This review essay discusses Stephania Jha’s account of Polanyi’s thought in her dissertation, Michael Polanyi’s Integrative Philosophy (Harvard University, Gutman Education Library: Thesis J47, 1995); I criticize her understanding and use of Polanyi’s notion of “from-at” integrations.

Stephen Turner explores the social dimensions of practices, probing to see if the notion of a shared practice can be understood as a cause or mechanism whereby knowledge arises and is used. When he concludes that practices are not some mysterious collective object but are best explained as individual habits, he thereby rejects an attenuated notion of practice and replaces it with a needlessly atomistic notion in which habits carry the full burden of explanation. Turner makes use of aspects of Polanyi’s thought, but this article suggests ways in which a fuller appropriation of Polanyian insights can salvage a social, telic notion of practices that illuminates human behavior.

Walter Gulick criticizes The Social Theory of Practices for its non-Polanyian views of the problem of the objective character of tacit knowledge, its insistence that there should be plausible causal mechanisms that correspond to claims about tacit knowledge and its “social” transmission, and its denial of the social, telic character of practices. In this reply it is asserted that the demand for causally plausible mechanisms is not scientistic or for that matter non-Polanyian, that the book has a view of objectivity that parallels Polanyi’s own, and that the idea of telic practices is subject to the same problems over mechanism as non-telic ones, with the additional problem that telic concepts need supra-individual feedback mechanisms, of which no plausible examples exist. In each case, the non-social or personal explanations of the phenomenon of “practice” are better than the “social” ones. The discussion concludes by posing the challenge of connectionism to Polanyi, as well as the opportunity it presents.

The relationship between Friedrich Hayek and Michael Polanyi is documented and explored with respect to philosophy and economics. Their respective positions on epistemology and science are shown to fundamentally govern their differences with regard to the efficacy of government policy with regard to the economy.

This essay describes the Hungarian historical background out of which Michael Polanyi’s lifelong commitment to a liberal, democratic form of government grew. Hungary’s liberal thinkers blossomed in the nineteenth centruy, but their orientation was more political and practical than philosophical. Enlightenment ideas did not penetrate deeply into Hungarian society, which in recent centuries was hampered by its Eastern European and feudal ties. Thus Polanyi felt he had to move to more liberal countries.

Crucial to teaching Polanyi is an appreciation of his post-critical position outside of usual philosophy of science debates. He is especially useful in introducing students to religion & science debates (esp. Science, Faith and Society), because he struggled out of a critical dilemma similar to theirs. Polanyi’s work has unusual moral and historical dimensions;Science, Faith and Society anticipates, in accessible form, many of his later arguments. A class mirroring Polanyian concerns will be communal, dialectical, and personal, in a combination which helps students find their own voice.