Personal Knowledge |
by Michael Polanyi |
Representative Quotations
Mission Statement
"This is primarily an enquiry into the nature and justification of scientific knowledge. But my reconsideration of scientific knowledge leads on to a wide range of questions outside science. . . . I want to establish an alternative ideal of knowledge, quite generally. . . . I regard knowing as an active comprehension of the things known, an action that requires skill. . . . Such is the personal participation of the knower in all acts of understanding. But this does not make our understanding subjective. Comprehension is neither an arbitrary act nor a passive experience, but a responsible act claiming universal validity. "
Samples
"Animals learn only when impelled by desire or fear, and in this sense all learning is purposive."
"Owing to the unceasing changes which at every moment manifestly renew the state of things throughout the world, our anticipations must always meet things that are to some extent novel and unprecedented. Thus we find ourselves relying jointly on our anticipations and on our capacity ever to re-adapt these to novel and unprecedented situations. Thisis truein the exercise of skills, in the shaping of our perception and even in the satisfaction of appetites; every time our existing framework deals with an event anticipated by it, it has to modify itself to some extent accordingly. And thisis even more true of the educated mind; the capacity continually to enrich and enliven its own conceptual framework by assimilating new experience is the mark of an intelligent personality. Thus our sense of possessing intellectual control over a range of things, always combins an anticipation of meeting certain things of this kind which will be novel in some unspecifiable respects, with a reliance on ourselves to interpret them successfully by appropriately modifying our framework of anticipations."
"In choosing a problem the investigator takes a decision fraught with risks. The task may be insoluble or just too difficult. In that case his effort will be wasted and with it the effort of his collaborators, as well as the money spent on the whole project. But to play safe may be equally wasteful. Mediocre results are no adequate return for the employment of high gifts, and may not even repay the money spent on achieving them. So the choice of a problem must not only anticipate something that is hidden and yet not inaccessible, but also assess the investigator's own ability (and those of his collaborators) atgainst the anticipated hardness of the task and make a reasonable guess as to whether the hoped for solution will be worth its price in terms of talent, labour, and money."
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