© Roger M Tagg 2011
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
This book was written just before Michael Polanyi's (MP's) death in 1976, although they are based on lectures which he gave between 1969 and 1971, and which Harry Prosch edited and wrote up with MP's help. The impression is that MP wanted to leave a legacy of his own philosophy, and a defence of his personal religious stance. His fundamental idea, that of 'tacit integration' (from our subsidiary inputs to the focal thing of our interest) is the basis for all his ideas in this book.
| Chapter | Page | Highlight |
|---|---|---|
| Preface | x | "... the modern mind has destroyed meaning ..." [RT: 'Meaning' is here used in a narrow sense, as in the phrase "The meaning of life" - i.e. we are assumed to be trying to find an answer to the questions "what's it all about?" and "what's it all for?" - much like Zijderveld (see my highlights).] |
| 1 - Eclipse | 4 | Existentialism seems to be the only philosophical school that represents freedom of thought. But if we follow Sartre, 'value' only arises from the choices we have (already) made. |
| of Thought | 6 | In Europe, religious revival in both Catholicism and Protestantism (after the Renaissance and Reformation) eclipsed freedom of thought for a time (probably due to the struggle between the two camps). |
| 8 | The French Enlightenment "was always supremely confident", so attacked religion as 'reactionary'. | |
| 9 | The collapse of freedom at the beginning of the 20th century didn't happen in Anglo-American parts of the world. | |
| 10-11 | In those areas, "... public opinion was swayed by moral forces ..." and these were influenced by religion. | |
| 11 | Continental philosophy realized that "universal standards of reason" weren't going to provide an answer to everything. | |
| 12 | Individuality, Romanticism, Bohemianism ('self-expression') were one reaction to this disappointment. | |
| 12-14 | These trends were further hijacked by Materialism, Economics and Nationalism. | |
| 15-16 | There was also a rise of Nihilism. But MP remarks that "private nihilism" doesn't get anyone anywhere. | |
| 19 | The trouble arises when reason and morality are deprived of value in their own right. | |
| 2 - Personal | 23 | Moral neutralism derives from people's fear of
being labelled hypocritical. "... a great movement, the movement of 'revisionism'." [RT: I agree!] |
| Know- | 24 | "... the fallacy of positivistic skepticism ..." |
| ledge | 25 | "The ideal of science remains ... to replace all knowledge by complete knowledge of atoms in motion." [RT: I think this is an Aunt Sally. I'd call this 'vulgar science'.] |
| 26 | An anthropologist said "that witchcraft is Navaho culture's principle answer to ... how to satisfy hate and still keep the core of society solid." 'Stability of evil' - can that be good? | |
| 28 | Simone de Beauvoir hailed "the glorification of crime and lust by the Marquis de Sade ..." | |
| 29-32 | Science, if its goal is reduction to predictions of movements of atoms, isn't addressing our focus of interest. We need interpretation and intuition (and art?) to make a bridge. | |
| 33 | 'Subsidiary awareness' versus 'focal awareness'; example: hammering a nail. | |
| 34 | Another example: stereo (3D) pictures. The 'from-to' relation (subsidiary to focal) relies on 'tacit knowing'. | |
| 35 | Another example: 'from' reading words 'to' getting a meaning. If we look too much at the words we miss the meaning. | |
| 39 | Focal awareness is always conscious; subsidiary awareness may be, but may also be subliminal. Perception via tacit integration can be true or mistaken. | |
| 41 | Tacit integration "cannot be replaced by any explicit mechanical procedure". [RT: While I agree as of now, this sounds rash if it applies to all future times.] | |
| 44 | "All knowing is personal knowing - participation through indwelling." [RT: I presume this last word means 'putting ourselves in the position of others'.] | |
| 3 - | 49 | "... we know other minds by dwelling in their acts" (seeing beyond subsidiary moves to their strategy). |
| Recons- | 49-51 | MP re-interprets mind/body dualism as different levels of subsidiary/focal awareness. |
| struction | 52 | Kant said that the way we classify things "is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul". Quine agreed. |
| 55 | Explanation by referring back to a more general law doesn't work. [RT: I suppose there would be infinite regress.] Instead, explanation should be "a particular form of insight ... that relieves our puzzlement through the establishment of a more meaningful interpretation of parts of our experience ..." [RT: 'Meaningful seems a dangerous word to use. What's certain is that what is 'more meaningful' to person A may well differ from that to person B.] | |
| 56 | "... no formal procedure could be found for producing a good idea from which to start an enquiry." | |
| 57 | "It is only the imagination that can direct our attention to a target that is as yet unsupported by subsidiaries." | |
| 61 | "... all our knowledge is inescapably indeterminate ... There is nothing in any concept that points objectively or automatically to any sort of reality." | |
| 63 | Science's "method is not that of detachment but rather that of involvement." | |
| 4 - From | 68 | Modern man "needs a theory of these meanings (e.g. of classes, minds, statues, Beethoven's 9th etc - all intangibles) that explains how their coherence is no less real ..." |
| Percep- tion to | 70-1 | Subsidiaries are 'bearing upon' their focal meaning [RT: same relationship as 'from-to?]. "Intrinsic interest" usually exists at the focal end but maybe not in the subsidiaries. |
| Metaphor | 72 | A national flag (as a focus) is of less interest than the subsidiary meaning it evokes. [RT: I think this analogy is rather contrived.] |
| 73-4 | Symbols, rituals etc can "carry us away" - we "surrender" to them. [RT: Doesn't sound like me - 'devout' Catholics, maybe!] | |
| 75-81 | Metaphors are similar; they have 'tenor' (the meaning) and 'vehicle' (the words used). This is a 2-stage relationship: between the vehicle and the tenor (maybe both ways) and between the metaphor to (and from?) our own subsidiary experience. | |
| 5 - Works of Art | 82-94 | Art should be like poetic metaphor, having a 'frame' (vehicle)
and a 'story'. It should "carry us away", not "represent". It shouldn't
stress the author. [RT: MP doesn't say anything about music here.] |
| 6 - Validity in Art | 95-107 | In art, there is valid person knowledge (for the 'receiver'), possibly in consensus with others. Art, like science, is work of the imagination, and can enhance our world view. The 'frame' adds something for us. [RT: I think the last 'is' is overstatement; in both art and science, there is technique to be learnt and followed. Sondheim: "Art isn't easy".] |
| 7 - Visionary | 108-19 | 'Point by point' meaning isn't necessary. Modern art (including poetry) trends away from any risk of 'representation' or of focus on the 'story'; MP says it parallels despair at incoherences in our social situation. |
| Art | 119 | "Our modern temper balks at ... truly dwelling in formal rituals and customs." We feel it's not 'authentic', and we don't 'surrender' to the situation. |
| "But the basis for our meaningful participation in rites and ceremonies lies in myths that in some sense we believe to be true." [RT: meaningful maybe, but this doesn't sound like a valid use of the word 'true'. However in the next chapters he tries to see if he can justify his line; one of his arguments being 'if we can be moved by modern art, why can't we be moved by religion?'] | ||
| 8 - The Structure of Myth | 120-31 | MP quotes
Eliade who said that myths deal with 'primordial time', as in a creation
myth. Rituals reflect 'sacred time' and eternity; they are "distinct from
and opposed to daily life" (Cassirer).
Myths evoke 'wonder'. Zen
Buddhism attempts to rescue our 'visionary' view of things. |
| 9 - Truth in Myth | 132-48 | A myth "re-actualizes the 'Great Time' ", and this enables man to "approach a Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane individual existence" (Eliade). But is this 'truth'? Or is it something we might 'accept' as giving meaning? MP agrees that most of us don't buy it. |
| 132 | How much do initiation ceremonies obscure initiates' minds? | |
| 144 | Even the ancients were tacitly integrating their subsidiary observations. | |
| 146 | Most myths have too many errors. | |
| 10 - Accep- tance of | 149-60 | MP talks about religion as similar to Art and Myth - we may (or may not) be carried away and 'accept' it. [RT: that seems much the same for Marxism, and presumably Naziism.] MP sees rituals in religion as central. He asks "what stands in the way of attaining such meaning in religion?" He answers that the "import" of the details must still be plausible. |
| Religion | 156 | "It is therefore only through participation in acts of worship - through dwelling in these - that we see God." |
| 159 | "... even when the story content of a work of art quite obviously has no plausibility, it is nevertheless possible for our imagination to integrate these incompatible elements into a meaning ..." [RT: That's too big an ask for most of us.] Regarding the Christian bible stories, he says "the contents may continue to seem completely implausible to us", but we [RT: people who think like MP?] see in them "a meaning expressing the whole significance of life and the universe in genuine and universal feeling terms. ... If not this story exactly, then something like this is somehow true ..." | |
| 160 | "... in general men do have a 'will to believe'." But MP's question is whether the "... commitments of 20th century man irrevocably bar his acceptance ... or whether he has merely misconstrued them to stand in his way". [RT: a will to believe what? Is Buddhism or Islam OK as well as ritual-centered Christianity? And what about people's distaste for the authoritarian nature of religious hierarchies and the human failings of priests?] | |
| 11 - Order | 161-81 | For the world to be meaningful, we need to feel that there is some overall direction, so that it's not 'value-free'. Teleology seems incompatible with a scientific view that it's all a balance of random forces in relative chaos. |
| 162 | "The recent rise of philosophical (and popular) opposition to science has not, however, reinstated teleology. We need a 'looser' teleology, not a deterministic one; rather a tendency, i.e. for forms of life to develop and human understanding to increase. | |
| 164 | (A long diversion into DNA) | |
| 179 | MP claims that the 'religious hypothesis is "that the world is meaningful rather than absurd". But he says that one can't have religion without religious language and, in turn, specific rites and myths. [RT: I don't see that this follows.] | |
| 179-80 | MP says that some inherit their religion while others don't; and that some get converted 'out of the blue' (and others don't). [RT: he doesn't talk about those who drift away from religion, which I would say is more the case for the majority.] | |
| 12 - | 184 | "A wholly open society would be a wholly vacuous one." |
| Mutual | 185 | Laymen acknowledge scientists to have authority in their own field. |
| Authority | 189 | A scientist encourages students both to respect current values and to look to deepen them [RT: maybe contradicting them?] in future. |
| 190 | "Because we (scientists) understand each other to be dedicated, we can respect, not try to stamp out, one another's differing views." This contrasts with 'scientism' (i.e. the idea that there is an absolute objective truth to be found). | |
| 191 | Groups of scientists 'mutually control' one another. | |
| 195 | "Acceptance" is not equivalent to "truth". [RT: the definition of truth may be critical here. We could go back to Popper and say that we can only talk in the negative sense, e.g. that something is definitely 'not true' if it leads to clear contradictions.] | |
| 13 - The | 198 - | MP's general idea is that the above model for scientists should be the basis of a "free" society. |
| Free | 200 | He thinks we should definitely have some "categorical oughts" rather than just conditional ones. |
| Society | 200-1 | Freedom cannot be taken to mean total absence of any external restraint. |
| 201 | Moral demands may generate categorical oughts. An alternative definition of freedom could be "liberation from personal ends by submission to impersonal obligations". [RT: I would call that very obtuse. There may be some justification for it, but I'd call that 'voluntary restraint', not 'freedom'. It shows the meaninglessness of the word 'freedom' on its own - one needs to say what one is free from. But 'submission' seems to be the opposite in most cases.] | |
| 203 | "What needs to come into the picture of a viable free society is a traditional devotion to the spiritual objectives, such as truth, justice and beauty." But, he adds, not with any explicit 'official line', which could ossify the society. [RT: I'd agree if "traditional devotion to" is replaced by "respect for".] | |
| 206 | "... man necessarily is adrift. The future is beyond our control since it is beyond our comprehension." [RT: I'd call this a shade defeatist. Surely we have some admittedly incomplete comprehension. We "see through a glass darkly" and "we know in part and we prophesy in part ..." (I Corinthians). And we can make some allowances in our plans for future happenings.] | |
| 206-7 | MP talks about the appearance of "polycentric oligarchies", which might include scientists, politicians, business leaders etc. | |
| 208 | Individuals in these elites operate under 1) a lower level of ambition for power and profit and 2) a higher level of moral obligation. [RT: Balancing these seems to be so often the snag!] | |
| 208-9 | Society needs occasional 'kicks' to correct things (like getting a sack of potatoes to settle). | |
| 209-10 | MP talks about balancing 'boundary conditions'. | |
| 211 | Persuasion is not the same as 'change of mind', which can be brought about by "gimmicks, lies, fraudulent claims, brainwashing". Persuasion should be without "pressure, threats or psychological tricks". | |
| 213 | "A political community must therefore depend on a fortuitous set of institutions to keep its political factions from destroying one another (and the State)..." | |
| We should "abandon our deeply ingrained moral perfectionism". | ||
| 214 | Free society needs to be conservative in the sense that it holds on to good values and doesn't ditch them in radical idealism. | |
| "Open" society shouldn't mean squashing the specialist enclaves of science, art and law; the State needs enough power to back these. However it's unrealistic to expect this power not to be backed and "financed by the beneficiaries of office and property". [RT: but these guys might be too keen to hang on to their power regardless. And having these benefices shouldn't be a criterion for office.] So, we have to go along with a "manifestly imperfect" society. | ||
| 215-6 | It's like "the internal combustion engine - it is noisy and smelly, and occasionally refuses to start, but it is what gets us to wherever it is we get". [RT: and it's use in the future might have to be limited to protect the environment.] | |
| 216 | "... our pursuit of all those things that bear upon eternity." [RT: do we all need to care about eternity? Maybe MP was "being towards death".] |
It is quite difficult to see a single theme in this book. In some places, Polanyi seems to be gamely attempting to bridge the gap between the 'science' and 'humanities' views of the world, and to describe an approach to a society that both can flourish in. In other places, he seems to be defending his own faith as a Roman Catholic, especially as one who sees the essence of his religion in rituals and ceremonies. A third theme seems to be his wrestling with some ideas about myth that were being propounded by Mircea Eliade, a Romanian emigré who was Professor of Religious History at the University of Chicago at the times when Polanyi visited there. Polanyi has tried to unite the three themes by describing 1) poetic metaphor; 2) art (especially modern art, but not mentioning music much); 3) the myths of ancient peoples and traditional religions (and their associated rituals) - all as things we can "accept". These can all become influences that can "carry us away" and prompt our imagination to see a reality beyond all their incompatibilities, as well as beyond our daily lives.
Polanyi was critical of Popper as well of the positivists. However his suggestion that the ideal of science is 'to achieve knowledge of everything as a matter of predicting the motion of atoms' seems 'over the top'. At one point he wonders why, if we can accept modern art, we can't accept religion. He doesn't anywhere entertain any other view of religion than the Catholic Christian one (although Eliade knew quite a bit about Eastern religions). Polanyi also doesn't consider the problem that myths probably have a "use by" date; even if the underlying meaning is long-lasting, the ability of many myths - to 'strike a chord with' or 'carry away' people at any time of history - is bound to be at risk of decline.
From Harry Prosch's preface, it seems that not all the chapters come from the same series of lectures, which maybe explains some of the differences between the themes. Also, according to the paper by Mullins and Moleski referenced in Prosch' obituary (follow the link in my introductory remarks), it is clear that the two authors were not always in total agreement.
In summary, I think this is very much Polanyi's personal apologetic, aided and abetted by Prosch, rather than a helpful guide to what 'meaning' really is.
Index to more highlights of interesting books
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 8th June 2012
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .