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1. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Paul Lewis

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2. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3

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articles

3. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
David James Stewart

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According to Richard Gelwick, one of the fundamental implications of Polanyi’s epistemology is that all intellectual disciplines are inherently heuristic. This article draws out the implications of a heuristic vision of theology latent in Polanyi’s thought by placing contemporary theologian David Brown’s dynamic understanding of tradition, imagination, and revelation in the context of a Polanyian-inspired vision of reality. Consequently, such a theology will follow the example of science, reimagining its task as one of discovery rather than mere reflection on a timeless body of divine revelation. The ongoing development of a theological tradition thus involves the attempt to bring one’s understanding of the question of God to bear on the whole of the human experience. The pursuit of theology as a heuristic endeavor is a bold attempt to construct an integrated vision of nothing less than the entirety of all that is, without absolutizing one’s vision, and without giving up on the question of truth.
4. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Jean Bocharova

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At the end of Personal Knowledge, Polanyi discusses human development, arguing for a view of the human person as emerging out of but not constituted by its material substrate. As part of this view, he argues that the human person can never be likened to a computer, an inference machine, or a neural model because all are based in formalized processes of automation, processes that cannot account for the contribution of unformalizable, tacit knowing. This paper revisits Polanyi’s discussion of the emergence of consciousness and his rejection of neural models in light of recent developments in connectionism. Connectionist neural modeling proposes an emergentist account of brain structure and, in many ways, is compatible with Polanyi’s philosophy, even if it ultimately neglects questions of meaning.

review essays

5. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
David Nikkel

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In Understanding the Tacit, Stephen Turner contends that 1) neo-Kantian frameworks, understood as identical (tacit) possessions collectively shared, do not exist and 2) in communicating with a person from another perspective, a speaker is not making explicit one’s tacit knowledge, but rather improvising an articulation relative to a given context. Turner establishes the first point in convincing fashion. However, he does not allow for the possibility of similar tacit knowledge that is in some sense “shared.” While Turner has positive things to say about the embodied nature of tacit knowledge, other contentions seem to undermine the crucial nature of embodiment. Turner is also correct on his second point, though he could have strengthened his argument by recognizing Polanyian implications and insights on the difficulty or impossibility of making the tacit explicit.
6. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Stephen Turner

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In this response to David Nikkel’s review essay on Understanding the Tacit, his suggestion that the book fails to incorporate insights from embodiment theorists is addressed. It is noted, against his appeal to the example of Lakoff’s and Johnson’s discussion of the bodily origins of metaphors used in reasoning, that there are problems with treating particular embodied elements as ineliminable. Also noted is the evidence of Luria’s studies of reasoning among the unschooled, which suggest that syllogistic inference is learned, which raises questions about the relation of embodied knowing and these kinds of inferences. It is suggested that another kind of embodiment thinking, involving emulation, is a better way to approach higher reasoning, and by extension also the kind of specialized knowledge usually discussed as tacit knowledge by Polanyi.
7. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Gabor Istvan Biro Orcid-ID

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This brief essay summarizes Nicholas Wapshott’s Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics and relates the early economic thought of Michael Polanyi to the dispute by raising questions for further reflection: Should we classify Polanyian economic thought as Hayekian or Keynesian, or is it something in between? How can it help us better understand the debate between these two? How is the agenda of the economist and social theorist Polanyi revealed through its connection to one of the most important episodes of the history of economic thought in the twentieth century?

reviews

8. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
David Nikkel

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9. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Walter Gulick

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10. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3

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11. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3

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12. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3

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13. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 2
Paul Lewis

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14. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 2

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articles

15. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 2
Eduardo Beira

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This essay introduces Michael Polanyi’s 1936 lecture, “Visual Presentation of Social Matters,” which is an important document sketching Polanyi’s analysis of the need for education in economics. It led eventually to the creation of Polanyi’s 1940 film, Unemployment and Money, and Polanyi’s career change from chemistry to economics and philosophy. The lecture outlines Polanyi’s program to develop visual symbols that can be used in film to promote an understanding of modern complex economics for ordinary citizens. It makes clear Polanyi’s early effort to rehabilitate contemporary liberalism which he regarded as inadequate to promote a free society.
16. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 2
Michael Polanyi

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“Visual Presentation of Social Matters” is a 1936 Polanyi lecture, delivered to the Association for Education in Citizenship, which lies in the background of Polanyi’s 1940 film Unemployment and Money. Polanyi argues that the complex modern market system is misunderstood by ordinary citizens who subscribe to economic fallacies; this misunderstanding has contributed to violence and turmoil in the twentieth century. Polanyi proposes a program to discover a dynamic visual symbolism (“moving picture writing”) that he believes can clearly represent modern economic life, releasing ordinary people from economic fallacies and exasperation and creating “economic consciousness.” This economic enlightenment is part of Polanyi’s effort to rehabilitate liberalism. He envisions an economic order in which there is freedom and “complete co-ordination” which he suggests already exists in the domain of scientific research.
17. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 2
Richard W. Moodey

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In a 1936 lecture, Polanyi claimed too much for the efficacy of visual presentations of relations among economic things. His 1945 book, Full Employment and Free Trade was the last of his major publications in which he used many diagrams to illustrate his points. In that book, he stated his objective of trying to popularize the economic theory of John Maynard Keynes. But after 1945, he seems to have stopped trying to help people understand Keynesian theory, and in Personal Knowledge, his only references to Keynes are criticisms of some of his ideas about probability and statistics. He later moved away from writing about the economy as an isolated system, towards treating it as just one of the four major aspects of society.
18. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 2
Phil Mullins

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In this brief essay, I discuss some interesting elements of Michael Polanyi’s provocative 1936 lecture outlining the potential of diagramatic film to transform social thinking about the economic order. A few years later, Polanyi more carefully and convincingly returns to some themes identified here, as he articulates his criticisms of and recon­struction of liberalism.
19. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 2
Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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The author’s doctoral dissertation on the theological implications of the epistemologies of John Henry Newman (1801-1890) and Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) operated on the assumption that Polanyi’s work was independent of Newman’s. That assumption was wrong. Polanyi read Newman’s Grammar of Assent twice and took at least five pages of notes on it; he also had a copy of the book in his personal library when he died. He mentioned his reading to a friend, but indicated that he could not quote Newman because to do so would distort Newman’s meaning. The purpose of this essay is to defend the thesis that the similarities between the epistemologies are real and to speculate why diagramming the relationship between the two systems of thought was not a worthwhile project for Polanyi.

20. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 41 > Issue: 2

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