“The term 'simplicity' functions then merely as a disguise for another meaning than its own. It is used for smuggling an essential quality into our appreciation of a scientific theory, which a mistaken conception of objectivity forbids us to openly acknowledge.”

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 16

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The term 'simplicity' functions then merely as a disguise for another meaning than its own. It is used for smuggling an…" by Michael Polanyi?
Michael Polanyi photo
Michael Polanyi 15
Hungarian-British polymath 1891–1976

Related quotes

Jonathan Ive photo

“The defining qualities are about use: ease and simplicity. Caring beyond the functional imperative, we also acknowledge that products have a significance way beyond traditional views of function.”

Jonathan Ive (1967) English designer and VP of Design at Apple

In an interview at the Design Museum (2003)[citation needed]

Herbert A. Simon photo
Vladimir Lenin photo

“To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense organs.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908), p. 130

Fritjof Capra photo
Wolfgang Pauli photo

“To achieve such a uniform description of nature, it appears to be essential to have recourse to the archetypal background of the scientific terms and concepts.”

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austrian physicist, Nobel prize winner

Letter to Carl Jung, (16 June 1948)
Context: The purely psychological interpretation only apprehends half of the matter. The other half is the revealing of the archetypal basis of the terms actually applied in modern physics. What the final method of observation must see in the production of "background physics" through the unconscious of modern man is a directing of objective toward a future description of nature that uniformly comprises physis and psyche, a form of description that at the moment we are experiencing only in a prescientific phase. To achieve such a uniform description of nature, it appears to be essential to have recourse to the archetypal background of the scientific terms and concepts.

L. P. Jacks photo

“Though science makes no use for poetry, poetry is enriched by science. Poetry “takes up” the scientific vision and re-expresses its truths, but always in forms which compel us to look beyond them to the total object which is telling its own story and standing in its own rights.”

L. P. Jacks (1860–1955) British educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister

The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Context: Though science makes no use for poetry, poetry is enriched by science. Poetry “takes up” the scientific vision and re-expresses its truths, but always in forms which compel us to look beyond them to the total object which is telling its own story and standing in its own rights. In this the poet and the philosopher are one. Using language as the lever, they lift thought above the levels where words perplex and retard its flight, and leave it, at last, standing face to face with the object which reveals itself.

George Holmes Howison photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“Nothing is more important than the formation of fictional concepts, which teach us at last to understand our own.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 85e

Max Horkheimer photo

Related topics