Talk:Michael Polanyi

Link to "Tacit Knowledge" Site
See this MeFi thread about Polanyi. Perhaps some links from there could be incorporated here. <>< tbc 06:51, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Should that say "adsorption" or "absorption"? 62.254.128.4 11:14, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I also was reading this and thought it should say 'adsorption'. I will change it. 75.157.27.217 (talk) 02:58, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Gap in Biography
One wonders how a person could obtain a doctorate degree in chemistry without ever having been a student of that subject (as the article currently makes you assume). The article says he graduated as a physician, and in that course of studies some knowledge of chemistry will be imparted, but how much ? A German language source says that he actually became a student of chemistry at a German university, before he was drafted to the (Austrian-Hungarian) army in WW I. If the date of 1913 for his graduating in medicine is correct, he cannot have persued that second course of studies for very long, though I do not know when precisely he had to start his war service.147.142.186.54 (talk) 16:38, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * From the Dictionary of National Biography: "During the First World War Polanyi served as a medical officer in the Austro-Hungarian army and then took his doctoral degree in chemistry at the University of Budapest. In 1919 he fled Budapest for Germany [...]. Polanyi [...] in 1920 moved to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Fibre Chemistry in Berlin." Stearnsbrian (talk) 10:52, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Contradiction
According to the "Early life" section, he was born in Vienna, but according to the infobox, he was born in Budapest. Which one is right? //Essin (talk) 21:14, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Budapest. His father, also named Mihály, was based in Vienna before moving to Budapest and giving birth to Polanyi. --77.56.104.13 (talk) 07:37, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Opening paragraph on positivism
Intro paragraph (past tense) ends with a sentence at present tense ("He argues that not only does positivism give..."). Before changing this, I was wondering if his stake on positivism was really so central to his thought to deserve a place in the first paragraph. Otherwise it should simply be removed, or replaced with a better summary of his work. --Satanetto (talk) 01:53, 26 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The lead should summarize the article, which covers much besides philosophy. I'll draft a summarizing lead now. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:45, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes the attack on "Positivism" is central to his work. It is not simply that as a working scientist he thought it an inaccurate account of the practice of science, he claimed that Positivism (in its most general sense) is profoundly destructive of the beliefs which sustain human civilisation. His work in chemistry and economics are footnotes (which is not to belittle them) in the history of those sciences, but his writings against Positivism are why he has a Wikipedia article. When Polanyi is mentioned in contemporary writings it is generally not for his work in the sciences - distinguished though his contributions were in various fields. You can find another word such as "Scientism" or "Reductionism" or "Analytical Philosophy" but Positivism (in all of its various senses) is the most accurate general description of what he was rejecting. You will be hard pressed to find a single Polanyi scholar who would disagree with this assessment. ERIDU-DREAMING (talk) 08:04, 30 December 2012 (UTC)


 * OK, I've emphasized that P. is central, but the function of a lead section is to summarize in about 4 paragraphs the whole of the subject's life and work, so I have reinstated the other paragraphs - they may not be perfect but they cover the other aspects of his career. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:16, 30 December 2012 (UTC)


 * It is only a short article and so a lengthy summary is unnecessary. I have not deleted the summary, but I have tightened up some of it's claims. For example, Polanyi did not reject the concept of objectivity.


 * ERIDU-DREAMING (talk) 02:14, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

RE: "Polanyi did not reject the concept of objectivity." That is a totally false statement. His book, his main work, entitled Personal Knowledge, is an explanation of why he in fact does wholly reject the concept of objectivity. Its one of the key reasons for his attack on the dogmas and false principles of positivism. Personal knowledge makes the individual responsible for what he or she claims to know. The doctrine of "objectivity" is an attempt to escape that responsibility. Absurdly, it would remove the known from the knower. He points out that personal knowledge does not result in solipsism (PK316f) because people share a language, which enables intersubjective agreement. But that is far from "objectivity." DrWJK (talk) 22:17, 28 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Polanyi is not a subjectivist. Nor does he strive for intersubjective agreement. He strives for truth. Not your truth or a truth we can agree upon, but the truth. You quite correctly point out that he thinks that all judgement is made by a particular consciousness, a point of view, from a particular place, relying upon assumptions which may turn out to be false, but that makes him a fallibilist, he is not rejecting the concept of the object, what is objectively the case. What he is doing is seeking to transcend the objective-subjective distinction. The subject is not a weakness, it is how knowing becomes possible, we know reality because we are part of it, but this also means that there is no view from nowhere, every claim is from somewhere, and as a consequence all general claims are fallible. All knowing is personal. All KNOWING you notice. He thinks we can know things, and be right or wrong. He endorses the attempt to find out what is true and reject what is false. In this sense he does not reject the concept of objectivity, and therefore your claim that this is a totally false statement about him is false. Linklock (talk) 12:34, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Explain twenty-odd edits involving hundreds of words
I've reverted a recent spree of edits involving many hundreds of words because they have no edit summary. I'm hoping for either a single proposal by the author of the last twenty-something edits, or at least some kind of explanation, any kind of positive gesture will help. &mdash; Cp i r al  Cpiral  07:39, 18 February 2013 (UTC)