“Whitehead and Russell… translate \vdash p imples q into the words 'it is asserted that p implies q'. But the phrase 'it is asserted' suggests an impersonal happening of assertions: 'it is asserted' as 'it is raining' or 'it happens'. The value of the assertion sign is lost if we allow ourselves to revert in our verbal translation of it to the muddle of a declaratory sentence which asserts itself or is impersonally asserted by nobody in particular.”
Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. 28
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Michael Polanyi 15
Hungarian-British polymath 1891–1976Related quotes
Source: Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness (1989), p. 21
"Language Log" blog, Language Log, If P, so why not Q http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001314.html, 5 August 2004.
Source: An Introduction to English Poetry (2002), Ch. 22: Poetic Drama and Opera (p. 125)

“Every definition implies an axiom, since it asserts the existence of the object defined.”
Part II. Ch. 2 : Mathematical Definitions and Education, p. 131
Science and Method (1908)
Context: Every definition implies an axiom, since it asserts the existence of the object defined. The definition then will not be justified, from the purely logical point of view, until we have proved that it involves no contradiction either in its terms or with the truths previously admitted.

Speech http://books.google.com/books?id=5jIwAAAAYAAJ&q=%22The+only+excuse+that+America+can+ever+have+for+the+assertion+of+her+physical+force+is+that+she+asserts+it+in+behalf+of+the+interests+of+humanity%22&pg=PA23#v=onepage to the Daughters of the American Revolution at Memorial Continental Hall in Washington, D.C. on April 17, 1916
1910s