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1. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3
Phil Mullins

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2. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3

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3. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3

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4. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3

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5. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3
Andy F. Sanders

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This introduction to a special Tradition and Discovery issue on Polanyi’s realism summarizes, and comments on the views of Jha, Gulick, Mullins, Cannon, Puddefoot, Meek and Sanders. All agree that Polanyi advocated a scientific realism hanging on the theses that reality is independent of human conceptualizations and that it is partially and fallibly knowable. Major differences concern its scope. All agree that it is comprehensive, pertaining not only to common sense and science but to intrinsic and ultimate values, and perhaps the divine realities as well. Whereas Jha and Gulick argue a more limited scope, others defend a Polanyian position by drawing in various ways on the personal (Cannon) and social (Mullins, Sanders, Puddefoot) coefficients of the practice of inquiry. The debates show clearly that the relationship between Polanyi’s epistemology, axiology and hermeneutics deserve further scrutiny.

6. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3
S. R. Jha

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Polanyi’s philosophy of “man in thought,” by all appearances, chronologically and structurally, seems to be founded on his epistemology. Polanyi’s epistemology of tacit knowing as integration is teleological. By his “ontological equation,” he patterned comprehensive (and complex) entities as emergence on his epistemology. This forces him to make puzzling formulaic statements which land him in trouble with fellow scientists. The equation also lends itself to unwarranted problematic interpretations. The exploration leads me to suggest that Polanyi may be understood as a “rational realist” who insisted on a tacit knowledge version of interactionist mode of mind-body relation.

7. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3
Walter B. Gulick

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Ultimately Michael Polanyi moved from theorizing about reality in terms of three overlapping frameworks of analysis (personal knowing, evolution/ecology, and tacit knowing) to a yet more comprehensive framework of interpretation: meaning construction. An analysis of the dimensions of embodied, symbol drenched meaning construction suggests that the modernist tendency to tether reality to epistemological analysis be replaced by an exploration of three interpenetrating ontological regions: experiences of existential meaning, cultural forms of meaning, and external reality. In support of this view, I make reference to earlier expressions of my work, utilize illustrations from philosophical history, and address comments from my critics.

8. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3

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9. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3
Phil Mullins

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This essay examines Michael Polanyi’s comments about “reality” over a forty year career and argues that there are many nuances. However, Polanyi is a peculiar kind of philosophical realist, a participative realist. There are polyvalent and a bodily aspects of Polanyi’s realism. Against Walter Gulick’s criticisms of Polanyi, I contend that a strong distinction between reality and meaning is not warranted.

10. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3

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11. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3
Dale Cannon

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This essay attempts to clarify certain aspects of Polanyi’s version of comprehensive realism: the irreducible role of responsible personal commitment as transcending human subjectivity in any meaningful reference to transcendent reality, and thus for any coherent realism; realism as a fundamental presupposition of intellectual responsibility in the humanities and in the sciences; a conception of intrinsic (vs. extrinsic, anthropocentrically projected) meaning characterizing real things, in greater and lesser degrees; a conception of embodied tacit knowing as a relational, acquaintance knowing that achieves contact with reality-in-itself, transcending our grasp – hence, transcending our representational or propositional knowing (which is always reality-as-constituted or construed-by-us).

12. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3

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13. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3
John C. Puddefoot

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Polanyi’s philosophy requires a synthesis of ontology and epistemology through the resonances that structure personal knowing. Its convivial elements make it political; self-conscious circularity distances it from metaphysical realism; the paradox of self-set standards accomodates dissent. The roles of reality, knowledge and truth in metaphysical realism are better understood in terms of resonance, trust and worthwhileness if we follow Polanyi’s lead. This more humane vocabulary saves us from the tyrannies of the truths and realities others would impose upon us. Polanyi points the way towards a position that avoids the worst of both absolutism and relativism.

14. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3

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15. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3
Esther L. Meek

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A reengagement of my 1983 dissertation, this essay describes and amplifies the commitment to realism presupposed by Michael Polanyi’s alternative model of knowing, recommending its value for thought and life. The idea of contact with reality replaces an unworkable traditional notion of correspondence. Truth bears indeterminately on reality and thus its assessment is ultimately unspecifiable. We assess successful contact by our anticipation of the discovery’s indeterminate future manifestations (IFM Effect, the reality criterion) as well as the radicality of the integrative coherence achieved (the integrative criterion). Polanyi’s realism offers grounds for a critique of postmodernism. Alternative concepts of truth and progress as well as the value of the analytic method, are examined in light of the Polanyian model.

16. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3

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17. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3
Andy F. Sanders

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In this essay, I argue that Polanyi developed a realism which ranges over the sciences and the humanities as well as over values. I argue that his comprehensive realism had best be understood as relative to veracious inquirers participating in communal traditions of inquiry and that this leads to a theological realism according to which the divine realities are interpreted contextually, i.e., in terms of a particular religious form of life, rather than in terms of the grand metaphysics of classical theism.

18. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 3

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19. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2
Phil Mullins

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20. Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical: Volume > 26 > Issue: 2

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