***Note: As the reader will see, this Michael Polanyi Dictionary (Glossary) is fairly crude and incomplete. However, as I studied Michael Polanyi, I found it necessary to create my own Polanyi Dictionary and Glossary because I could not find any that were comprehensive on the Internet. Thus, I post this Glossary to encourage beginners in Polanyi to advance (perhaps) a little more rapidly and proficiently than I did. I welcome corrections and additions by older or younger Polanyi scholars.
BSCL: Belief in Science and Christian Life, Torrance, editor, various authors of individual chapters.
DOTW: Doers of the Word, John Apczynski (Scholars Press, 1977.
FSF: Faith, Science, and Society, book by Polanyi
KAB: Knowing and Being, Polanyi essays assembled by Marjorie Grene
M: or MEA: Meaning, book by Polanyi
MP: Michael Polanyi by Mark T. Mitchell
PVT: “Polanyi and Van Til: Two Analyses of the Nature and Function of Presuppositions,” Joshua Benjamins, posted here..
TD or TDD: The Tacit Dimension by Polanyi. An excellent summary of Polanyi’s more mature and clear presentation.
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Reason and the Heart: A Prolegomenon to a Critique of Passional Reason, by William J. Wainwright (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995). This book is essentially a Biblical, Christian discussion of Polanyi’s personal knowledge without knowing of Polanyi and without reference to him. Wainwright discusses the views of Jonathan Edwards, William James, Thomas Aquinas, John Henry Newman, and other theologians. The book is extremely important for evangelical scholars who are also Polanyians.
Affection: the reason for a switch in preferences from the Ptolemaic system to the Copernican system; intellectual satisfaction: PK:4; belief in what is superiorly rational and objectively rational, PK:5;
American Academy of Religion (AAR): has Polanyi meetings every year conjointly with AAR. The Evangelical Theological Society and Evangelical Philosophical meet earlier in the same week each year, rotating geographical sites.
Anarchism, scientific (Feyerabend): science does not proceed by any set of rules, criterion or methods. http://www.amazon.com/review/RIKM1A6GKY13Z/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#RIKM1A6GKY13Zs
Articulate communication: “tacit coefficients” are necessary in a “society of intellectual standards”, PK:203;
Attendance: TTD:24, movement from unspecifiable particulars to a comprehensive entity”: same as “power of tacit integration”(?); see indwelling; “we attend from to attend to something else,” TTD:10;
Authenticity: see “verification” below
Authority: “competent” vs. “supreme”, 163-4; see fiduciary framework, conviviality,
Belief: “A belief always works (Ed: is pragmatic, operational) in the eyes of the believer,” SFS:61; belief precedes knowing, MP:68; beliefs are often revealed by one’s actions, e.g., how often has your behavior surprised yourself!; conceptual framework, deeply ingrained convictions, presuppositions, (these held within the idiom of language), interpretive system (291), belief system, implicit beliefs, unquestioned beliefs (294), highly stabilized framework (292), background beliefs (294), uncritically acquired preconceived beliefs (295), example of the Azande (below), universal interpretive framework (95), fiduciary foundations (297), personal criteria (71), Ed: “mini-beliefs” (page references to PK).
“Believing in” vs. “believing that”: “believing in” is an enacted, developing relationship which cannot be reduced to “believing that” (i.e., propositional content)… http://www.missouriwestern.edu/orgs/polanyi/TAD%20WEB%20ARCHIVE/TAD23-3/TAD23-3-pg17-23-pdf.pdf
Boundary condition: the limits within which a machine or organism functions:
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1970/JASA12-70Polanyi.html; see last two chapter of KAB—explained in detail; two types: “active and passive”, TAD 29;
Breaking out (“dwelling in and breaking out”: “Religious transformation, as seen in mysticism and enlightenment, however, may present a radical, “transnatural” solution of a different order. Polanyi’s understanding of “breaking out” from conceptual frameworks, and his conception that Christian worship promotes a sustained hopeful anguish, are contrasted with a Polanyian “breaking in” to a new framework of knowing and being that provides a happy solution to human suffering.”
http://www.missouriwestern.edu/orgs/polanyi/TAD%20WEB%20ARCHIVE/TAD37-1/TAD37-1-fnl-pg19-38-pdf.pdf
“Sensual abandon” more than exact observation; this surrender is the highest indwelling “within the fabric of religious ritual”—this is devoutly taking part in religious life; “the indwelling of a Christian worshipper is therefore a continued attempt at breaking out” (PK:198); “to break through the accepted framework of thought”; “music, poetry, painting: the arts are a dwelling in and breaking out” (199) which lie between science and worship; for more, read these pages… “the negation of familiar meaning may usher us into nothingness” (199);
Calling: somewhere in PK towards the end…
Canon: see revelation.
Chance: see randomness
Christian rationalism: MP:62… Augustine’s understanding based upon reason
Circularity: PK:288-292; always arguing within a closed system;
Coherence: see intuition
Commitment: acting on faith; TTD:25;
Community: orthodoxy, community of agreement in belief; conviviality (?); tradition
Comprehension: see “understanding” below
Conceptual framework: PK: 286-7, “idiom of belief,”; the modern scientific objectivism is a conceptual framework, PK:288; conceptual framework, deeply ingrained convictions, presuppositions, (these held within the idiom of language), interpretive system (291), belief system, implicit beliefs, unquestioned beliefs (294), highly stabilized framework (292), background beliefs (294), uncritically acquired preconceived beliefs (295), example of the Azande (below), universal interpretive framework (95), fiduciary foundations (297), personal criteria (71), Ed: “mini-beliefs” (references to PK);
Confidence, confidence intervals: personal confidence cannot be expressed by probability, that is, by an impersonal symbol, e.g., P(H/E), PK:31.
Connoisseurship: a person who is especially competent to pass critical judgments in an art, particularly one of the fine arts, or in matters of taste; an activity that can only be learned under the tutelage of an authority, e.g., a physician learning heart sounds, a connoisseur of wines, etc. A learning that is not objective, but personal. PK: 54-55
Conscience: personal belief, SFS:63;
Contact with reality: one’s conclusions from discovery, MPMM:82
Conversion: see this article, http://www.nhinet.org/mitchell19-1.pdf “not a Kierkegaardian leap; based upon intuition, volition, and conscience more than different interpretations on the same premises, TTD: 67; “conversion may come to us against our will”, TTD: 67;
Definition: “A decision, originating in our own personal judgment, to modify the premises or our judgment, and thus to modify our intellectual existence, so as to become more satisfying to ourselves,” (PK:106).
Admittedly, religious conversion commits our whole person and changes our whole being in a way that an expansion of natural knowledge does not do. But once the dynamics of knowing are recognized as the dominant principle of knowledge, the difference appears only as one of degree
http://www.ctr4process.org/publications/SeminarPapers/27-1Milavec.pdf
Considerable discussion by Mark Mitchell on both MacIntyre and Polanyi in a long paper which you have printed out, “Michael Polanyi and Alasdair MacIntyre and the Role of Tradition,” also found here: www.nhinet.org/mitchell19-1.pdf
Conviviality: Chapter 7, p. 202 (PK); defined in BSCL: glossary, 135; “akin to empathy”;
“mutual endeavor and trust within the community in question,”
http://www.kfki.hu/chemonet/polanyi/9912/sheppard.html
“Conviviality involves a real communication on the inarticulate level, and shared intellectual passion. Pure conviviality is the cultivation of good fellowship, especially in small groups, in joint activities.” Esther Meek (source was a URL that has since been made invalid).
Copernican revolution: the change from an earth-centered universe to that of a man-centered universe, BSCL:91.
Creative imagination, tacit integration: TTD: 79; how we have some knowledge of the knowledge that we are seeking…as in Plato’s Meno…; Ed: moving from tacit to explicit; skillful coherence, HUM:113;
Culture: one of the four (language, personal abilities, history) types of embeddedness, MP:87f;
Denotative: p. 58, I don’t understand
Descriptive sciences vs. exact sciences: PK:17, 81, 84. See exact sciences.
Determinism: coming into a culture…at birth members cannot be given a free choice, MP:87;
Discovery: preparation à incubation à illumination à verification. See scientific discovery (herein).
Discovery of the rationality in nature, “the kind of order that a discoverer claims to see in nature goes far beyond his understanding; so that his triumph lies precisely in a foreknowledge of a host of yet hidden implications…”, PK:64; “Regularity is on of the distinctive characteristics which pleases the eye and stimulates the imagination,” PK:42;
Doubt: the simple movement from one set of beliefs to another. All thought (epistemologies) are inescapably and foundational to personal beliefs. Thus, to doubt is to exchange beliefs of one kind with other kinds of beliefs. PK:272
Dual control: in emergence, the lower levels and higher levels each have laws that govern in both directions, here; see Glossary in BSCL;
Dualism: see BSCL Glossary;
Educated mind: PK: 102-104 (Section title); see hermeneutical circle.
Embeddedness: MP:85-90… embedded in our (1) languages, (2) histories, (3) personal abilities, and (4) cultures; often the premises of a tradition “lie embedded in the unconscious foundations of practice,” MP:69; “the bodily embeddedness of all human thought;
Embodiment (Ed: “incarnation, ensoulment?): Polanyi begins—by taking bodily indwelling as the natural and the correct position for all knowing… here … “embodied knowing”…; traditions are embodied and transmitted through practices, MP:68; embedded in the physical body, TAD 37(2); “the propositions embodied in natural science,” “These premises or beliefs are embodied in a tradition,” “the theory of the universe embodied in any particular language, here;” the personal embodiment of knowing in the tacit dimension”, “personal knowing in the form of embodied skills”, TAD: 38(1):5; “Learning by precepts embodied in examples,”
Indwelling and embodiment are not the same, here. On the other hand, ” “When we accept a certain set of pre-suppositions and use them in our interpretative framework, we may be said to dwell in them as we do in our own body.” PK:60
“Radical embodiment in our biosphere and in our social traditions, within a universe regarded as the body of God” (panentheism), “the bodily embeddedness of all human thought,” “embodied knower with his or her environment,” TAD 37(2), p. 1;
“Every act of knowing presupposes a subsidiary awareness of our body. Every piece of knowledge has its bodily root. This is why Polanyi concludes: “All thought is incarnate; it lives by the body,” here, major paper on Polanyi’s concept of embodiment, as it relates to the mind, also mind-body dualism and Polanyi;
Embodiment can mean indwelling… the gestalt of one’s beliefs.
Embodied skills seems to be same as embeddedness (personal abilities)
Embodied as the physical body is the only reality of the person.
Michael Polanyi characterizes tacit knowing as a relationship between a focus and its subsidiaries, a relationship that Ronald Bontekoeoe says “present in all knowing, [since] every act of knowing is just that, an action, and all action involves a focal attending toward the end of the action and a subsidiary or tacit awareness of [all else we go through] to achieve that end.”3 Since these actions rely on bodily modes of support, tacit knowing is ultimately an embodied process. here
http://www.missouriwestern.edu/orgs/polanyi/TAD%20WEB%20ARCHIVE/TAD37-2/TAD37-2-fnl-pg9-15-pdf.pdf “knowledge is inextricably embedded in the physical body, in social tradition, and in a divine source of all meaning”;
PK: Index: of use of tools, 59; in commitment, 64, 321; transmission of culture, 173; in abstract arts, 194; contemplation as, 195-202; sharing of fellowship, 212; doubt of, 272; in religion, 279, 280, 283; awareness of wholes, 344; logical levels, 345; in conviviality, 378. Also, see here.
Emergence, boundary conditions, irreducible principles, machines, wholes rather than parts, : “an ordering principle capable of producing operational principles which the system had not previously possessed, PK:399; an ordering system that lead to the next higher level of life, TDD:55 (much here); emergence leads to tacit knowledge;
The first emergence, by which life comes into existence, is the prototype of all subsequent stages of evolution, by which rising forms of life, with their higher principles, emerge into existence…. The spectacle of rising stages of emergence confirms this generalization by bringing forth at the highest level of evolutionary emergence those mental powers in which we had first recognized our faculty of tacit knowing (TD 49).
Dual control: in emergence, the lower levels and higher levels each have laws that govern in both directions, here
Any machine: Polanyi: to walk through a machine does not tell one what the machine does. Ed’s opinion: If a wheel, two levers, and a barrow are seen scattered over a football field, they would not describe what a wheelbarrow is capable of, and no parts could function near what the whole could.
Chemical reactions: predictable and unpredictable
Emergence, phylogenetic: here
Emergentist supervenience: “Toward an Emergentist Theory of Mind” in this paper by Philip Clayton Philip Clayton is critiqued by the Reformed person James White on his website.
Epistemology: “tacit integration of subsidiaries (which rely on prior subsidiaries—re: Duhem) into focal objects,” MP:129; Ed: very much like quantum mechanics and chaos theory (unpredictable, but limiting parameters)… “uncaused causes”; “belief … as the source of all knowledge”; (1) knowing is tradition-dependent; (2) initial belief and submission to a teaching authority is an essential element of knowing; (3) all inquiry is inherently circular; (4) we can know more than we can tell; and (5) knowing includes crossing a gap by way of insight or judgment. http://www.nhinet.org/mitchell19-1.pdf;
There is (1) the knowing of a thing by attending to it, in the way we attend to an entity as a whole and (2) the knowing of a thing by relying on our awareness of it, in the way we rely on our awareness of the particulars forming the entity for attending to it as a whole.
Most basic belief framework: conceptual framework, deeply ingrained convictions, presuppositions, (these held within the idiom of language), interpretive system (291), belief system, implicit beliefs, unquestioned beliefs (294), highly stabilized framework (292), background beliefs (294), uncritically acquired preconceived beliefs (295), example of the Azande (below), universal interpretive framework (95), fiduciary foundations (297), personal criteria (71), Ed: “mini-beliefs” (references to PK).
Ethics, justice, etc.:
Evil:
Evolution: see organizing principle, potentialities which evoke…evolution as presented (natural selection and random mutation) cannot be true, MP: 134; see emergence;
Exact sciences: “the exact sciences, defining them as a mathematical formalism with a bearing on experience” http://www.missouriwestern.edu/orgs/polanyi/Persons.pdf; the rest of the sciences are “descriptive.” (PK:17, 84, etc.) The latter have to do with living organisms, especially humans. There is much more personal bias and inexactitude in psychology and sociology which can never approach the exactitude of physics, chemistry, and mathematics.
Existential: the context in which a thing functions, and it may have many contexts, e.g., a stick may be used to hit objects or to feel them in some way, PK:58; indwelling;
Explicit knowledge:
Fact/value distinction: simply that the “personal” epistemology of empirical science applies to ethics/values, also. Fact and value cannot be separated, as modern science has tried to do.
Faith and reason: MK:128ff;
Fallibilism: one name for Polanyi’s system. “The principal purpose of this book is to achieve a frame of mind in which I may hold firmly to what I believe to be true, even though I know that it might conceivably be false, PK:214.
Fideism: appropriate term for Polanyi’s position, http://www.nhinet.org/mitchell19-1.pdf
Fiduciary framework: PK:266; conceptual framework, deeply ingrained convictions, presuppositions, (these held within the idiom of language), interpretive system (291), belief system, implicit beliefs, unquestioned beliefs (294), highly stabilized framework (292), background beliefs (294), uncritically acquired preconceived beliefs (295), example of the Azande (below), universal interpretive framework (95), fiduciary foundations (297), personal criteria (71), Ed: “mini-beliefs” (references to PK);
Fiduciary program: BSCL:17
Final conception of truth: PK:104;
Flood: “if another Flood came over us…”, PK: 207. Polanyi acknowledges “The Flood”?
Focal awareness: focal awareness “is always fully conscious, but subsidiary awareness can exist at any level of consciousness, ranging from the subliminal to the fully conscious. TAD:36(2); self-consciousness is what happens when the focal is focused on the subsidiary elements, PK:56; subsidiary and focal awareness are mutually exclusive, PK: 56;
synonym of explicit? “the integration of subsidiaries,” TAD:32(2), 34; “Subsidiary awareness and focal awareness are mutually exclusive,” PK:56;
Foreknowledge: see intuition; the tacit as a kind of foreknowledge, Meek, TAD:26(3), 74; “the kind of order that a discoverer claims to see in nature goes far beyond his understanding; so that his triumph lies precisely in a foreknowledge of a host of yet hidden implications…”, PK:64. This term is similar, if not identical with, the Meno paradox of Plato (anamnesis).
From-at… from to: TAD here; phenomenal structure;
Genius: the highest forms of tacit integration and discovery, TD:6.
Hermeneutical circle: Ed: essentially the process which Polanyi describes by which our present conceptions take in “novel” experiences and are thus re-set to become a new set of conceptions. See PK:102-104, “The Educated Mind.”
Hermeneutics and tradition: see Tradition…
Heuristic field, PK:403 set up by an innate structure…central to Polanyi’s thought…”innate” appears on this page;
Hidden reality: see objective knowledge.
Ed: How does Polanyi explain the correspondence of that “hidden reality” with the “reality” of the structure of the brain? Why should there be a correspondence?
Idiom of belief (conceptual framework, belief system): “they reason excellently in the idiom of their belief,” that is, their beliefs or belief system, PK:288; “This idiom is logically prior to formalizable propositions… inarticulable beliefs… (that by which) we interpret our experience and in terms of which we erect our articulate systems.” This idiom develops through the child’s learning of language within his culture and may be modified by later experiential and educational experiences. (PVT: 6-7) Polanyi illustrates the power of this idiom by the “primitive” Azande people and their oracle of poison, PK:286ff.
Illumination: “illumination “is the plunge by which we gain a foothold at another shore of reality,” “Polanyi’s ‘Illumination’: Aristotelian Induction or Peircean Abduction?”; PK: 123, 172.
Inanimate nature, laws of: See structural principle
Inarticulate: see ineffable, tacit
Incompatibles: things that do not fit together in art and religion, MEA:155ff;
Incommensurability or “logical gap”: Michael Polanyi argues in Personal Knowledge (1958) that conceptual frameworks involved in major scientific controversies are separated by a `logical gap’. Such frameworks, according to Polanyi (1958: 151), are logically disconnected: their protagonists think differently, use different languages and occupy different worlds. Relinquishing one framework and adopting another, Polanyi’s scientist undergoes a `conversion’ to a new `faith’. Polanyi, in other words, presaged Kuhn and Feyerabend’s concept of incommensurability; HUM:112 http://hhs.sagepub.com/content/16/2/57.abstract
Indwelling: tool, idea, or conceptual framework that we appropriate and incorporate into our mental capacities, MP:123; see BSCL glossary; “the extension of the body in the process of knowing”, MP:77…the parts of the world that we interiorize…we live in the tools and probes that we use… To apply a theory a theory for understanding nature is to interiorize it. We attend from the theory to things interpreted in its light
Ed: We indwell the entire universe; we are a part of the whole; we exist existentially in the universe.
Indwelling = Heidegger’s “being in the world” (Dasein); see here.
Indwelling and embodiment: Indwelling is a dangerous term, suggesting that the body is our house, and that we can move out. We can move in and out of indwelling a tool, but it is a different story regarding our relation to our bodies. Our bodies are not in the world like things. We are not embodied by our bodies whatever this means. We are embodied period. Accordingly, it is puzzling to think that embodiment Is a subset of indwelling. To do so runs the risk of thinking that we indwell our bodies in the same way that we indwell things. If anything indwelling should be a subset of embodiment. Comment from here.
Ineffable, tacit, inarticulate, subsidiary: something that I know but cannot describe precisely… riding a bicycle or picking out one’s raincoat… what is not said, even cannot be said, about what one knows… PK:87ff, all the particulars may be known, but their relationships to each other are not, 88; inability to describe spatial relations, 88-9;
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-police-dont.html
discussion of sketch artists
another article on criminal sketches
Inherence:
Innate: “our fundamental beliefs are innate… modified and enlarged by our upbringing… acquired beliefs… our minds live in action…presuppositions and axioms (with no reason for believing them), PK:267; “primordial”, as in being passed down by evolution, KAB: 196; PK:96, 100;
Integration: see tacit power. Its highest function is in scientific and artistic genius, TD:6;
Intellectual passion: see passion
Intellectual powers: the motive force of intellectual passions, PK:17; “power” to recognize truth, PK173.
Irreducible life structures or “life principles”, emergence: last two chapters of KAB; the product of parts into whole, a whole is not the sum of its parts… machines and consciousness are “irreducible life structures;
Intangibles: what the mind does, as opposed to material things (tangibles), MM: 84; intangibles are more important than tangibles;
Interiorization: MP:114; TTD:17;
Interpretative framework: PK:59; conceptual framework, deeply ingrained convictions, presuppositions, (these held within the idiom of language), interpretive system (291), belief system, implicit beliefs, unquestioned beliefs (294), highly stabilized framework (292), background beliefs (294), uncritically acquired preconceived beliefs (295), example of the Azande (below), universal interpretive framework (95), fiduciary foundations (297), personal criteria (71), Ed: “mini-beliefs” (references are to PK);
Intuition (“foreknowledge”): “a skill for guessing with a reasonable chance of guessing right; a skill guided by an innate sensibility to coherence, improved by schooling”; “intuition works on a subsidiary level,” MPMM:82; see innate; “skillful guessing,” HUM:113 (Ed: my first reaction is that “skillful guessing” is an oxymoron…perhaps using creative imagination?); BSCL:60ff; TTD:67
Inversion: see moral inversion
Justice: see ethics
Knowing: see Epistemology
Language: one of the four kinds of embeddedness (others: culture, history, personal abilities)…what separates humans from animals…human thought grows only within language which is inherent in society… therefore, all language is social…all questions have to formulated in language… we “indwell” in our language… determines a particular theory of the universe…linguistic tradition…establishes the framework through which the world is viewed, MP:86-87;
Layered view of nature: perhaps, not Polanyian, but corresponds to emergence wherein there is a “layered view of nature,” (Stanford, “Emergent Properties”)
Logic of tacit knowing, Logical gap: see incommensurability above; HUM: 112; see tacit integration (the means by which to cross this logical gap; the “logical gap” that exists between subsidiary and focal awareness, between inarticulate and articulate forms of knowing. “But what actually follows from the fact that mind and body do not interact explicitly is that they interact according to the logic of tacit knowing. And it is this logic that disposes of the Cartesian dilemma by acknowledging two mutually exclusive ways of being aware of our body.” (The Structure of Consciousness)
Logical inference: “the strictest form of human thought,” PK:264.
Looking at and looking through: MP: 122, 126-7; “looking at” is the attempt of objectivism of modern science…” dispassionate knowing”; “looking through” is Polanyi’s commitment of the person in his quest for knowledge;
Marginal control, principle of : the control by a higher level on the particulars of a lower level, TD:40 (emergence);
Master: “knowing requires submission to a master”, MP:68
Maxims: rules for art; laws in nature; “the correct application of which is part of the art which they govern,” PK:31. Maxims cannot be understood, still less applied, buy anyone not already possessing a good practical knowledge of the art,” PK:31.
Meaning: reality, values, place in the cosmos, vocation (calling), predestination, teleology; “consciousness, curiosity, creativity, and moral responsibility” (MP:135—summary conclusion here); has to do with values, ethics, freedom, calling, personal commitment, etc.; validation, not verification (as a fact); imagination, art, myth, religion, here; “pursuit of those things that bear upon eternity,” Meaning, 216; Ed: full human potential, living one’s “calling” or vocation, enacting commitment of one’s tacit beliefs, “being all that you can be.” The purpose for which a thing was designed, e.g., what use has a hammer if not to hammer?
Miracles: discussed in MP: 126, 127; if miracles could be “proven,” they would cease to be miracles for they could be explained;
Moral inversion: the dominant ideal of impersonal objectivity its cultural consequences, DOTW:v; destructive capacities that are decoupled from the moral and spiritual resources that could have kept them under tighter control, Lewis, TAD:33(2), 30; PK:233; Moral inversion… which may be broadly understood as the process by which the fusion of scientific skepticism (“extreme critical lucidity” [TD 4]) with utopian social aspirations (“intense moral conscience” [TD 4]) produces the dystopia of moral and political nihilism out of which arises the modern totalitarian state, in which the only principle of social order is absolute coercive power and in which material welfare is embraced as the supreme social good” here;
“Moral inversion,” those passions sought clandestine outlets. They disguised themselves as “science,” “history,” or “national destiny”; castigating the so-called hypocrisy of “bourgeois” morality, they asserted their validity on grounds of their lack of self-deception. On a personal level, this moral inversion produced the bohemian immoralist who, precisely because of the totality of his contempt for all moral standards, demanded respect and admiration. That is why, for example, the late Simone de Beauvoir asked us to recognize in the Marquis de Sade our moral superior. See here.
(Polanyi) spoke of “moral inversion” where a commitment to an ideal grounded in some version of “scientific objectivity” allowed people to commit all sorts of atrocities in the name of the ideal, here.
Moral inversion is “the process by which the fusion of scientific skepticism (“extreme critical lucidity” with utopian social aspirations (“intense moral conscience”) produces the dystopia of moral and political nihilism out of which arises the modern totalitarian state, in which the only principle of social order is absolute coercive power and in which material welfare is embraced as the supreme social good.” Y. M Yeager
Morphogenetic field: Polanyi’s name for Supramolecular Genetic Mechanism (that entity which controls the timing of the copying of RNA and DNA, as the genes themselves are only imprints, not activating forces), PK:383fn;
There is mounting evidence that as more and more people learn or do something it becomes easier for others to learn or do it”;
Synonyms: emergence, supervenience, self-organization, reaction-diffusion systems, fractal analysis, parts/whole, nonlinear dynamics, parts/wholes: Ed: supramolecular genetic mechanism”;
Morphogenic or Morphogenetic fields are fields of thought created by everything in existence; it is the input and output of creation. With every thought and action (or non-action) every individual strengthens one of those fields of thought that exist or with the focus of enough minds, creates a new one. You’ve heard of mass consciousness? This is a morphogenic field. Global fear, judgment, peace and love are also morphogenetic fields in existence, waxing and waning with every individual thought.
http://www.lifefieldtechnique.com/Morphogenic_Fields.html
Myth: see MEA somewhere
Neurology: One who denies the powers of an interpreting mind (an all the functions of a person) to the subject under his/her investigation! The brain/mind is infinitely beyond the neurological mechanisms that are attributed to the brain. PK:263 (in context 262-264). The same is true for psychology (PK:334).
Noosphere: “the articulate framework that constitutes our cultural heritage and that sustains and is sustained by the vast interdependent web of individual human intellectual achievement,” Inkster’s glossary; “the collective mental activity of homo sapiens,” Morowitz in Chapter on Spirit in The Emergence of Everything. Seems similar to Abraham Kuyper’s “organism” in his Principles of Sacred Theology.
Normal population: “an aggregate assumed (by a person) to show purely random variations of a certain measured quantity,” PK:31.
Objective knowledge: “establishing contact with a hidden reality; a contact that is defined as the condition for anticipating an indeterminate range of yet unknown (and perhaps yet inconceivable) true implications,” PK:vii-vii; see first chapter of BSCL—lengthy discussion of same, i.e., “objective pole” vs. subjective pole; exactitude, TTD:56;
Objective truth: “the apprehension of a rationality which commands our respect and arouses our contemplative admiration… using our senses as clues, transcends … to a reality beyond the impressions of our senses… (not) outdated Platonism,” PK:5-6.
Objectivist” theory of truth: the denial (or elimination) of the tacit component [i.e., “the inherently personal character of the act”] as a constituent part or factor in the making of any truth-claim, here … Objectivity is a “delusion” and “a false ideal,” PK:18;
Objectivism, scientism, “critical doubt,” Kant’s “critique of”: the pretense (blindness) of modern scientific thinking that personal beliefs do not enter into scientific conclusions, PK:15-17 and many other places. Objectivism leads to scientism which continues the delusion that science is not only truth, but the only basis of truth (logical positivism). Reference for “critical doubt,” Proposed Polanyian Resolution of the Age-Old Conflict Between …
Objectivity: total objectivity is impossible. Polanyi illustrates how man is a speck in the cosmic scheme of things, yet considers himself the most important object in the universe (PK:3).
Operational principle: that which makes a machine function in the way that it does, PK:328ff;
Ordering principle of evolution: PK: 382-3;
Organism as machine: PK:334. Rules of rightness are heuristic within the function of a machine or “organism as a machine.” Neither psychology nor neurology can determine rules of rightness, as these are studied by rules of logic, not psychological or physiological processes. “Machine-like features of an animal,” PK: 334.
Orgiasmic principle: “the development of the embryo is controlled by the gradient of potential shapes, in the way the motion of a heavy body is controlled by the gradient of potential energy.” http://www.missouriwestern.edu/orgs/polanyi/mp-structure.htm , applied to inanimate nature;
Operational field: PK:59
Ordering principle: that force which give design to a system… it may intrinsic or extrinsic… 38-39; All knowledge has an ordering principle, 38… including evolution (see Chapter 13, PK); “orderly innovating principle,” 386; synonyms from PK: organizing principle of evolution,” “operational principles” (381), “rules of rightness” (381), “morphogenetic field” (383), “anthropogenesis” (386), “orderly innovating principle” (386), “phylogenetic and ontogenetic emergence” (395), “biological fields (399), “a field as the agent of biological biotic performances” (402), “an active center” (402), “autonomous centers of decision” (403), “heuristic field” (403), “fields of opportunity” (404), “logical maturation” (404), “centers of first causes, (404), “phylogenetic centers” (404), and “cosmic field which called forth all these centers” (404);
Orthodoxy: agreement in community, conviviality (?),
Passion: central to the scientist’s pursuit; PK: Part Two, Chapter 6, 13 sections, 70 pages on “Intellectual Passions.”
“A preoccupation with a problem which alone can elicit discovery, and protracted struggles against doubts of its significance and validity by which its announcement is often followed. Such a struggle, in which the ardor of discovery is transformed into a craving to convince, is clearly a process of verification in which the act of making sure of one’s own claims is coupled with the effort of getting them accepted by others” (“universal intent”). PK:171
Person: one who “understands a meaning, believes a factual statement, interprets a mechanism in relation to its purpose, and on a higher level, reflects on problems and exercises originality in solving them. (Further down the page), one who … feels, imagines, desires, means, believes or judges…,” PK:263;
Personal assimilation: PK:60
“Personal”: how appropriate! We live in a Personal universe… knowledge is personal because the universe is personal! Our understanding (one of Polanyi’s favorite terms) of the universe is personal: a personal link to the personal universe.
**Personal (post-critical) knowledge: PK: vii-viii, “the fusion of the personal and the objective”; “a passionate commitment to universal truth made by limited, fallible knowers who strive to make contact with a hidden, indeterminate reality and embrace their findings with universal intent” (MP:103); “all knowledge is ultimately personal,” PK:xi;
Phenomenal structure: the from-to structure of knowing. One knows the proximal term in the appearance of its distal term: all knowledge includes a tacit component;
Plausibility structures: “plausibility structures” or ways of thinking which are unanimously accepted by the members of society, Truth claims are then tested against these plausibility structures to determine their validity. But the plausibility structures themselves are based on unproven, dogmatic assumptions.” cited here (amazon reviews)
Potentialities which evoke action: TTD:91; probably same as organizing principle;
Predestination: “sources over which (a person) has no control”, MP:129; see foreknowledge;
Present knowledge: whether tacit or focal, it is based upon all previous knowledge and understanding, which is further tacit, PK:92;
Physiognomy: “the assessment of a person’s character or personality from their outer appearance, especially the face. The term physiognomy can also refer to the general appearance of a person, object or terrain, without reference to its implied characteristics.” Wiki “physiognomy”
Probability: “Statements of probability can be made about random systems and about significantly ordered systems in so far as these are affected by interaction with random systems” PK:37. So to do is “specious,” PK:38.
Progress: see revelation.
Psychology: see neurology.
Randomness: “it is logically impossible to define randomness with any logical precision,” PK:37. Randomness alone can never produce a significant pattern …, PK:37.
Rationality: Ed: The person demands rationality. His mind demands that the cosmos to which he is exposed “make sense.” One looks an example of abstract art and beings to formulate something recognizable. The mind cannot manage disorder; indeed, the very nature of mind IS order.”
Reality, realism: four parts, MPMM: 83; Ed: the entity “out there” that we can know by personal knowledge; “an objective reality exists and can be grasped by human minds but only provisionally and fallibly,” http://www.nhinet.org/mitchell19-1.pdf ; “minds and problems are more real than cobblestones,” TD:33; “reality is that which has the power to manifest itself in indeterminate and unexpected ways in the future,” here; ““that from which we expect indeterminate properties to arise in the future, properties of which we have not yet dreamed,” here.
“Hidden” reality: that which is pursued by discovery, MM:82; “a reality largely hidden from us,” MM:92;
The “increasingly” real: as we discover more and more, MM:85; full discussion in a paper by Phil Mullins here.
Endpoint: Perhaps suggested by Peirce as a final understanding to which we will all agree.
Reductionism: inconsistent with Polanyi’s epistemology
Regularity, see Discovery in the rationality in nature
Representative: seems to be the same as denotative;
Revelation (canon): In this manner, Polanyi’s thought represents a challenge to the Christian traditions’ use of canon. While there is a broad range of the use of canon within different Christian communities, the very notion that a body of writings could be “objective” is antithetical to Polanyi’s entire Weltanschauung and directly opposed to his views on progress. As traditional writings, even formative writings, religious writings of the past would play a vital role in Polanyi’s thinking. As the final arbiter, as the measure of all future discoveries, the very idea of canon presents a head-on conflict with Polanyi’s views. The problem is that there is no extra-canonical correction possible to canon;* this Polanyi would disallow, for were a series of writings to be granted ultimate authority, the penultimate would be arrogating prerogatives of the ultimate. Rather than seeing canonical texts as authoritative, Polanyi placed the locus of final decision in the individual’s conscience:** “Conscience can then be used even to oppose the authority of the Bible where the Bible is found spiritually weak” (SFS 56). Throughout his writings, Polanyi is really quite consistent on this point: both the individual and the community of indwelling must remain in submission to the transcendent and spiritual, whether we are speaking of the universal laws of nature or the God whom Christians worship:
Processes of creative renewal always imply an appeal from a tradition as it is to a tradition as it ought to be . That is to a spiritual reality embodied in tradition and transcending it. It expresses a belief in this superior reality and offers devotion to its service (SFS 56-57). This whole section from Polanyi’s Progress.*Ed: Perhaps, the ongoing work of hermeneutics would answer this challenge. While the canon, as text is fixed, its understanding is not. For example, the Reformation brought in systematic theologies that were virtually known in prior times only in isolated and unformed seeds of thought and writings.**Ed: Reformed theology places the “locus of final decision” in the individual conscience, also. Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 20, Section 2 states “to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands, out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience.” While liberty of conscience must be guided by Scripture, one’s conscience has a certain liberty in interpretation of Scripture.
Rules of rightness: operational principles of machines which account for its successful working, PK:329ff;
Science: making sense of experience, finding rationality (beauty, symmetry, etc… for synonyms, see beauty in nature (below under
Scientific discovery: “Scientific discovery reveals new knowledge, but the new vision which accompanies it is not knowledge. It is less than knowledge, for it is a guess; but it is more than knowledge, for it is foreknowledge of things yet unknown and at present perhaps inconceivable. Our vision of the general nature of things is our guide for the interpretation of all future experience. Such guidance is indispensable. Theories of the scientific method which try to explain the establishment of scientific truth by purely objective formal procedure are doomed to failure. Any process of enquiry unguided by intellectual passions would inevitably spread out into a desert of trivialities. Our vision of reality, to which our sense of scientific beauty responds, must suggest to us the kind of questions that it should be reasonable and interesting to explore. It should recommend the kind of conceptions and empirical relations that are intrinsically plausible and which should therefore by upheld, even when some evidence seems to contradict them, and tell us also, on the other hand, what empirical connections to reject as specious, even though there is evidence for them—evidence that we may as yet be unable to account for on any other assumptions. In fact, without a scale of interest and plausibility based on a vision of reality, nothing can be discovered that is of value to science; and only our grasp of scientific beauty, responding to the evidence of our senses, can evoke this vision.” (emphasis Polanyi) PK:135
Scientism, objectivism, critical doubt, Kant’s “critique of”: see objectivism
Self-consciousness: the situation when focal awareness is directed to the subsidiary elements,” PK: 56;
Sense-reading: the name (Polanyi) gives to the process of dwelling in subsidiary clues and, through inference qua integration, arriving at a meaning… assimilation, “seeing as,” Fennell, here.
Skepticism: According to Polanyi, skepticism of the Humean kind is simply unlivable, for despite Hume’s talk of radical doubt, he in fact could not live his life in accord with the conclusions of his own thought. http://www.nhinet.org/mitchell19-1.pdf; somewhere in PK, skepticism is impossible…;
Skill: the required ability in the comprehension of personal knowledge, PK:vii; the ability by which we accept our own utterances as true… the only way that we can believe ourselves… which defies formal definition… declaration of truth is a personal act, PK:70-71.(Ed: A simple statement that truth can only be held by a person. Moreso, is the holding of truth, or at least propositions that may or may not be true, the essence of person or Person?).
Speech: the power of which systemization is dependent, PK:84.
Structural principle, laws of inanimate nature: “The structure and functioning of an organism is determined, like that of a machine, by constructional and operational principles which control boundary conditions left open by physics and chemistry. We may call this a structural principle, lying beyond the realm of physics and chemistry.” http://www.missouriwestern.edu/orgs/polanyi/mp-structure.htm
Subconscious: see subsidiary awareness, tacit beliefs.
Subjective: see “validation” below
Subsidiary (instrumental) knowledge… the particulars that contribute to the whole… not known in itself, but in relation to focal knowledge, PK:88; subsidiary knowledge is not unconscious, but exists at varying levels of consciousness, MM:74; “sources over which he has no control”, MP:131;
Subsidiary awareness: …subsidiary awareness can exist at any level of consciousness, ranging from the subliminal to the fully conscious. TAD:36(2), Takaki; see self-awareness, PK:56.
We may describe the situation by saying that we are focally aware of the stereo-image, by being subsidiarily aware of the two separate pictures. And we may add that the characteristic feature of subsidiary awareness is to have a function, the function of bearing on something at the focus of our attention. Next we may observe that the focal image, into which the two subsidiary pictures are fused, brings out their joint meaning; and thirdly, that this fusion brings about a quality not present in the appearance of the subsidiaries (Ed: parts and wholes). We may recognize then these three features as parts of a process of knowing a focal object by attending subsidiarily to the clues that bear on it. We meet here the structure of tacit knowing, with its characteristic functional, semantic, and phenomenal aspects.
We notice them subsidiarily in terms of their participation in a whole… (looking at a picture)
For example, while learning to play piano we must have knowledge of the particular components of a song: keys, chords, and octaves. However, once we have subsidiary knowledge, we can know the particulars in terms of their greater contribution to the whole. So the pianist with subsidiary knowledge is aware of separate notes with regards to their contribution to the musical composition as a whole. It is this subsidiary knowledge, “this act of integration” that Polanyi calls tacit knowing (140). For example, when looking at a pointillist painting we could focus on the individual dots that make up the painting or we could step back and try to view the painting as a whole. Only with this latter, subsidiary view could we understand what was going on in the painting. According to Polanyi, when we are able to let go of the particulars in order to focus on the whole, we have achieved tacit knowledge
Symbiosis: creativity of science, faith, and society, BSCL:145;
System of implicit beliefs: see conceptual framework
Tacit beliefs: “prereflecitve tacit beliefs,” does not seem to be a prominent term in Polanyi writings, but a necessary one as “tacit” knowledge is dependent upon tacit beliefs.
Tacit coefficients: 203, necessities for community and cultural life to be “understood and accredited”; MP:77… tacit coefficients are inseparably attached to all explicit knowledge (no knowledge can be entirely explicit); conceptual framework, deeply ingrained convictions, presuppositions, (these held within the idiom of language), interpretive system (291), belief system, implicit beliefs, unquestioned beliefs (294), highly stabilized framework (292), background beliefs (294), uncritically acquired, preconceived beliefs (295), example of the Azande (below), universal interpretive framework (95), fiduciary foundations (297), personal criteria (71), Ed: “mini-beliefs”; “interpretive framework,” “scientific beliefs” (Paper by Polanyi, “Stability of Beliefs”); “idiom of beliefs” (same paper); “interpretive framework” (same paper); a-critical (TSM:17); pre-verbal (TSM:17), unreasoned conclusions (TSM:17), “art”:, “personal coefficient” (TSM:25); inarticulate mental faculties (TSM:26); “tacit coefficient,” PK:250;
Tacit inference: used by speaker on “metaphor”… probably the same as tacit integration, but shows reasoning in the tacit process;
Tacit integration: integrating subsidiary and focal knowledge, MM: 75; the means by which to cross a “logical gap”, HUM:112; KAB:196; “tacitly integrating hitherto meaningless acts into a bearing on a focus that thereby becomes their meaning”;
Tacit knowledge, inarticulate, ineffable: “all knowledge is … either tacit or rooted in tacit knowledge” (reference); tacit knowledge is what prevents complete systemization of knowledge! (Ed… from same reference); more discussion in footnote, also, in same reference; an inexplicit dimension of pre-reflective belief that determines explicit acts of reflective knowledge, and hence cannot be clarified prior to inquiry, MAKING TACIT KNOWING EXPLICIT;
Tacit power: “sharpening or integrating … great and indispensable … (means) by which all knowledge is discovered, and once discovered, held to be true, TD:6.
Origin: Tacit knowledge (as opposed to formal or explicit knowledge) was first introduced into philosophy by Michael Polanyi in 1958. Wikipedia “tacit knowledge”
Four aspects of tacit knowing: (1) functional (how subsidiaries bear upon a focus), (2) semantic (the meaning of parts as they bear on a whole), (3) phenomenal (the gestalt nature as a whole), and ontological (a whole as a comprehensive entity), TAD: 38(1):48; TAD:36(2), 27;
“Knowledge that enters into the production of behaviors and/or the constitution of mental states but is not ordinarily accessible to consciousness”, http://philosophy.uwaterloo.ca/MindDict/tacitknowledge.html
“subconscious” does not seem a bad synonym of “tacit”… see above reference…also in same reference is “cognitive unconscious”…
Michael Polanyi characterizes tacit knowing as a relationship between a focus and its subsidiaries, a relationship that is Ronald Bontekoeoe says “present in all knowing, [since] every act of knowing is just that, an action, and all action involves a focal attending toward the end of the action and a subsidiary or tacit awareness of [all else we go through] to achieve that end.”3 Since these actions rely on bodily modes of support, tacit knowing is ultimately an embodied process. TAD here
Tangibles, intangibles: MP: 84;
Tautology: Polanyi’s episteme is necessarily a tautology… I think that he says that somewhere;
Technology: what? See PK which has sections on science vs. technology;
Test tube boundary conditions: paper at Polanyi Conf.
Tool: an object or a belief by in which one dwells and through which the world is interpreted. A probe is an objective tool, and basic beliefs are personal tools. PK:59.
Tradition: “dynamic and unpredictable, not static,”HUM:104; see HUM (whole article involves tradition);
Tradition and Discovery: the scholarly publication of the Polanyi Society which fosters the further “discovery” of the ideas of Michael Polanyi here.
Tradition and hermeneutics: each generation must interpret its tradition, and by so doing, will inevitably change it, MP: 68; “the way to move beyond what they perceive as the dead end wrought by modernity is a rediscovery of the central role played by tradition” (Mitchell),
http://www.nhinet.org/mitchell19-1.pdf
Transcendence: My initial reading is that transcendence in Polanyian understanding is not that usually meant in its philosophical and theological understanding.
Transcendent ideals: truth, justice, charity, and tolerane; See last Chapter of SFS, where this term is mentioned often, ending in the last paragraph about God!; “beauty and tolerance,” here
Transcendent obligations: to truth, justice, and charity, SFS:83; see transcendent ideals, above;
Triadic structure of knowing: subsidiary knowledge, focal knowledge and the person…
Augustine’s triad: love, lover, and one loved… Do these “triads” compare in any way?
Truth: “…the establishment of truth becomes decisively dependent on a set of personal criteria of our own which cannot be formally defined…PK:71; “truth is the external pole of belief; to destroy all belief would be to destroy all truth,” PK: 286; Ed: thus, truth is limited to the personal beliefs of a person—to change from one belief to another requires conversion; “the asserveration of the sentence to which it refers” (a statement of personal belief), PK:255.
“The achievement of connection in the first person (for oneself) with, or rapport with, objective reality (qua recognizable in common to responsible inquirers), a fidelity to it that adheres to it, acknowledges it, and makes it known, appearances and others’ unbelief to the contrary notwithstanding.” (“Sanders’ Analytic Rebuttal to Polanyi’s Critics, With Some Musings on Polanhyi’s Idea of Truth, (reference here).
Wikipedia on “Michael Polanyi”; “truth seeking generates communities of specialists”, must arise out a free society… truth cannot be forced or directed from “on high”; “truth transcends our ability to articulate them”, inarticulate (Ed???); [T]here is no difference, except in emphasis, between saying ‘I believe p’ or ‘“p” is true’, here;
Sum of Polanyi’s truth: Dale Cannon is the “here” above: “(Truth) is the achievement of connection in the first person (for oneself) with, or rapport with, objective reality (qua recognizable in common to responsible inquirers), a fidelity to it that adheres to it, acknowledges it, and makes it known, appearances and others’ unbelief to the contrary notwithstanding.”
Ed’s conjecture: truth is that which we pursue, never arriving at it? Charles Sanders Peirce held the belief that truth was what everyone would eventually agree upon and never change again.
From Mark Mitchell: “contact with an independent and hidden reality that manifests itself in the future in indeterminate and unexpected ways”, and is not the sole property of natural science,” MP:100;
External pole. “Truth is the external pole of belief.” (PK: 286)
Relationship of truth with reality?
What makes the believer state his personal position as universal?
Uncaused causes: TTD:88
Unconscious trial and error: PK:62
Understanding: “Understanding, comprehension – this is the cognitive faculty cast aside by a positivistic theory of knowledge, which refuses to acknowledge the existence of comprehensive entities as distinct from their particulars; and this is the faculty which I recognize as the central act of knowing. For comprehension can never be absent from any process of knowing and is indeed the ultimate sanction of any such act. What is not understood cannot be said to be known.”
Universe: one comprehensive whole.
Universal doubt: the impossible state whereby all beliefs are suspended and reality may be considered impartially, PK:294ff. This claim is made by skeptics, logical positivists, advocates of scientism, and “pure” rationalists. Polanyi proves throughout PK that such a state of mind is impossible and would result in insanity.
Universal intent: see Definitions, BSCL; Everyone believes that what he or she believes should be universally accepted; “universal framework,” “How can we claim to arrive at a responsible judgment with universal intent if the conceptual framework in which we operate is borrowed from a local culture and our motives are mixed up with the forces holding on to social privilege? From the point of view of a critical philosophy, this fact would reduce all our convictions to the mere products of a particular location and interest. But I do not accept this conclusion.” (PK:322); universal intent is the placement of a concept for the test of universal challenge that it might hold to be actually so;
Natural dogmatism of the human mind. (a) The initial and inescapable problem with which the epistemologist is confronted is that of the very possibility of knowledge: Is genuine knowledge at all attainable? The natural dogmatism of the human mind is confronted with the skeptic’s challenge: a challenge grounded on the relativity of the senses (sensory skepticism) and the contradictions into which the reason is often betrayed (rational skepticism). An alternative to both dogmatism and extreme skepticism is a tentative or methodological skepticism of which Descartes’ systematic doubt, Locke’s cautious empiricism, and Kant’s critical epistemology are instances. See Dogmatism; Skepticism; Criticism. Skepticism in modern epistemology is commonly associated with solipsism, since a skepticism regarding knowledge of the external world leads to solipsism and the ego-centric predicament.
http://www.ditext.com/runes/e.html
Unspecifiability: the loss of learned behaviors to the unconscious, PK:62; “we know more than we can tell”; “logistically unspecifiable,” PK: 56;
Verification, validation, subjective, authenticity: “Our personal participation is in general greater in a validation than in a verification. The emotional coefficient of assertion is intensified as we pass from the sciences to the neighboring domains of thought. But both verification and validation are everywhere an acknowledgement of a commitment: they claim the presence of something real and external to the speaker. As distinct from both of these, subjective experiences can only be said to be authentic, and authenticity does not involve a commitment in the sense in which both verification and validation do.” (Italics Polanyi’s), PK: 202; MP:125ff;
Virgin mind: a synonym of universal doubt (above);
Vocation: see calling…
Appendix I
Synonyms and Relationship of Terms (not exact synonyms, but closely related.) An attempt to unify Polanyian terms. No attempt has been made to include all terms found in Polanyian writings. An attempt at summary and synthesis, to find beauty and symmetry, to discover.
Bolding of terms means greater importance (possibly). All the following is an active work in progress (Fall 2014)
“One knows more than he can tell…”
Articulate: explicit, focal, focal awareness, attended to, particulars, conscious object of our attention, attend focally,, focal target, tangible,
Beauty in nature: simplicity, symmetry, economy, law, rationality, profundity, form, appreciation, excellence, design (?), harmony, universality, order, transcendence, number, pattern, correspondence of mind to nature, coherence, opposite of chaos (what about chaos theory?), idealization,
Brain/mind: one must account for the ability of the mind to “understand” (categorize, compare/contrast, interpret, synthesize, etc.) the reality “out there.” (Ed)
Commitment: see vocation.
Discovery: integration of clues into meaningful whole, tacit power, gestalt, discovery, emergence, intuition, foreknowledge, process of discovery, inarticulate to articulate (tacit to focal), means by which reality becomes known, from-to, tacit integration, recognizing patterns (symmetry, rationality, order, “laws,” etc.), learning, the “aha” moment, suddenly, “I see”;
Embeddedness: four (4) types
Faith and belief: fiduciary, commitment, passion, fiduciary framework, truth, the tacit component of knowledge; the “from” of the “from-to” connection of all knowledge; meaning (TD:11); stereoscope; dogmatism; tradition; individual and group; one and the many (Ed); conceptual framework, deeply ingrained convictions, presuppositions, (these held within the idiom of language), interpretive system (291), belief system, implicit beliefs, unquestioned beliefs (294), highly stabilized framework (292), background beliefs (294), uncritically acquired preconceived beliefs (295), example of the Azande (below), universal interpretive framework (95), fiduciary foundations (297), personal criteria (71), Ed: “mini-beliefs” (references to PK);
Focal: denotation, verbal pointing (ostensive definition), definition, ideal, universal, form,
Future reality: we know not what. No person in the present can project what will be discovered in the future; no one fully understands his own understanding, “we know more than we can tell,” and the future of what we know now is unknown. Peirce: truth is that which we will all agree upon.
Indwelling: embodied knowing, here. Second nature, habit, trained physical and mental skills,
Meaning: the purpose for which a thing exists, e.g., a hammer has not other purpose that its use as a hammer. Vocation means the same for a person. See meaning in Glossary above.
Objectivity: exactitude, TTD:56; This search by modern science has led to a decline in morals, and its only hope is a return to traditional authority, TTD:57; see objectivism (above);
Order: see beauty in nature and reality.
Ordering principle: see above definitions… what? Ed: It would seem that the only “principle” that can “order” is a person or Person.
Person: passions, intuition, tacit and focal knowledge, calling, responsibility, the reservoir of knowledge, the integrator, the discoverer, every person inhabits (indwells) their own cosmos-gestalt, individuality,
Rationality in nature: see beauty in nature
Reality: result of discovery; what is established by man in recognizing patterns (order, rationality, symmetry, beauty, etc) in nature. See brain/mind above.
Tacit: tacit knowing, subsidiary, subsidiary awareness, particulars; subsidiary awareness and focal awareness are mutually exclusive” (MP:73), intangible, tacit coefficients, inarticulate, dwelling subsidiarily (clues that stand in the background) MP:71; unconscious (PK:334); “knowing more than we understand”;
Tradition: orthodoxy, authority, community of agreement in belief; conviviality (?), knowing is fundamentally social (MP:68), conviviality, standard, ideal, community: conviviality, indwelling, tradition, whole, tacit and explicit agreement, authority, group belief, belief over generations or over time,
Truth: unknown, as it is future reality. Truth resides in an individual or group, insofar as they are willing to agree and commit. C. S. Peirce defined truth as that to which we will all agree sometime in the future.
Universality: imago Dei, universals, “persuasive intent” (PK:333), individually held but projected universally (Ed), our universal intent is the only reason that we would ever voice an opinion (you would be as gods), community (tradition, authority, rationality, etc.),
Vocation (calling): commitment, universality, knowledge (tacit and focal), calling, meaning, desires (hopes, dreams, etc.), values, vision (“without a vision, the people perish), affection, “If I don’t care… why would I ever implement the scientific method (?), individuality (every person inhabits their own cosmos-gestalt),
Whole: integration, from-to, tacit integration, meaning, higher principle (MP:110), boundary conditions (that makes the whole possible), emergence, ordering principle, stereoscope: attend subsidiarily and focus on their integration, MP:72;
Appendix II
Ed’s comments and questions
Origins and wholes: just where does this enigma of a person originate? Unspecifiable? How does an unspecifiable creature be sufficiently unified to function as a composite? How does that which is unknown become that which is known? If discovery never ends, at what point on the spectrum does one reliably have knowledge sufficient to stake one’s life upon? How can one be certain in such an “unspecifiable” environment? How does a whole emerge from unspecifiable parts? How does a mind cohere when it never knows when its beliefs will change; then, which beliefs are better, the old or the new?
Reality: If knowing reality is a process of discovery, how can we know that today’s knowledge is trustworthy? How can we pretend to “know” reality when it is always being discovered? How do we know when to act, if new knowledge is always coming? Reality remains “largely hidden.”
Brain/mind correspondence?How does Polanyi explain the correspondence of that “hidden reality” with the “reality” of the structure of the brain? Why should there be a correspondence?
Beauty, symmetry, rationality? Why do persons only accept these transcendent (ideal) forms for their study in nature? What causes a person to seek this ideal, rather than disorder or asymmetry, or ugliness? The imago Dei? Almost certainly.
Community, Group, Tradition: One and the many? Science takes place within a community. There is a “agreeing” community and a partially “agreeing-disagreeing” community. And, there is an “entirely disagreeing” community. Why should this be? What causes “agreement” and “disagreement?” Why does a “paradigm” shift take place, even after this agreement? What causes persons to think as they do with or without correspondence to their natural world?
Individual discovery (opinion and belief): How is one person so arrogant as to claim universality to his personal beliefs?
Morality, ethics: modern science has eroded morals, and our only hope is a return to traditional authority, TTD:56ff;