Polanyi's Personal Knowledge: Part I

I've started reading Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge as part of a discussion with a group of scientists and theologians. I intend to record my thoughts on Polanyi to share with the discussion group, and this blog seems like a good place to do so. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on Part I of Polanyi's book:

I think I like the general direction that Polanyi is headed in Part I, but I am anxious to see how he resolves some issues that seem like potential problems to me. I am very much in favor of his advocacy of a metaphysical commitment to truth on the part of scientists. I think a commitment to devising TRUE theories about REALITY is essential to genuine science, but some philosophers of science have disregarded this notion as either meaningless (like the logical positivists) or as a goal to which we can aspire but which we can never know if we have attained, or even come close (like Popper). But if you look at the history of science it seems as though it was a metaphysical commitment to finding the truth which led to all the great advances in our knowledge. I should be careful to point out that a commitment to finding the truth is quite different from a belief that one's current theory is true.

The value of this metaphysical commitment can be made to fit with the views of other philosophers of science (but probably not the positivists). For example, a commitment to devising a true theory (as opposed to an empirically acceptable theory) makes your theory more falsifiable in Popper's sense, because you must accept ALL of the consequences of your theory as legitimate predictions. You can't just take those things the theory was designed to predict and leave out those things it wasn't designed for. Polanyi seems to be talking about this aspect of a theory when he talks about the "indeterminate scope of its true implications". This commitment fits with Lakatos idea of a hard core of beliefs (those which the scientists believes are TRUE) and a protective belt (those which the scientist is less committed to and thus more willing to change or discard). Further, it fits with Kuhn's idea that from a practical perspective we must accept a certain set of things as true in order to get any work done. But I think Polanyi seems to be reaching for something more than any of these others deliver - I hope he gets us there by the end!

I also like Polanyi's claim that in respect to their approach to truth, theories must be judged using what are essentially aesthetic criteria (criteria which he equates with "rationality"). This is very important in his discussion of order, in which he claims that to talk about randomness we must first recognize some kind of distinctive order. This recognition is a personal act and it involves aesthetic considerations. Aesthetic criteria come into play in his description of statistical tests as well: we will require more stringent statistical evidence for hypotheses that we feel are intrinsically unlikely (like his horoscope example), while requiring less stringent evidence (perhaps using Fisher's 5% rule) for a hypotheses we deem not unlikely (like Darwin's cross-fertilization hypothesis). I AM concerned about how much subjectivity this leads to. Different people can hold to different aesthetic criteria. How will Polanyi suggest that we mediate between different sets of criteria, each of which is judged to be a "rational" set by its holder? I look forward to finding out later in the book: at this point I'm still worried by this.

To take an example, let me pick on a statement in the book that bothered me. On p. 4 he says "the Copernican system, being more theoretical than the Ptolemaic, is also more objective. Since its picture of the solar system disregards our terrestrial location, it equally commends itself to the inhabitants of Earth, Mars, Venus, or Neptune, provided they share our intellectual values." This statement may be fine for the modern reader. But a 16th century astronomer would not have known what to make of this argument. For him (and it would have been a "him") the idea of inhabitants of Mars or Venus would have seemed absurd (and he wouldn't have known what Neptune was). He would not understand why there was any value to having a system that works just as well from the viewpoint of Mars. Mars was a fundamentally different entity from the Earth (it was an eternal, perfect, celestial body, in contrast to the corrupt and mutable Earth). He might agree that the Copernican theory was more abstract, but he would have questioned the value of that abstraction. So is Polanyi saying that abstraction is a universal criterion and that the 16th century astronomer is simply wrong (in an objective way) for not choosing the more abstract theory? I'm not sure yet that's what he's saying, and if he is I'm not sure what I think of it. I'm very leery of any attempt to lay down universal objective criteria for choosing scientific theories. All attempts at doing this so far have failed, in my view.

A similar point could be made about his statement (on p. 64) that "since every act of personal knowing appreciates the coherence of certain particulars, it implies also submission to certain standards of coherence." I can see how this submission could lead to less subjectivity. But what if two people have different "standards of coherence"? What do we do then? Whose standards do we follow? Kuhn would say we follow the standards of our chosen paradigm and that there is simply no real way to mediate between two opposing paradigms. I am very uncomfortable with this view. I hope that Polanyi will show us how "submission to the compelling claims of what in good conscience I conceive to be true" (p. 65) will help us make at least partially objective choices between competing theories, even if he can't spell out specific rules for how this might work.