This article offers an appreciative review of Milton Scarborough’s book, Comparative Theories of Nonduality: The Search for a Middle Way. The nondualistic metaphysics and epistemology Scarborough argues for integrating three major influences: the Buddhist notions of emptiness and nothingness, ancient Hebrewcovenantal theology, and the minority perspectives within Western philosophy of Polanyi and Merleau-Ponty. What results is a vision of a protean reality that is not captured adequately by fixed essences—especially dualistic alternatives— or by a drive toward some unreachable certainty in knowledge. The article raises somequestions about the implications of Scarborough’s thought and how he formulates it, but as a whole praises the work as a fine example of cross-cultural philosophy.

This essay replies to Walter Gulick’s review of my book. It points out the book’s double purpose, namely, finding both a Western middle way and also a middle way between East and West. It clarifies the flexibility of my use of “dualism” while emphasizing my consistency in the use of “middle way” as referring to a larger and more concrete reality as the source of abstracted dualisms. It compares the Buddha’s namarupa with the mindbody of Merleau-Ponty and Poteat. It articulates six benefits of my approach. Finally, it justifies my emphasis on Hebrew thought about covenant, history, and knowledge.

This essay pulls together from myriad sources the record of Marjorie Grene’s early collaboration with Michael Polanyi as well as her interesting, changing commentary on Polanyi’s philosophical perspective and particularly that articulated in Personal Knowledge. It provides an account of the conflicting perspectives of Grene and Harry Prosch, who collaborated in publishing Polanyi’s last work, Meaning.

This review essay describes David Nikkel’s broad conception of embodiment as a remedy for the insanity of modern mind/body dualism. He employs Polanyian themes, supplemented by the insights of cognitive scientists and neuroscientists, to show that all knowing is bodily, that tradition functions in knowing in a way similar to the body, and that thinking metaphorically of the world as God’s body leads to a new appreciation of panentheism.

While acknowledging her appreciation of and dependence upon the philosophy of Michael Polanyi, Marjorie Grene in developing her own philosophical vision distanced herself from some aspects of Polanyi’s thought. This essay examines her critique of a) Polanyi’s incorporation of religious themes in his writing, b) the teleology present in Polanyi’s understanding of evolution, c) his alleged return to dualistic thought, and d) his confusing use of “subjectivity” in Personal Knowledge. The essay points out ways in which her remarks are sometimes trenchant and sometimes miss the mark.

This appreciative response to David Rutledge’s review of my book, Radical Embodiment, deals with the natureof categorization/generalization with respect to and in light of postmodernism, with the issue of the articulation of tacit knowledge, with Mark C. Taylor’s current a/theological stance regarding the concept of God, and finally with my model of divine embodiment that rejects special providence and revelation.

This essay is a response to Struan Jacobs, “Recovering the Thought of Edward Shils,” which is an extended review of Adair-Toteff and Turner’s The Calling of Social Thought. It considers Edward Shils as a “stranger,” in the sense defined by Georg Simmel, relative to contemporary sociology. Christian Smith’s claim that American sociology is implicitly pursuing a “sacred project” is invoked, in contrast with Shils’ vision for consensual sociology. The expansion by CST to “Social Thought” as a calling (vocation), and its ties to science as understood by Polanyi, are strongly affirmed.

This article provides an extended review of The Calling of Social Thought, a collection of essays about the thought of social theorist Edward Shils. The article includes preliminary observations about Shils’ life and work, brief summaries of the essays included in the collection, and several suggestions aimed at encouraging additional study of Shils’ writings.

Starting in 1946, Polanyi begins to criticize a comprehensive system of ideas that he names positivism. His criticism is twofold. On the one hand, it has the narrow aim of pointing out the inconsistencies of a positivist account of science, according to which the essence of scientific objec­tivity lies in establishing rigorous mathematical relations between measured variables employing fixed rules. On the other hand, it examines the broad assumptions underlying this view, namely radical empiricism and skeptical doubt. The present paper analyzes both aspects of this criticism, stressing its crucial role in the development of Polanyi’s philosophy.

This review article continues the forum from Tradition and Discovery 47/1 (February 2021) on Gábor Bíró’s book, The Economic Thought of Michael Polanyi (London: Routledge, 2019; 178 pp. Hardback: 9780367245634, £120.00; eBook: 9780429283178, £22.50).

This is a brief response to comments by Struan Jacobs and Peter Blum on The Calling of Social Thought, Rediscovering the Work of Edward Shils, a recent collection of essays edited by Christopher Adair-Toteff and Stephen Turner. It identifies a distinctive contribution of Shils to the larger problem of the tacit.

This response addresses some points raised by Eduardo Beira’s review article found in this issue of TAD and suggests new directions for future studies focusing on the economic thought of Michael Polanyi.

Rating scales that link numbers to verbal labels are ubiquitous in social psychological research and are used to re-express individuals’ attitudes on wide-ranging matters in quantities that can be treated statistically. These re-expressions pay tribute to an objectivist framework, but at the expense of eclipsing the powers of personal knowing Polanyi attributes to other minds. This fact comes to the fore in the present paper through an investigation of Polanyi’s analysis of linguistic indeterminacy, indication and symbols, and the application of neurological models to persons who are competent to make sense of their own lives. Accrediting the result of this inquiry compels one dedicated to Polanyi’s thought to wonder how social psychology ought to be conceived. Clues to an answer appear in the educational bonds formed between mentors and pupils in the transmission of cultural lore.

Similarities between what Michael Polanyi and Daniel Kahneman wrote about the acts of judging and deciding are partly the result of taking seriously the findings of Gestalt psychology. Both men treat acts of judging and deciding as analogous to acts of perceiving. This similarity is the reason that the differences between Kahneman and Polanyi are mostly complementary, rather than contradictory. Among the things Polanyians can contribute to the interdisciplinary field of judgment and decision making are commitment, the from-to structure, and the image of leaping across a logical gap. Among the things Polanyians can learn from Kahneman is a pragmatic distinction between judging and deciding, a distinction between fast and slow thinking, and a heightened awareness of the many ways tacit heuristics and biases lead to mistaken judgments and bad decisions.

In this essay, I contend that Polanyi’s view of metaphor as outlined in Meaning (1975), has important heuristic implications for understanding the way metaphor functions in trauma therapy. I also contend that in his seminal book on trauma, The Body Keeps the Score (2014), Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., although he rarely uses the term, relies on metaphor as a vital element in his treatment of trauma victims. Analysis of Van der Kolk’s practice further confirms and extends Polanyi’s view of the bodily roots of all knowledge. Juxtaposing Polanyi’s theory and Van der Kolk’s practice demonstrates how unspeakable trauma can be overcome through the embodied metaphoric/linguistic matrix of human speech.

Michael Polanyi, along with colleagues at University of Manchester, worked to produce the journal Humanitas, A University Quarterly for two years just after the end of World War II. This essay outlines how Polanyi’s two articles in Humanitas and other work on the journal reflect Polanyi’s developing philosophical perspective.

Polanyi’s theory of personal knowledge provides a paradigmatic conceptual framework for the empirical analysis of tacit knowing and learning. We use this framework to analyze the development of pedagogical competence. Drawing on Polanyi, we regard pedagogical competence as a particular field of professional tacit knowing that relates subsidiary and focal awareness of events in class, effects situated appraisal, and relates events to teaching intentions. The development of pedagogical competence takes place when a teacher struggles to relate teaching intentions to ongoing events in tacit knowing and engages in situated experimentation. Based on Polanyi’s conception of subsidiary awareness, focal awareness, and appraisal, we present an empirical vignette from a case study. In it, a teacher engages in situated experimentation to resolve two opposing semantic fields in class: an intended field of interaction, which focuses on the lesson topic, and the field of student peer relations. Based on our analysis, we argue that the teacher’s competence development is focused on the educative task of managing students’ peer culture, while the teacher’s focal awareness remains on the didactical task of teaching a subject.