus on a question to be solved about external objects. Common experiences that give us a sense of this tacit knowledge, which cannot be articulated by rote rules, are the achievements of riding a bicycle or playing the piano or discriminating a fine wine (49–50, 54).”
― Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy

“belief” is a treacherous word when applied to scientific knowledge. There are all kinds of beliefs that scientists and other people regard as unscientific, false, or immoral. So how can we distinguish valid scientific belief from other forms of belief? And why is this important? In Personal Knowledge Polanyi aimed to establish a new epistemology, free of subjectivism or relativism, in which scientific knowledge is understood to be personal and free, rather than mechanical and deterministic.”
― Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy