Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical

Volume 25, Issue 2, 1998/1999

Reclaiming “Science as a Vocation”
Learning as Self-Destruction; Teaching as Self-Restraint

Working from an integration of Michael Polanyi‘s image of learning as self-destruction and Max Weber’s analysis of the ethics of scholarship, the author explores the implications of Polanyi’s argument concerning “the depth to which the . . . person is involved even in . . . an elementary heuristic effort” (367). In the process, the author raises questions about current expectations concerning faculty “performance” and current methods of assessing faculty success in the classroom.