Michael Polanyi Quotes

26 quotes in 495 categories

• The amount of knowledge which we can justify from evidence directly available to us can never be large. The overwhelming proportion of our factual beliefs…
• And the actual achievements of biology are explanations in terms of mechanisms founded on physics and chemistry, which is not the same thing as explanations…
• No inanimate object is ever fully determined by the laws of physics and chemistry.
• We cannot ultimately specify the grounds (either metaphysical or logical or empirical) upon which we hold that our knowledge is true. Being committed to such…
• I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell,
• The process of philosophic and scientific enlightenment has shaken the stability of beliefs held explicitly as articles of faith.
• While tacit knowledge can be possessed by itself, explicit knowledge must rely on being tacitly understood and applied. Hence all knowledge is either tacit or…
• Human beings exercise responsibilities within a social setting and a framework of obligations which transcend the principle of intelligence.
• Personal participation is the universal principle of knowing.
• But even physics cannot be defined from an atomic topography.
• Of course language manifests a belief only if we use its words with the implied acceptance of their appositeness.
• Theories of evolution must provide for the creative acts which brought such theories into existence.
• Admittedly, scientific authority is not distributed evenly throughout the body of scientists; some distinguished members of the profession predominate over others of a more junior…
• Admittedly, the body of scientists, as a whole, does uphold the authority of science over the lay public. It controls thereby also the process by…
• But the system of prices ruling the market not only transmits information in the light of which economic agents can mutually adjust their actions, it…
• I hold that the propositions embodied in natural science are not derived by any definite rule from the data of experience, and that they can…
• I shall suggest, on the contrary, that all communication relies, to a noticeable extent on evoking knowledge that we cannot tell, and that all our…
• My title is intended to suggest that the community of scientists is organized in a way which resembles certain features of a body politic and…
• So long as we use a certain language, all questions that we can ask will have to be formulated in it and will thereby confirm…
• The first thing to make clear is that scientists, freely making their own choice of problems and pursuing them in the light of their own…

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