“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

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Michael Polanyi 15

Hungarian-British polymath 1891–1976

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