Michael Polanyi
Physical Chemist & Philosopher of Tacit Knowledge
關於
Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) was a Hungarian-British polymath who made major contributions to physical chemistry before turning, in his fifties, to philosophy. Holding a chair in social science at the University of Manchester from 1948, he developed the concept of tacit knowledge, crystallized in his phrase 'we can know more than we can tell.' Against the positivist ideal of fully explicit, impersonal knowledge, he argued that all knowing rests on personal judgment, skill, and 'indwelling' — a background of commitments that can never be completely stated as rules. His books Personal Knowledge (1958) and The Tacit Dimension (1966) remain central to any discussion of knowledge that resists formalization, and pose a sharp question for machines trained only on what has been written down.
主要貢獻
- Introduced the concept of tacit knowledge — 'we can know more than we can tell'
- Wrote Personal Knowledge (1958), a sustained case against the ideal of wholly impersonal, explicit knowledge
- Wrote The Tacit Dimension (1966), the compact statement of his epistemology
- Argued that skilled expertise depends on 'indwelling' — a background that cannot be reduced to rules
- Made foundational contributions to physical chemistry (reaction rates, adsorption, X-ray analysis) before his philosophical work
書籍
思想連結
卡爾·波普爾
觀點交鋒科學哲學家
兩位中歐流亡者先後落腳英國學界，反對的是同樣的東西——實證主義與極權主義——接著卻花了數十年，始終無法就「究竟是什麼把一項探究維繫起來」達成一致。博蘭尼的立場是：沒有任何否證是完全決定性的，因為出錯的可能是實驗本身；科學家因此是從他們「棲居其中」而非懷疑的框架出發工作。他把《個人知識》的副標題定為〈邁向後批判哲學〉，要越過的正是波普爾的批判理性主義。波普爾則把這視為對非理性主義的邀請，並在 1959 年自己那本書的英文版中尖銳作答。只要還有人追問「一位實作者的默會判斷究竟是知識還是習慣」，這場爭論就仍然活著。
polanyisociety.org · Struan Jacobs and Phil Mullins, "Michael Polanyi and Karl Popper: The Fraying of a Long-Standing Acquaintance", Tradition & Discovery 38:2
John Vervaeke
思想同道認知科學家與哲學家
一組以一句坦承為錨的詮釋性配對。向 Adam Walker 解釋為什麼一首好詩取之不盡時，韋爾維克伸手去拿博蘭尼：「這是博蘭尼的想法，還有 Esther Meek——我們與實在接觸的感覺，就是感覺自己置身於某個會不斷給出更多的東西面前。」「我同意博蘭尼與 Meek。」博蘭尼的默會知識與韋爾維克的相關性實現，是同一個主張在兩個世紀裡的兩種說法：我們知道的比能說的多，而告訴我們碰到了真實之物的，正是它不會枯竭。
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