Michael Polanyi: Act

Michael Polanyi was Hungarian-British polymath. Explore interesting quotes on act.
Michael Polanyi: 30   quotes 0   likes

“Comprehension is neither an arbitrary act nor a passive experience, but a responsible act claiming universal validity. Such knowing is indeed objective in the sense of 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. It seems reasonable to describe this fusion of the personal and the objective as Personal Knowledge. Personal knowledge is an intellectual commitment, and as such inherently hazardous. Only affirmations that could be false can be said to convey objective knowledge of this kind.”

Michael Polanyi

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. vii-viii

Knowledge , Reality , Sense , Universe

“The correct reading of \vdash p written down by me in good faith is therefore 'I believe p', or some other words expressing the same fiduciary act.”

Michael Polanyi

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 28

Faith , Reading

“The descriptive sciences rely on skill and connoisseurship. At all these points the act of knowing includes an appraisal; and this personal coefficient, which shapes all factual knowledge, bridges in doing so the disjunction between subjectivity and objectivity. It implies the claim that man can transcend his own subjectivity by striving passionately to fulfil his personal obligations to universal standards.”

Michael Polanyi

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 17

Knowledge , Universe , Passion , Science

“In a strict usage the same symbol should never represent the act of sincerely asserting something and the content of what is asserted. For the symbolic distinction between the two, Frege has introduced the 'signpost' symbol. … \vdash p is to signify the actual assertion of p, while the bare symbol p must henceforth be used only as part of a sentence. … It should be clear from the modality of a sentence whether it is a question, a command, an invective, a complaint or an allegation of fact.”

Michael Polanyi

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 27

Question , Parting , Sincerity

“A declaratory sentence can be asserted, because it is an incomplete symbol, of indeterminate modality; while a question, a command, an invective, or any other sentence of fixed intention can no more be asserted than could my act of hewing wood or of drinking tea.”

Michael Polanyi

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 28

Drink , Question , Tea

“Our view of life must account for how we know life; biological theories must allow for their own discovery and employment. Theories of evolution must provide for the creative acts which brought such theories into existence. Beginning with our own embodiment our theory of knowledge must endorse the ways we manifestly transcend our embodiment by acts of indwelling and extension into more subtle and intangible realms of being, where we meet our ultimate ends.”

Michael Polanyi

Transcendence And Self-Transcendence (1970)

Life , Way , Knowledge