Polanyi Quotes & Sayings

Instead, in the absence of respect for human rights, science and its offspring technology have been used in this century as brutal instruments for oppression. — John Charles Polanyi

Young people ask me if this country is serious about science. They aren't thinking about the passport that they will hold, but the country that they must rely on for support and encouragement. — John Charles Polanyi

A free society is regarded as one that does not engage, on principle, in attempting to control what people find meaningful, and a totalitarian society is regarded as one that does, on principle, attempt such control. — Michael Polanyi

the selfish gladly consoled themselves with the thought that though it was merciful at least it was not liberal; — Karl Polanyi

We know more than we can tell. — Michael Polanyi

In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy. — John Charles Polanyi

Science is an enterprise that can only flourish if it puts the truth ahead of nationality, ethnicity, class and color. — John C. Polanyi

Christianity sedulously fosters, and in a sense permanently satisfies, man's craving for mental dissatisfaction by offering him the comfort of a crucified God. — Michael Polanyi

It was the merit of Gestalt psychology to make us aware of the remarkable performance involved in perceiving shapes. Take, for example, a ball or an egg: we can see their shapes at a glance. Yet suppose that instead of the impression made on our eye by an aggregate of white points forming the surface of an egg, we were presented with another, logically equivalent, presentation of these points as given by a list of their spatial co-ordinate values. It would take years of labour to discover the shape inherent in this aggregate of figures - provided it could be guessed at all. The perception of the egg from the list of co-ordinate values would, in fact, be a feat rather similar in nature and measure of intellectual achievement to the discovery of the Copernican system. — Michael Polanyi

Admittedly, the body of scientists, as a whole, does uphold the authority of science over the lay public. It controls thereby also the process by which young men are trained to become members of the scientific profession. — Michael Polanyi

No inanimate object is ever fully determined by the laws of physics and chemistry. — Michael Polanyi

Human beings exercise responsibilities within a social setting and a framework of obligations which transcend the principle of intelligence. — Michael Polanyi

The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end. — John Charles Polanyi

A wise man in China asked his gardener to plant a shrub. The gardener objected that it only flowered once in a hundred years. "In that case," said the wise man, "plant it immediately." [On the importance of fundamental research.] — John Charles Polanyi

I knew, however, that it would cost ten times what I had available in order to build a molecular beam machine. I decided to follow a byway, rather than the highway. It is a procedure I have subsequently recommended to beginning scientists in this country, where research strategy is best modelled on that used by Wolfe at the Plains of Abraham. — John Charles Polanyi

...To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society. For the alleged commodity, "labor power" cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar commodity. In disposing of a man's labor power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity of "man" attached to the tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rovers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed... — Karl Polanyi

My title is intended to suggest that the community of scientists is organized in a way which resembles certain features of a body politic and works according to economic principles similar to those by which the production of material goods is regulated. — Michael Polanyi

[Chemist Michael] Polanyi found one other necessary requirement for full initiation into science: Belief. If science has become the orthodoxy of the West, individuals are nevertheless still free to take it or leave it, in whole or in part; believers in astrology, Marxism and virgin birth abound. But no one can become a scientist unless he presumes that the scientific doctrine and method are fundamentally sound and that their ultimate premises can be unquestionably accepted. — Richard Rhodes

There was nothing natural about laissez-faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course. Just as cotton manufactures were created by the help of protective tariffs, export bounties, and indirect wage subsidies, laissez-faire was enforced by the state. — Karl Polanyi

And the actual achievements of biology are explanations in terms of mechanisms founded on physics and chemistry, which is not the same thing as explanations in terms of physics and chemistry. — Michael Polanyi

But the system of prices ruling the market not only transmits information in the light of which economic agents can mutually adjust their actions, it also provides them with an incentive to exercise economy in terms of money. — Michael Polanyi

To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment ... would result in the demolition of society. — Karl Polanyi

The information in DNA could no more be reduced to the chemical than could the ideas in a book be reduced to the ink and paper: something beyond physics and chemistry encoded DNA. — Michael Polanyi

Discoveries that are anticipated are seldom the most valuable ... It's the scientist free to pilot his vessel across hidden shoals into open seas who gives the best value. — John Charles Polanyi

The emotional pattern seems to be something like, "[Karl] Polanyi, a person of the left like me, says many true things, beautifully. Therefore his tales about what happened in economic history must be true." Marx before him got similar treatment. Lately the more eloquent of the environmentalists, such as Wendell Berry, get it too. People want to believe that beauty is truth. A supporting emotional frame on the left arises from the very idea of historical progress: "We must be able to do so much better than this wretched capitalism." It is not true, but it motivates. — Deirdre N. McCloskey

Personal participation is the universal principle of knowing. — Michael Polanyi

the organization of labor is only another word for the forms of life of the common people, this means that the development of the market system would be accompanied by a change in the organization of society itself. All along the line, human society had become an accessory of the economic system. — Karl Polanyi

Even in the world of molecules the civilising influence of modest restraints is a cause for rejoicing. — John Charles Polanyi

When, as we must often do, we fear science, we really fear ourselves. — John Charles Polanyi

To try to reform all the power structures at once would leave us with no power structure to use in our project. In any case, we will be able to see that absolute moral renewal could be attempted only by an absolute power and that a tyrannous force such as this must destroy the whole moral life of man, not renew it. — Michael Polanyi

[Intellectual courage is] the quality that allows one to believe in one's judgement in the face of disappointment and widespread skepticism. Intellectual courage is even rarer than physical courage. — John Charles Polanyi

Moreover, only a strong and united scientific opinion imposing the intrinsic value of scientific progress on society at large can elicit the support of scientific inquiry by the general public. — Michael Polanyi

We do not accept a religion because it offers us certain rewards. The only thing that a religion can offer us is to be just what it, in itself, is: a greater meaning in ourselves, in our lives, and in our grasp of the nature of things ... a religion exists for us only if, like a piece of poetry, it carries us away. It is not in any sense a 'hypothesis. — Michael Polanyi

Discoveries are made by pursuing possibilities suggested by existing knowledge. — Michael Polanyi

Under this scientific and moral pressure, the Canadian government conceded publicly that the use of these weapons in Vietnam was, in their view, a contravention of the Geneva Protocol. — John Charles Polanyi

Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an international NGO of exceptional authority. — John Charles Polanyi

So long as we use a certain language, all questions that we can ask will have to be formulated in it and will thereby confirm the theory of the universe which is implied in the vocabulary and structure of the language. — Michael Polanyi

Our reliance on the validity of a scientific conclusion depends ultimately on a judgment of coherence; and as there can exist no strict criterion for coherence, our judgment of it must always remain a qualitative, nonformal, tacit, personal judgment. — Michael Polanyi

While tacit knowledge can be possessed by itself, explicit knowledge must rely on being tacitly understood and applied. Hence all knowledge is either tacit or rooted in tacit knowledge. A wholly explicit knowledge is unthinkable. — Michael Polanyi

The respect for human rights, essential if we are to use technology wisely, is not something alien that must be grafted onto science. On the contrary, it is integral to science, as also to scholarship in general. — John Charles Polanyi

For scholarship - if it is to be scholarship - requires, in addition to liberty, that the truth take precedence over all sectarian interests, including self-interest. — John Charles Polanyi

All types of societies are limited by economic factors. Nineteenth century civilization alone was economic in a different and distinctive sense, for it chose to base itself in a motive rarely acknowledged as valid in history of human societies, and certainly never before raised to the level of justification of action and behavior in everyday life, namely, gain. The self-regulating market system was uniquely derived from this principle. The mechanism which the motive gain set in motion was comparable in effectiveness only to the most violent outburst of religious fervor in history. Within a generation the whole human world was subjected to its undiluted influence. — Karl Polanyi

It is folly to use as one's guide in the selection of fundamental science the criterion of utility. Not because (scientists) ... despise utility. But because.. useful outcomes are best identified after the making of discoveries, rather than before. — John Charles Polanyi

I shall suggest, on the contrary, that all communication relies, to a noticeable extent on evoking knowledge that we cannot tell, and that all our knowledge of mental processes, like feelings or conscious intellectual activities, is based on a knowledge which we cannot tell. — Michael Polanyi

What makes the Universal Declaration an epochal document is first of all its global impetus and secondly the breadth of its claims, a commitment to a new social contract, binding on all the Governments of the world. — John Charles Polanyi

Authority in science exists to be questioned, since heresy is the spring from which new ideas flow. — John C. Polanyi

The pioneer, the creator, the explorer is generally a single, lonely person rather than a group, struggling all alone with his inner conflicts, fears, defenses against arrogance and pride, even against paranoia. He has to be a courageous man, not afraid to stick his neck out, not afraid even to make mistakes, well aware that he is, as Polanyi has stressed, a kind of gambler who comes to tentative conclusions in the absence of facts and then spends some years trying to figure out if his hunch was correct. If he has any sense at all, he is of course scared of his own ideas, of his temerity, and is well aware that he is affirming what he cannot prove. — A.H. Maslow

Of course language manifests a belief only if we use its words with the implied acceptance of their appositeness. — Michael Polanyi

The amount of knowledge which we can justify from evidence directly available to us can never be large. The overwhelming proportion of our factual beliefs continue therefore to be held at second hand through trusting others, and in the great majority of cases our trust is placed in the authority of comparatively few people of widely acknowledged standing. — Michael Polanyi

The most exciting thing in the twentieth century is science. — John Charles Polanyi

Nothing is more irredeemably irrelevant than bad science. — John Charles Polanyi

Science never gives up searching for truth, since it never claims to have achieved it. It is civilizing because it puts truth ahead of all else, including personal interests. — John Polanyi

Theories of evolution must provide for the creative acts which brought such theories into existence. — Michael Polanyi

We could not, for example, arrive at a principle like that of entropy without introducing some additional principle, such as randomness, to this topography. — Michael Polanyi

Some dreamers demand that scientists only discover things that can be used for good. That is impossible. Science gives us a powerful vocabulary, and it is impossible to produce a vocabulary with which one can only say nice things. — John Polanyi

A steady recognition that the evils which prevent the fullness of moral development are precisely the elements which are also the source of the power that gives existence to whatever moral accomplishments we see about us may eventually lead us to a tolerance we grant to the internal-combustion engine: it is noisy and smelly, and occasionally, it refuses to start, but it is what gets us to wherever we get.
We must somehow learn to understand and so to tolerate- not destroy- the free society. — Michael Polanyi

Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness. — Karl Polanyi

Others think it the responsibility of scientists to coerce the rest of society, because they have the power that derives from special knowledge. — John Charles Polanyi

A new sense of shared international responsibility is unmistakable in the voices of the United Nations and its agencies, and in the civil society of thousands of supra-national NGOs. — John Charles Polanyi

If we treasure our own experience and regard it as real, we must also treasure other people's experience. Reality is no less precious if it presents itself to someone else. All are discoverers, and if we disenfranchise any, all suffer. — John Polanyi

The applause is a celebration not only of the actors but also of the audience. It constitutes a shared moment of delight. — John Charles Polanyi

Today, Academies of Science use their influence around the world in support of human rights. — John Charles Polanyi

But even physics cannot be defined from an atomic topography. — Michael Polanyi

The process of philosophic and scientific enlightenment has shaken the stability of beliefs held explicitly as articles of faith. — Michael Polanyi

Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward troth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey. — John Charles Polanyi

If we define the word Theos as that on which everything else depends but which itself depends on nothing else - a reasonable definition - then none of these scientific theories is theologically neutral. All of them rest on fundamental assumptions which can be questioned. But the questioning, if it is to be rational, has to rely on other fundamental assumptions which can in turn be questioned. It follows (and this is Polanyi's point) that there can be no knowing without personal commitment. We must believe in order to know. — Lesslie Newbigin

These maxims and the art of interpreting them may be said to constitute the premisses of science but I prefer to call them our scientific beliefs. These premisses or beliefs are embodied in a tradition, the tradition of science. — Michael Polanyi

Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts. — John Charles Polanyi

In the late 1950s a major topic under discussion was whether Canada should acquire nuclear weapons. — John Charles Polanyi

Poverty was nature surviving in society; that the limitedness of food and the unlimitedness of men had come to an issue just when the promise of boundless increase of wealth burst in upon us made the irony only the more bitter. — Karl Polanyi

The first thing to make clear is that scientists, freely making their own choice of problems and pursuing them in the light of their own personal judgment, are in fact co-operating as members of a closely knit organization. — Michael Polanyi

Better to die in the pursuit of civilized values, we believed, than in a flight underground. We were offering a value system couched in the language of science. — John Charles Polanyi

I hold that the propositions embodied in natural science are not derived by any definite rule from the data of experience, and that they can neither be verified nor falsified by experience according to any definite rule. — Michael Polanyi

The time has come to underscore the fact that our and others' rights are contingent on our willingness to assert and defend them. — John Charles Polanyi

Individual scientists like myself - and many more conspicuous - pointed to the dangers of radioactive fallout over Canada if we were to launch nuclear weapons to intercept incoming bombers. — John Charles Polanyi

The scientific and scholarly community is marked by the belief that the truth is to be found in all; none can claim it as their monopoly. — John Charles Polanyi

Our assessment of socio-economic worth is largely a sham. We scientists should not lend ourselves to it - though we routinely do. We should, instead, insist on applying the criterion of quality. — John Charles Polanyi

In education the appetite does indeed grow with eating. I have never known anyone to abandon study because they knew too much. — John Charles Polanyi

Though we explore in a culturally-conditioned way, the reality we sketch is universal. — John Charles Polanyi

Though neglectful of their responsibility to protect science, scientists are increasingly aware of their responsibility to society. — John Polanyi

It takes a trained and discerning researcher to keep the goal in sight, and to detect evidence of the creeping progress toward it. — John Charles Polanyi

We cannot ultimately specify the grounds (either metaphysical or logical or empirical) upon which we hold that our knowledge is true. Being committed to such grounds, dwelling in them, we are projecting ourselves to what we believe to be true from or through these grounds. We cannot therefore see what they are. We cannot look at them because we are looking with them. — Michael Polanyi

Admittedly, scientific authority is not distributed evenly throughout the body of scientists; some distinguished members of the profession predominate over others of a more junior standing. — Michael Polanyi

It is this, at its most basic, that makes science a humane pursuit; it acknowledges the commonality of people's experience. — John Charles Polanyi

Idealism is the highest form of reason. — John Charles Polanyi

Science is a collection of stories, linking characters worthy of notice. — John Charles Polanyi

Enclosures have been appropriately called a revolution of the rich against the poor. — Karl Polanyi

Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge. — John Charles Polanyi

For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom. — John Charles Polanyi

At the heart of science lies discovery which involves a change in worldview. Discovery in science is possible only in societies which accord their citizens the freedom to pursue the truth where it may lead and which therefore have respect for different paths to that truth. — John Charles Polanyi