Science, faith and society
by Michael Polanyi · first published 1946
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In its concern as an essentially human enterprise, Science, Faith and Society makes an original and challenging contribution to the philosophy of science. On its appearance in 1946 the book became the focus of controversy. Polanyi aims to show that science must be understood as a community of inquirers held together by a common faith ; science, he argues, is not the use of "scientific method" but rather consists in a discipline imposed by scientists on themselves in the interests of discovering an objective, impersonal truth. That such truth exists and can be found is part of the scientists
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Sure. Polanyi is easy. He wrote a trio of short, accessible, and engaging books outlining his ideas: Science, Faith, and Society (1946), Personal Knowledge (1958), and The Tacit Dimension (1966). He was a true polymath, and very up-to-date with psychological science of his day; I would be interested in your thoughts as a specialist.…
on “Intuition is a “superpower”” ↗"Personal Knowledge" and "Science, Faith and Society" are two that I've enjoyed
on “Two stories about tacit knowledge” ↗…Pragmatism, continuations of Marxism, the critical school (excluding some late works by Horkheimer), and postmodernism, all of which retain positivism’s negations. EDIT: to supply some evidence, in Book III of Science, Faith, and Society, Polanyi argues that unchecked Positivism would result in a society not fundamentally dissimilar from the Soviet society which had prompted him to write the book in the first place. I encourage you to…
on “Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)” ↗