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When Science Gets Personal: An Analysis of Scientific Practices
According to Michael Polanyi and Thomas Kuhn
by
Edmund Kwok-Fai Lo
A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Regis College and the Graduate Centre for Theological Studies of the Toronto School of Theology.
In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Theology awarded by Regis College and the University of Toronto.
© Copyright by Edmund Kwok-Fai Lo 2019
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When Science Gets Personal:
An Analysis of Scientific Practices According to Michael Polanyi and Thomas Kuhn
Edmund Kwok-Fai Lo
Master of Theology
Regis College and the University of Toronto
2019
Abstract An examination of scientific practices according to Michael Polanyi and Thomas Kuhn
reveals a unique involvement of scientists on a personal level. Such a personal
involvement reveals the teleology behind scientific practices through the intentions of the
scientists. According to Polanyi, scientists are in search of truth in reality; for Kuhn,
scientists strive to solve scientific problems as puzzles. Such differences are reflected in a
potential science-religion dialogue: A Polanyian approach can find common ground with
religion, while a Kuhnian approach either leads to a confrontation or a parting of ways
with religion due to unresolvable conflicts. By using Polanyi’s interpretive framework
that is personal knowledge, the personal nature of scientific practices overlaps with the
personal nature of religious practices, with the common ground being the truth-seeking
person.
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Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Michael Polanyi ....................................................................................... 5
The Structure of Skills .................................................................. 5
The Awareness in the Performance of a Skill: Polanyi on Focal and
Subsidiary Awareness ................................................................... 6
Subsidiary Awareness and the Beginning of “Personal” ................ 7
Beliefs and Rules in Scientific Practices ........................................ 9
Neither Subjective Nor Objective ................................................ 10
Intellectual Passion ..................................................................... 12
Heuristic Passion ........................................................................ 14
Persuasive Passion ...................................................................... 15
Summary of Motivations............................................................. 16
Master-Apprentice ...................................................................... 18
Scientist-Scientist ....................................................................... 19
Tradition ..................................................................................... 20
Chapter Two: Thomas Kuhn ......................................................................................... 23
Paradigms Versus Rules .............................................................. 24
Anomaly ..................................................................................... 26
Crisis and Emergence of Scientific Discoveries........................... 26
Response to Crisis ....................................................................... 27
Personal Knowledge ................................................................................. 5
Human Passions as Motivations ............................................................. 12
Scientific Community............................................................................. 18
Summary ................................................................................................ 22
Normal Science and Paradigms .............................................................. 23
Anomaly and Crisis ................................................................................ 26
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Why “Revolution”? ..................................................................... 29
The Necessity of Revolutions ...................................................... 30
Paradigm Shift as a Change of Worldview .................................. 32
Resolutions of Scientific Revolutions .......................................... 32
Puzzles and Parameters ............................................................... 36
Chapter Three: Critical Engagement of Polanyi and Kuhn............................................. 41
Motivations and Passions ............................................................ 41
The Authority of the Scientific Community ................................ 42
Scientific Progress ...................................................................... 44
Continuity or Rupture?................................................................ 46
An Evolutionary Kind of Progress .............................................. 47
Teleology of Scientific Practices ................................................. 48
Suitable Analogy to Describe Scientists? .................................... 53
Chapter Four: Science and Religion, Matters of Faith ................................................... 57
Scientific Revolution .............................................................................. 29
Aim of Normal Science .......................................................................... 34 Motivation: To Solve Puzzles ................................................................. 35
Scientific Practices and Community ....................................................... 38 Summary ................................................................................................ 39
On Scientific Practices: Similarities Between Polanyi and Kuhn ................. 41
On Scientific Practices: Differences Between Polanyi and Kuhn ............ 44
Summary ................................................................................................ 55
The Silos of Kuhn .................................................................................. 57 Kuhn in Theology .................................................................................. 59 Polanyi: Truth, Reality and Theology ..................................................... 62 Vocation................................................................................................. 64 Personal Knowledge and Theology ........................................................ 66 From Scientific to Religious Practices .................................................... 68 Summary ................................................................................................ 72
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Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 73 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 76
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Introduction Given the influence of scientific progress on human lives and society, exploring the
prospect of a dialogue between science and religion becomes ever more pertinent from
the perspective of theologians. Such prospect is especially important in the face of
popular portrayals that do injustice to both science and religion. A lack of understanding
fosters over-simplification1: Just as it is unhelpful to consider “religion” as a monolithic
entity in which everyone believes in the same way, it is equally unhelpful to consider
“science” in general terms that turns out to be far removed from the ways in which
science is actually practiced.
The Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Century proves to be an important period in
which scholars begin to understand science in different ways. For instance, scholars from
the German and British scientific circles begin to focus on methodological issues in
science, an effort that eventually gives rise to logical positivism, with an emphasis on the
roles of logic and mathematics along with the abandonment of metaphysics2. Within the
same period, other scholars begin to explore the role of history in how we consider
science: The historical context does not merely function as background information but
rather as an integral part in which scientific discoveries are to be understood. The shift
can also be seen as a turn away from a matter-of-fact presentation of scientific
discoveries: Such a presentation is akin to one that is typically seen in an encyclopedia,
1 Admittedly, popular works of prominent anti-religion scientists (such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Jerry A. Coyne) and controversial topics such as arguing for a young earth tend to attract more public attention; nevertheless, such opinions highlight only a small percentage of views and cannot be considered as representative of a consensus amongst scientists. 2 The philosophical positions taken by scholars from the German scientific circles are diverse, with some taking inspirations from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and adopting a view that scientific knowledge is not relativistic but rather absolute; others side more with Ernst Mach and adopt a position that rejects any kind of a priori elements in how knowledge is gained in general, and particularly in scientific knowledge. The Kantian and Machian schools of thought – especially the Machian – are influential in laying the groundwork for the development of logical positivism from the Vienna Circle. Frederick Suppe, ‘The Search for Philosophic Understanding of Scientific Theories’, in The Structure of Scientific Theories, ed. Frederick Suppe, Second edition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 6-15; Richard Creath, ‘Logical Empiricism’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Fall 2017 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2017), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/logical-empiricism/.
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with the focus being on the success of a few influential scientists while neglecting or
discarding the scientific problems of that time, or that which has gone before and after the
said major discoveries, as well as the errors made by scientists3. Rather than simply
considering what works, the shift to the historical pays close attention to the scientific
achievements that lay the groundwork for major scientific breakthroughs4.
An example of the turn to the historical is the scholarly work by Paul Tannery on the
history of mathematics. Tannery opines that the significance of a branch of science can
only be properly appreciated when situated within a larger context of the general history
of science5, which can be seen as the mutual enrichment between synthesis and research6.
Other notable contributions include Antonio Favaro’s twenty-volume edition of the
works of Galileo and Pierre Duhem’s study of Leonardo da Vinci. Favaro compares
Galileo’s work with the latter’s friends and foes, while Duhem compares da Vinci’s work
with both da Vinci’s predecessors and successors, as well as the minor figures who have
since been long forgotten7. Tannery, Favaro and Duhem are pioneers who pave the way
for subsequent scholars to pursue a more holistic understanding of science through the
consideration of the historical context of scientific discoveries8.
3 For instance, scholars of the Enlightenment period commonly consider the Middle Ages as a dark age. Voltaire deems the discussion of the works of Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe as unnecessary since both the systems of Ptolemy and Tycho are false. While such a sentiment is not universal, the disregard for the historical context can be seen as a desire to distance oneself from an age that offers very little to the scientific understanding of the time. Herbert Butterfield, Herbert Butterfield: Essays on the History of Science (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998), 42–43. 4 The study of the history of science both better situate scientific discoveries within the context of scientific progress and serves to better understand the role of science in shaping history of societies in general; indeed, some scholars believe that the construction of a history of modern Europe is impossible without considering the impact of science. Butterfield, 32–35. 5 Butterfield, 44. 6 Butterfield, 46. The founding of scholarly journals devoting to the study of the history of the sciences is an example of such a turn towards the historical. Tannery is influential in the founding of the journal Revue de Synthèse Historique, and George Sarton in the journal Isis, both of which are founded in the earl 1900s and remain in publication to this present day. Another example is Aldo Mieli’s founding of the journal Archeion. Butterfield, 47. 7 Butterfield, 47–50. 8 A key contributor who has picked up the mantle of the aforementioned scholars is the British historian Herbert Butterfield, whose essays from which I have referred extensively in the introduction. Herbert’s seminal work describes the origin of modern science within the context of the medieval period. Herbert also summarizes the historical approach towards a better understanding of science as scientists’ needing help from historians, and historians needing help from scientists. Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1800 (London, UK: G. Bell, 1957).
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The historical approach towards science is a contextualization through the consideration
of successes and failures, or predecessors and successors. A snapshot of the progress in
the historical consideration of science can be seen from the symposium titled The
Structure of Scientific Change at Oxford in 1961, attended by distinguished scholars such
as Joseph Needham, Georges Canguilhem and Imre Lakatos, among others. The wide
scope of the symposium is reflected from the discussion topics: The historical
reconstruction of science; the lives and motivations of those who take part in scientific
activity; the essential changes in scientific thought and the ways through which the
changes have been brought about; the social context of scientific and technical changes;
the historiography of science9.
Approaches that examine scientific discoveries through the ways in which scientific
expertise is practiced are considered in the sociological portion of the symposium10. Here,
the contributions from the two scholars of interest in this thesis can be found: Thomas
Kuhn and Michael Polanyi11. Such an approach is a contextualization of scientific
discoveries by examining what actually takes place in scientists’ attempts at noteworthy
discoveries, as supposed to a conceptual speculation of scientists’ work as following
certain scientific precepts by rote12. Polanyi argues that scientific practices show a
9 Alistair Cameron Crombie, ‘Introduction’, in Scientific Change: Historical Studies in the Intellectual, Social, and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present (Symposium on the History of Science (1961: Oxford, England)), ed. Alistair Cameron Crombie (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1963), 10. 10 The link between the sociological and the historical approach to understanding science can be perceived: The ways in which the trade of scientists is practiced can be discussed with greater depth by examining what happens when such practices take place. The historical approach is a consideration of what has happened, and such an approach remains useful despite the inevitable picking and choosing of what is being documented. 11 The attention paid to scientific practices can at least be partly explained by the background of Polanyi and Kuhn, as both Polanyi and Kuhn begin as scientists: Kuhn a physicist, and Polanyi a physical chemist. Both are intimately familiar with the journey of scientific discovery by having gone through the thick of scientific research in a hands-on manner. 12 Andrew Pickering observes that very little attention has been directed to understanding scientific practices until the Twentieth Century, with Polanyi and Kuhn being the two forerunners, along with Ludwik Fleck whose work highlights how medicine is practiced. Rather than scientific practices, the focus is casted upon scientific knowledge as a product of science. For example, Anglo-American philosophy of science has focused on the relationship between scientific theory and facts; the focus can be seen both from those who ascribe to the “logical-empiricist mainstream” thoughts, and those – such as Paul Feyerabend – who do not ascribe to the aforementioned mainstream opinions. Andrew Pickering, ‘From Science as Knowledge to Science as Practice’, in Science as Practice and Culture, ed. Andrew Pickering (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 3.
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personal – and even passionate – involvement of the scientist which directly goes against
the stereotype of scientific activities as a search for the objective without the involvement
of the person13. On the other hand, Kuhn argues that scientific practices reveal the
process of scientific progress.
The focus of the following essay is the understanding of scientific practices according to
Polanyi and Kuhn. My main thesis is that the ways in which scientific practices are
understood change the ways in which science-religion dialogue take place. My work is
divided into four chapters. The first chapter is devoted to how Polanyi understands
scientific practices through an interpretative framework termed “personal knowledge”;
the second chapter focus on how Kuhn understands scientific practices through the ways
in which scientific progress takes place. I argue that an examination of what happens in
scientific practices reveals a tight link between scientific practices and the intentions of
scientists as well as the epistemological roots of scientific knowledge. The third chapter
is an examination of the similarities and differences of how Polanyi and Kuhn envision
scientific practices. I argue that Polanyi’s notion of scientists’ pursuit of a reality beyond
the self provides a better description to the ways in which scientific practices actually
take place; consequently, Polanyi’s notion of the personal is a more useful framework in
understanding scientific practices than that of Kuhn’s. The fourth chapter engages the
thoughts of Polanyi and Kuhn within the context of a science-religion dialogue. I argue
that the understanding of the intentions of scientists and the epistemological roots of
scientific knowledge better set the stage for a dialogue with religion due to the
recognition of common grounds. I also argue that science-religion dialogue is possible
within a Polanyian framework due to a common epistemological foundation, whereas a
confrontation between science and religion is all but inevitable within a Kuhnian
framework. Finally, I argue that – when understood in a Polanyian manner – scientific
practices and religious practices are comparable because of a shared cognitive
framework, and that understanding scientific practices allows for a better understanding
of religious practices.
13 Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago, Ill.: The University of Chicago Press, 1958), 134.
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Chapter One: Michael Polanyi
In Michael Polanyi’s interpretative framework termed personal knowledge, practices play
a determinant role in the acquisition of knowledge by the ways in which practical skills
are performed. I argue that personal knowledge lays bare both the personal motivations of
scientists and the necessary involvement on the level of the person in the acquisition of
scientific knowledge, and that both personal motivations and the nature of practices in
personal knowledge can serve as a potential bridge for a science-religion dialogue. The
significance of Polanyi’s interpretative framework lies in the emphasis of practices as
supposed to procedural rules in knowledge acquisition, as well as the insistence of
preserving two positions that may seem irreconcilable at first glance: Objectivity in truth
and personal involvement.
Personal Knowledge
The Structure of Skills
In order to better understand the link between scientific practices and scientific
knowledge, Polanyi insists that “the structure of skills” in general must be understood,
with skills being goal-oriented actions that need to be learned: “The aim of a skillful
performance is achieved by the observance of a set of rules which are not known as such
to the person following them”14. Polanyi highlights the importance of an aspect of skills
of which the person remains unaware in a certain way when the skill is being performed.
For example, swimming is a skill that needs to be taught in order to perform properly.
Polanyi does not mean that explicit instructions such as “extend yourself at the end of the
front crawl stroke by rotating your torso” are unnecessary; rather, Polanyi focuses on the
ways in which swimmers keep afloat, refraining from emptying the lungs while breathing
out and over-inflating the lungs while breathing in with the aim of maintaining an
14 Polanyi, 49.
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increased level of buoyancy in the water15. While the theory behind buoyancy during
swimming can be understood on an intellectual level, such a theory does not teach the
hows of moving through water. The explanatory powers of the underlying scientific
theories do not shed any light upon the ways in which swimming is performed in
practice; the rules do not explain the hows of the practicing of a skill16.
While the example of swimming is indicative of muscular skills, the same
aforementioned principle can be seen in more specialized skills such as that of a
physician, and Polanyi calls the learning of such specialized skills “connoisseurship”17.
Polanyi cites a physician’s recognizing the accentuation of the second sound of the
pulmonary artery to illustrate that a specified diagnostic ability must be learned through
practice. Physicians learn about diagnostic criteria from medical textbooks, but a proper
diagnosis in practice can only be learned through a repeated exposure to symptom-
manifesting cases; physicians fully realize the difference between the presence and
absence of the symptoms through practice18. The importance of connoisseurship is
reflected in the large amounts of time that the students of medicine spend in more
practical courses19. Similar to the swimming example, rules for medical diagnosis do not
show the hows of a diagnostic practice. The practitioners remain unware of the hows of
the practicing of a skill, and the awareness of the performance of a skill will be discussed
in detail in the next section.
The Awareness in the Performance of a Skill:
Polanyi on Focal and Subsidiary Awareness
According to Polanyi, the structure of skills also illustrates different aspects of the
awareness of the person who performs the skill, whom will be henceforth called the
performer. Take a more general example of hammer and nail: The performer attends to
15 Polanyi, 49. 16 Polanyi, 50. 17 Polanyi, 54. 18 Polanyi, 54–55. 19 Polanyi, 55.
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the hammer and nail in different ways during the act of hammering a nail: When the
hammer is being brought down onto the nail, the performer focuses on how the head of
the hammer strikes the nail and not how the handle of the hammer hits the palm. At the
same time, the performer is not oblivious to the feeling of the latter, as the handling of the
hammer remains important in the effective guiding of the hammer onto the nail. Polanyi
calls the awareness of the hammer striking the nail a focal awareness, and the awareness
of the feeling of the hammer in the palm a subsidiary awareness20. The usage of a
dentist’s probe also illustrates the two different kinds of awareness in a more specialized
manner21. When a dentist handles the probe to examine a cavity, the dentist’s focal
awareness is the interaction between the probe and the cavity, while the subsidiary
awareness is the dentist’s manipulation of the probe. Focal awareness and subsidiary
awareness are mutually exclusive22; the performer focally attends to one specific action
while everything else falls into the subsidiary. Another example is the playing of a piano:
The performer is focally aware of the piece of music while being subsidiarily aware of
the movement of the fingers. When the attention is switched onto the action of the
fingers, confusion ensues and the performer may have to stop the playing23. The piano
example illustrates that a subsidiary awareness is not the same as ignorance but rather
being aware in an unspecifiable manner24. While mutually exclusive, focal and subsidiary
awareness are not fixed entities; the latter switches to the former – and vice versa – when
attention is diverted to what the performer is doing subsidiarily.
Subsidiary Awareness and the Beginning of “Personal”
Polanyi’s examples involve objects that are not a part of – and in this sense external to –
the human body. When external objects are being attended to, the performer relies on
subsidiary awareness through the performer’s body; by extension, Polanyi argues that
20 Polanyi, 55. 21 Polanyi, 55. 22 Polanyi, 56. 23 Polanyi, 56. 24 Polanyi, 56. Polanyi also calls such an involvement of the subsidiary awareness “tacit”, as evident from the title of Polanyi’s book The Tacit Dimension.
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subsidiary awareness can also be seen as an act of making the external object into a part
of the performer’s own body25. For example, an external object such as the medical probe
is “incorporated” into the dentist’s body:
While we rely on a tool or a probe, these are not handled as external objects. We may test the tool for its effectiveness or the probe for its suitability […] but the tool and the probe can never lie in the field of these operations; they remain necessarily on our side of it, forming part of ourselves, the operating persons. We pour ourselves out into them and assimilate them as parts of our own existence. We accept them existentially by dwelling in them.26
Such an act of incorporation of something external signals a turn to the “personal”: The
“personal” goes beyond the performer’s engagement through focal and subsidiary
awareness. Through the assimilation, the external tool is treated as simply a part of the
performer. The act of assimilation is also “personal” because the object is being
incorporated, and the performer – as Polanyi says – “pours” oneself into the object. The
external object becomes a tool only when the performer intends the object for the
performer’s own purposes; the performer is confident in the intention regardless of
whether the intended result – be it the probing of a cavity or the hammering of a nail – is
successfully achieved or not27.
More importantly, Polanyi proposes that the skillful aspects behind the using a physical
tool continues to apply when the physical tool is replaced with an intellectual tool28.
Through the subsidiary awareness, intellectual tools such as interpretative frameworks in
the sciences are being incorporated29. The performer of such an “intellectual practice”
takes in the intellectual tool and pours oneself into the tool as if the tool is a part of the
25 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 59. 26 Polanyi, 59. 27 Polanyi, 60. 28 Polanyi, 59. 29 Polanyi explains the interpretive frameworks in the sciences as such: “I am not speaking of the specific assertions which fill the textbooks, but of the suppositions which underlie the method by which these assertions are arrived at. We assimilate most of these pre-suppositions by learning to speak of things in a certain language, in which there are names for various kinds of objects, names by which objects can be classified, making such distinctions as between past and present, living and dead, healthy and sick, and thousands of others. Our language includes the numerals and the elements of geometry, and it refers in these terms to laws of nature whence we can pass on to the roots of these laws in scientific observations and experiments”. Polanyi, 59.
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performer. The performer implicitly accepts the interpretative framework, and the
framework is intended to be used for the purposes of the performer30. The performer has
confidence in such an intention, just as the performer has confidence in using a hammer
on a nail whether the attempt is successful or not. Therefore, what makes knowledge
personal is the incorporation of intellectual tools, as well as the performer’s implicit
belief and confidence in such tools.
Beliefs and Rules in Scientific Practices
Since interpretive frameworks found in science are implicitly accepted and believed
through the subsidiary awareness of scientists, belief plays an important role in scientific
practices. What is the relationship between such a belief and rules that are found in
scientific practices? Polanyi thinks that expectations and methods in scientific practices
are mutually determined, as expectations and methods adjust to each other according to
the success or failure in scientific practices31. Such a mutual relationship is founded upon
practices. Beliefs are embedded subsidiarily within practices and the former is only
realized in a focal manner upon the performer’s own reflection of the process of
establishing facts32. A similar situation can be seen with rules in Polanyi’s earlier
examples of the practicing of skills: The premises and rules of buoyancy cannot be
focally discovered prior to the act of swimming until the performance of swimming has
been experienced and reflected upon; indeed, the performer practices a skill while being
focally ignorant but subsidiarily aware of the rules33. Once focally known through
reflection and analysis, the rules and methods can be used to guide and improve the
performance of the skill of interest34. Polanyi’s understanding of scientific practices
explicitly rejects the view that scientific practices are governed by presuppositions that
come before and are independent from scientific practices.
30 Polanyi, 61. 31 Polanyi, 161. 32 Polanyi, 162. 33 Polanyi, 162. 34 Polanyi, 163.
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Neither Subjective Nor Objective
Polanyi’s great emphasis on the personal aspect of scientific knowledge aims to do away
with the notion that there exists a complete, detached objectivity in the sciences, which
Polanyi describes as “a delusion and is in fact a false ideal”35. Meanwhile, neither does
Polanyi endorse any kind of subjectivist approach where everyone’s scientific standards
and results are equally valid. Polanyi rejects both the traditional accounts of objectivity
and subjectivity in scientific knowledge:
We may distinguish between the personal in us, which actively enters into our commitments, and our subjective states, in which we merely endure our feelings. This distinction establishes the conception of the personal, which is neither subjective nor objective in so far as the personal submits to requirements acknowledged by itself as independent of itself, it is not subjective; but in so far as it is an action guided by individual passions, it is not objective either. It transcends the disjunction between subjective and objective.36
That which Polanyi proposes as personal transcends the objective because what guides
scientists’ scientific practices is the individual passions of scientists (a topic which will
be discussed in detail in the next section); the personal also transcends the subjective
because of the scientists’ acknowledgement and commitment to a universal standard that
is independent of the scientists37. Scientists’ fiduciary passion triggers a confident
utterance about scientific facts is personal when scientists submit to such facts as
universally valid; on the other hand, such passion is reduced to subjectivity when
scientists reflect on the act of utterance of scientific facts in a manner that is non-
35 Polanyi, 18. Polanyi thinks that the view of a completely detached and impersonal view of the sciences is exemplified by the French scientist Pierre Simon de Laplace: “An intelligence which knew at one moment of time – wrote Laplace – ‘all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the entities which compose it, […] would embrace in the same formula the movements of the largest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atom: nothing would be uncertain for it, and the future, like the past, would be present to its eyes.’ Such a mind would possess a complete scientific knowledge of the universe.” Polanyi argues that a Leplacean worldview is akin to a set of equations and data which tell the scientist nothing about the scientist’ object of interest. More importantly, Polanyi argues that this Leplacean view promotes a kind of “strictly objective knowledge…continues to sustain a universal tendency to enhance the observational accuracy and systematic precision of science, at the expense of its bearing on its subject matter”. Polanyi, 139–141. 36 Polanyi, 300. 37 Polanyi, 303.
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committal to any independent and universal standards38. With an independent standard
comes a sense of obligation: “The freedom of the subjective person to do as he pleases is
overruled by the freedom of the responsible person to act as he must”39. The “personal”
perspective bestows a sense of responsibility upon scientists that goes beyond the mere
fulfilment of a task. In fact, Polanyi describes the obligation as a scientist’s vocation40,
and there cannot be any sense of self-indulgence in such a pursuit41. Ultimately, the
standard that is independent from scientists serves to guide the scientists to a much bigger
goal: “We can assimilate an object as a tool if we believe it to be actually useful to our
purposes […] The act of personal knowing can sustain these relations only because the
acting person believes that they are apposite: that he has not made them but discovered
them. The effort of knowing is thus guided by a sense of obligation towards the truth: by
an effort to submit to reality” (Italics original)42. Personal knowledge demands the giving
of the lives of scientists over to a pursuit of truth and reality that provides the ground for
scientists’ personal commitment43. The commitment of scientists does not guarantee any
success and can be misguided, yet such uncertainties are implicit in great scientific
inquiries and discoveries44. How can such a commitment from scientists be better
understood? What more can be said about the motivations behind scientists’ pursuit of
truth and reality?
38 Polanyi, 303. Polanyi does not see a personal desire for an universal – and hence “impersonal” – truth as contradictory because the personal and the universal need each other within the framework of commitment: “Here the personal comes into existence by asserting universal intent, and the universal is constituted by being accepted as the impersonal term of this personal commitment”. Polanyi, 308. 39 Polanyi, 309. 40 Polanyi, 322–323. 41 Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967), 25. 42 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 63. 43 Polanyi, 311. Polanyi sees no difference in saying “I believe ‘p’” and “‘p’ is true”. Both sayings indicate a confident asserting of ‘p’ as a fact. Beliefs – through personal commitment – inherently indicate a directionality towards truth. Polanyi, 317. 44 Polanyi, 310.
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Human Passions as Motivations
According to Polanyi, human passions both serve as motivations behind scientific
practices and are indispensable aspects of what makes knowledge personal45. Polanyi
further differentiates passions into intellectual, heuristic, and persuasive passion.
Intellectual Passion
Intellectual passion can be understood as a kind of felt appreciation of ingenuity,
scientific value and scientific beauty46; “the excitement of the scientist making a
discovery […] telling that something is intellectually precious and, more particularly, that
it is precious to science”47. Scientists judge and appreciate that something is worthwhile
in scientific practices. Three different factors constitute that which Polanyi considers as
scientific value: 1. Certainty (or accuracy); 2. Systematic relevance (or profundity); and
3. Intrinsic interest. The first two criteria are considered “inherently scientific” while the
last criterion that is intrinsic interest is considered “extra-scientific”48, which highlights
the personal component that allows scientists to give directionality to scientific research.
An intellectual appreciation is not simply scientists’ reflex towards the products of
scientific practices; scientists do not simply find every piece of gathered data to be
interesting49. In fact, evidence that do not agree with the scientists’ preferred approach is
45 Polanyi, 134. According to Polanyi, passions for knowledge acquisition are already reflected in animal behaviours. An “active principle” underlies tacit intelligence, and such an active principle is apparent even in the general alertness of primitive creatures such as worms, which seek to explore and exert some kind of control over the situations that the worms encounter. The development of such tacit intellectual powers in more advanced creatures is also evident. For instance, upon discovering a novel manipulation of a tool, chimpanzees repeatedly enact the same manipulation for the action’s own sake but not for any practical purposes. Such behaviour exhibited in animals is a prefiguration of the intellectual passions and satisfaction that can be observed from human beings; that being said, Polanyi thinks that the intellectual passions of a scientific pursuit transcend that which animals are capable of, and animals are unable to appreciate the intellectual beauty that scientists can identify through scientific practices. Polanyi, 132–133. 46 Polanyi, 133. 47 Polanyi, 134. 48 Polanyi, 135–136. 49 Polanyi cites the discovery of T. W. Richards to illustrate that accuracy in observations does not equate to scientifically valuable: Richards was awarded the Nobel prize in 1914 for discovering a method to accurately determine the atomic weights of chemicals. Yet less than twenty years later, Frederick Soddy – also a Nobel laureate in chemistry – declared that the kind of measurement pioneered by Richard was of as
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often ignored, in hoping that such evidence can eventually be either accommodated or
found to be irrelevant to the particular investigation at hand50. Polanyi does not consider
scientists’ ignoring certain evidence to be problematic because such an approach prevents
scientists from being drawn into futile projects51.
Scientific values – certainty, systematic relevance and intrinsic interest – are appreciated
by scientists’ sense of intellectual or scientific beauty on a personal level, and is
intimately related to scientists’ vision of reality; the sense of intellectual beauty is guided
by the scientists’ “vision of the general nature of things”:
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 be 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.52
Intellectual beauty that is found in science is characterized by the former’s contact with
reality53. Such an understanding resonates with that which makes knowledge personal:
little interest as “the determination of the average weight of a collection of bottles, some of them full and some of them more or less empty”: “It had been realized meanwhile that the value of atomic weights results from the accidental proportion in which the constituent isotopes happen to be present in the elements as found in nature. A magnitude that had seemed to characterize a deep-seated feature of the universe, had turned out to have no such bearing. Though factually correct, it had proved deceptive because – contrary to expectation – it did not correspond to anything substantial in nature. When the exact atomic weight of an element ceased to be of interest to science, what had seemed important turned out to be trivial”. The example of determination of atomic weights also shows the importance of historical context, in that scientific discoveries can be considered valuable during one period but are considered of little use in another. Polanyi, 136. 50 Polanyi, 138. 51 According to Polanyi, there is a caveat in scientists’ deliberate ignorance of certain pieces of evidence: There isn’t any rules by which scientists can guarantee that the ignored evidence is not true. In other words, there is no safeguard to prevent the scientists’ decision to discard valuable scientific results that conflict with the scientists’ scientific worldview. Polanyi, 138. 52 Polanyi, 135. 53 The link between beauty and reality is not restricted to the scientific realm, as such a link is present in other realms such as art and mathematics; indeed, Polanyi speaks of an “artistic beauty” that is a token of “artistic reality”, and a “mathematical beauty” that is reflective of a “mathematical reality”. Such an
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The intellectual passion of scientists is stirred by the intellectual beauty of truth in reality.
Indeed, Polanyi describes intellectual beauty as “a guide to discovery and as a mark of
truth”54. When understood in such a manner, scientists – through intellectual passion –
are motivated by a beauty that is both external to the scientists and reflects that which is
real; the pursuit of a reality that is independent of oneself is the difference between the
fulfilment of a universal obligation and a private satisfaction55. Unsurprisingly, Polanyi
thinks that scientists can have a misguided intellectual passion which results from a false
vision of reality; namely, that “a misguided intellectual passion, a passion for achieving
absolutely impersonal knowledge which, being unable to recognize any persons, presents
us with a picture of the universe in which we ourselves are absent. In such a universe
there is no one capable of creating and upholding scientific values; hence there is no
science”56. Truth in reality is not determined by scientists, but intellectual passion for
scientific values gives the scientists motivation to proceed with scientific research.
Heuristic Passion
Through intellectual passion, scientists are attracted to a beauty that reflects reality57.
Along with intellectual passion comes a motivation that leads scientists to persist in
scientific pursuits, a motivation that is directly linked to another passion that renders
scientists capable of scientific discoveries, and Polanyi calls the latter passion the
heuristic passion58. While the type of motivation provided by intellectual passion is more
appreciation has universal intent, and bears witness beyond that to the presence of an inexhaustible fount of meaning which may be exhibited in the future. Polanyi, 201. 54 Polanyi, 300. 55 Polanyi, 174. Polanyi distinguishes the difference between scientific knowledge and the operational principle of technology; namely, that the former yields a discovery that “makes an addition to our knowledge of nature”, while the latter results in an invention, whose new and established operational principle offers some kind of practical advantage. Polanyi sees beauty – albeit in different terms – in both scientific discovery and technological invention: The former allows scientists to probe more deeply into the nature of things, while the latter turns known facts into a technological advantage. The key implication between theoretical and practical interest is that scientists’ pure intellectual passions may be ostracized by a view of scientific progress that is only measured by practical interests. Polanyi, 177–180. 56 Polanyi, 142. 57 Polanyi never explicitly states that intellectual passion is a prerequisite for scientific pursuits, but intellectual passion guided by a sense of intellectual beauty does provide a kind of foundational motivation, and is an indispensable part of scientific pursuits. 58 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 143.
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inspirational, heuristic passion provides the motivation in the operational aspect of a
discovery process. The heuristic passion of scientists provides the motivation to seek a
resolution to whatever scientific problem in a resourceful manner. Scientists are not
driven by a heuristic passion that follows a pre-established list of scientific procedures
through which the generation of novel scientific knowledge is guaranteed. Indeed,
Polanyi believes that creative scientists “spend their lives in trying to guess right”59.
Scientists’ decisions are informed by experience in scientific practices, and Polanyi calls
such educated guesses – in paraphrasing Albert Einstein – “a groping for the meaning of
the facts”60. When heuristic passion is engaged, the type of scientific work that is being
engaged is creative, both in the sense that scientists seek different – and at times
surprising – venues in an attempt to discover novel scientific knowledge, and that
scientists undergo an irrevocable change in a perception of the world through a deepening
of understanding, hence creating a new worldview61. Polanyi describes heuristic passion
in two contrasting ways: “Heuristic passion seeks no personal possession. It sets out not
to conquer, but to enrich the world. Yet such a move is also an attack. It raises a claim
and makes a tremendous demand on other men”62. The enriching aspect comes from a
desire to pursue new insights that contribute to a better understanding of the world, yet
there also exists an aggressive aspect whose underlying passion Polanyi calls persuasive.
Persuasive Passion
To persuade is to convince another to change a previously-held opinion. Polanyi sees the
objective of the persuasion as changing the vision of reality of another63. Convinced of
59 Polanyi, 143. The guesses of scientists are not matters of chance. Such a guessing process can be distinguished between scientific and unscientific guesses: The former, if erroneous, can be called mistaken; whereas the latter, if erroneous, can be considered as incompetent; Polanyi, 144. 60 Polanyi, 150. 61 Polanyi, 143. 62 Polanyi, 150. While Polanyi’s description of heuristic passion as not to conquer the world but as an attack can seem contradictory, such a description can be interpreted in the following manner: Driven by heuristic passion, scientists strive to enrich the world by discovering, but not exerting control and dominance over truth in reality through a kind of conquest. The “attack” component takes place on a more personal level, as the ways in which scientists try to convince others of new discoveries can be aggressive because of the belief that such discoveries do reflect a part of reality. 63 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 150.
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the validity and value of a new discovery, scientists try to convert others to see reality
through a different lens; such a conversion is a crossing of a gap that is similar to the
“heuristic gap” that one has crossed upon a new discovery64. A worldview is irrevocably
changed through scientific discovery, and scientists try to convince others to go through a
similar irrevocable change. The case of Galileo illustrates that persuasive passion is much
more than just demanding a change in scientific opinions:
The real ground of Galileo’s conviction lay in his passionate appreciation of the greater scientific value of the heliocentric view: a feeling which was accentuated by his angry rebellion against Aristotle’s authority over science. His opponents had on their side the common-sense view which sees the earth at rest, and, above all, a vivid consciousness of man’s uniqueness as the only particle of the universe that feels responsible to God. Their craving to retain for man a location which corresponds to his importance in the universe was the emotional force opposed to the intellectual appeal of Copernicanism.65
Galileo engages in a battle that is waged not only over scientific facts, but more
importantly over a difference in worldview: Heliocentrism threatens the unique position
of the human person in the universe for which an Aristotelian system allows.
Summary of Motivations
The three kinds of passions that fuel scientists’ motivations in scientific practices can be
summarized as such: Intellectual passion affirms both the interest and value in scientific
facts that scientists encounter; heuristic passion is the wellspring of originality,
discovering new horizons through the scientific pursuit and linking such novelty with
intellectual passion; heuristic passion then turns into a persuasive one in trying to
convince others of the new vision that resulted from a new scientific discovery66. The
passions which motivate scientists can undergo a kind of transformation into what
Polanyi calls a “public” passion:
Personal participation changes from an impetuous pouring out of oneself into channels of untried assumptions, into a confident holding of certain
64 Polanyi, 150. 65 Polanyi, 152. 66 Polanyi, 159.
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conclusions as part of one’s interpretative framework. The driving power of originality is reduced to a static personal polarization of knowledge; the intellectual effort which led to discovery and guided its verification is transformed into the force of a conviction which holds it to be true – in exactly the same way as the effort of acquiring a skill is transformed into a sense of its mastery.67
The three types of passions that have previous been discussed are more “fluid”: Scientists
who are driven by a vision of intellectual beauty to pursue novel discoveries face many
uncertainties; as well, creativity and fluidity are necessary in scientists’ approach towards
experimentation. Once the scientific knowledge becomes more certain and trustworthy,
the underlying passions transform into a more solidified state: A confidence in certain
conclusions with a force of conviction. The latter scenario of solidification also serves as
a signal that such scientific knowledge can be confidently presented to a more general
audience for a dissemination of knowledge, as the passions of scientists go from private
to public. When scientific discoveries are learned through textbooks, that which takes
place in the private still happens on the public stage to a certain extent:
A theory like that of relativity continues to attract the interest of ever new students and laymen by intimations of its beauty yet hidden to their understanding: a beauty which is rediscovered every time a new mind apprehends the theory […] All true appreciation of science by the public continues to depend on the appreciation of such beauty even though sensed only at second hand; it offers an indirect tribute to the values that the multitude have been taught to entrust to a group of men whose cultural guidance they have accepted.68
Similar passions arouse when scientific discoveries are being taught to students; the
students are indirectly experiencing the fruition of scientific pursuits, as intellectual
beauty has been rediscovered and appreciated. The switch of scientists’ passions from
private to public points to the role of the scientific community and the relationship
between the persons who are a part of such a community.
67 Polanyi, 172. 68 Polanyi, 172.
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Scientific Community
According to Polanyi, the ways in which scientists interact with one another within the
scientific community are emblematic of personal knowledge. Three key aspects shall be
discussed: The relationship between the master and the apprentice; the relationship
between fellow scientists, and the role of tradition within a scientific community.
Master-Apprentice
Polanyi believes that the essentials of scientific practices can be learned by junior
scientists only “through close personal association with the intimate view and practice of
a distinguished master”69. Polanyi describes such a relationship as one between a master
and an apprentice. The relationship between J. J. Thomson and Ernest Rutherford with
the work on the atomic model, as well as the four future Nobel laureates under the
tutelage of Rutherford serve as good examples70. The relationship is characterized by the
apprentice’s learning of the master’s “personal intuitions” through the latter’s work. Such
intuitions include the ways through which scientific problems and corresponding
techniques are chosen; the ways scientists react to novel clues or unforeseen difficulties,
as well as the ways in which scientists discuss the works of colleagues or the manners in
which possibilities are speculated71.
By evoking the image of a master and an apprentice, Polanyi is also comparing scientific
practices to practices of other disciplines such as art; in fact, Polanyi considers scientific
practices as a kind of art. Some aspects of art cannot be specified in detail, and such
aspects are not passed on through explicit precepts but rather from the personal
interaction between the master and the apprentice72; similarly, “while the articulate
contents of science are successfully taught all over the world in hundreds of new
69 Michael Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 43. 70 Polanyi, 44. 71 Polanyi, 43–44. 72 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 53.
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universities, the unspecifiable art of scientific research has not yet penetrated to many of
these”73. Herein lies the connection between the master-apprentice relationship and
Polanyi’s personal knowledge: The unspecifiable aspects of scientific practices can only
be tacitly learned by the apprentice from the master. The apprentice must first believe the
master before the former can learn and know, and such a role of belief is similar to the
self-confident scientists who embark on a journey of discovery; the difference is that
while scientists are confident in themselves, the confidence of the apprentice lies in
another person that is the master74. The confidence of the apprentice in another also
informs Polanyi’s perspective that the apprentice is submitting to authority when learning
from the master75. A good master does not try to brainwash the apprentice, but rather
encourages the development of the latter’s originality76. A relationship of mentorship
exists between the master and the apprentice amidst tensions of dependence and
independence.
Scientist-Scientist
It is impossible for a scientist to have complete knowledge of the entire scientific
discipline. Regardless of the breadth and depth of the scientist’s knowledge, only a first-
hand knowledge of a fragment of the scientist’s own discipline can be realistically
expected. The rest must come from a second-hand knowledge that originated from others.
In what way does such an acceptance take place?
For each member of the (scientific) community can judge at first hand only a small number of his fellow members, and yet eventually each is accredited by all. What happens is that each recognizes as scientists a number of other by whom he is recognized as such in return, and these relations form chains which transmit these mutual recognitions at second hand through the whole community. This is how each member becomes directly or indirectly accredited by all. The system extends into the past. Its members recognize the same set of persons as their masters and derive from this allegiance a
73 Polanyi, 53. 74 Polanyi, 208. 75 Polanyi, 53. The apprentice’s submission to the master is not absolute. As the apprentice matures and gains experience, the reliance on the master also decreases. Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society, 45. 76 Polanyi, 46.
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common tradition, of which each carries on a particular strand.77
For Polanyi, what matters is the first-hand judgement of a scientist of a fellow colleague.
Realistically, a scientist can only make informed judgements about a handful of fellow
scientists. In acknowledging the work of a few scientists, a scientist acknowledges and
accredits fellow scientists as experts who are intimately involved in the pursuit and
discovery of novel scientific knowledge. When everyone is able to recognize a few others
as fellow experts, then everyone is indirectly but mutually accredited by all, and such
accreditations bind all scientists together into a scientific community. Such a process of
scrutiny and accreditation is a kind of checks and balances that maintain the integrity of a
scientist’s work and reputation. Polanyi likens such a process to a marching column
where the marchers keep and are kept in step with adjacent marchers78. The image of a
marching column illustrates a dynamic component of the scientific community: The
scientific beliefs and values of scientists can change according to novel and fundamental
discoveries. Such changes do not occur in a coordinated change of formation as if
scientists are simply taking marching orders from an authority figure; the scientific
community never marches onwards with perfect uniformity, and conflicting views always
exist within a body that marches onwards in general79.
Tradition
The mutual scrutiny and accreditation between scientists extends to the past. Scientists
acknowledge several common scientists as masters, and a mutual recognition extending
into the past indicates an allegiance to a shared tradition. Such a tradition consists of a
kind of consensus, but not one in which everyone agrees upon everything through a vote;
rather, the consensus is a trust in a body of scientific knowledge on which scientists can
rely. The relationship between the scientist and an existing consensus does not remain
static: “whenever I submit to a current consensus, I inevitably modify its teaching; for I
submit to what I myself think it teaches and by joining the consensus on these terms I
77 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 163. 78 Polanyi, 217. 79 Polanyi, 164.
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affect its content. On the other hand, even the sharpest dissent still operates by partial
submission to an existing consensus: for the revolutionary must speak in terms that
people can understand”80. The personal aspect of knowledge acquisition once again
comes to the fore. Scientists submit to and adopt a scientific consensus by involving the
scientists’ own interpretation of the consensus and believing that the consensus truly
reflects that which is indeed the case in reality. Even the most unconventional and daring
scientists necessarily affirm scientific discoveries from scientists of generations past81.
Such an affirmation remains so even if a new discovery posts a challenge to traditional
grounds of the existing body of scientific knowledge; the trailblazing scientists must
nevertheless appeal to the said tradition as a common ground with others who hold a
different opinion. Ground-breaking scientific discoveries cannot happen under groundless
conditions.
As the apprentice submits to the master, so the scientist submits to the scientific tradition;
authority functions on the level of the individual82. Scientists submit to the yet-to-be-
discovered knowledge which have been deemed as valuable; scientists recognize “the
authority of that which he is going to learn and of those from whom he is going to learn
it”83. Those who dissent from the consensus can also be considered through the lens of
authority: “Every dissenter is a teacher. The figures of Antigone and of the Socrates of
the Apology are monuments of the dissenter as lawgiver. So are also the prophets of the
Old Testament, and so is a Luther, or Calvin. All modern revolutionaries since the
Jacobins demonstrate likewise that dissent does not seek to abolish public authority, but
to claim it for itself”84. Dissenters are not simply rebelling against the existing authority,
but are trying to claim the authority in order to establish a new consensus according to the
dissenters’ own perspective.
80 Polanyi, 208–209. 81 Polanyi, 171. 82 Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society, 48. 83 Polanyi, 45. 84 Polanyi, 209.
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Summary
I have argued that when Polanyi’s notion of personal knowledge is being employed to
better understand scientific practices, scientists’ desire to pursue truth in reality – which
serves as motivation behind scientific practices – can be revealed. Polanyi’s
understanding of scientific practices requires that scientists commit to the truth that is
being sought, and acknowledge that there exists a truth that is not of the scientists’ own
design. The essential role of commitment and belief in Polanyi’s interpretive framework
not only provide an alternative to, but also presents a challenge to the understanding that
scientific knowledge is impersonal. Personal knowledge advocates for the role of
personal belief, which has often been associated with religious but not scientific matters.
Polanyi’s efforts can hence be seen as a redemption of the role of belief in the acquisition
of scientific knowledge and knowledge in general. The role of belief also extends to the
ways in which non-scientists assent to scientific knowledge.
As aforementioned, Polanyi does not have any monopoly on the study in scientific
practices. Thomas Kuhn also values the contribution of scientific practices and veers
away from a theory-centric understanding of science. Despite the common interest, Kuhn
understands scientific practices through a different interpretive framework, which Kuhn
terms “scientific revolutions”. The thoughts of Kuhn are the main topics for the next
chapter. Kuhn addresses similar topics such as the scientific authority and the motivation
of scientists, which serve as a good comparison to that of Polanyi.
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Chapter Two: Thomas Kuhn A deeper dive into Kuhn’s interpretive framework allows for an understanding of
scientific practices from another angle; namely, that scientific practices must be
understood through the lens of what Kuhn calls normal science and scientific revolutions.
I argue that scientists’ desire to resolve scientific problems as puzzles in scientific
practices reveals the inner motivations of scientists, and such motivations can act as
potential common grounds for a science-religion dialogue.
Normal Science and Paradigms
The majority of scientific practices take place in what Kuhn calls “normal science”,
which refers to the “research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements,
achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as
supplying the foundation for its further practice”85. Scientists’ acknowledgement of the
normal science-establishing foundational research can either be implicit or explicit.
Normal science sets the boundaries for scientific practices by dictating both the kind of
problems to be pursued as well as the methods to be used in such pursuits. Some
examples of agenda-setting normal science include Aristotle’s Physica, Ptolemy’s
Almagest, or Newton’s Principia and Opticks86. Scientific practices within normal
science are determined by what Kuhn calls “scientific achievements”: “Their
achievement was sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents
away from competing modes of scientific activity”, and that “it was sufficiently open-
ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve”87.
The parameters that are established by past scientific achievements ensure that further
scientific development be possible, and that scientists’ efforts and resources be
consolidated to further such development. Kuhn calls scientific achievements with the
aforementioned characteristics “paradigms”. Putting the two definitions together, normal
85 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., enlarged, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1970), 10. 86 Kuhn, 10. 87 Kuhn, 10.
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science consists of scientific practices that are established upon paradigms, which are
scientific achievements that both attract the interest of a significant number of scientists
and display enough potential for further development. Scientific practices do not take
place within paradigms that guarantee success; the success of paradigms – such as
Aristotle’s analysis of motion or Ptolemy’s computations of planetary position – need not
be fully realized before being considered as such88. Paradigms can represent a promise of
further success, and normal science provides scientists the venue for the actualization of
the promise89.
Paradigms Versus Rules
Kuhn argues that neither normal science nor paradigms influence scientific practices by
preparing a detailed list of instructions and conditions that scientists must seek to fulfil,
as scientists can follow a certain paradigm without agreeing with every details90. Kuhn
does not suggest that scientific practices are irrational and undetermined; rather, scientific
practices – when operating within paradigms – are not entirely determined by rules:
“Rules, I suggest, derive from paradigms, but paradigms can guide research even in the
absence of rules”91. The rules for scientific practices are not the prerequisites of
paradigms; rather, paradigms – as a focus of scientists’ commitment – precede the rules
and concepts92.
Kuhn lists four reasons for the priority of paradigms over explicit rules in scientific
practices. Firstly, unearthing the scientific rules that have guided traditions of normal
science is a “severe difficulty”93. When scientists seek to find the common ground for
certain research problems of interest in normal science, the commonality is found in
88 Kuhn, 23. 89 Kuhn, 23–24. Kuhn does not consider the scientific practices within normal science to be a source for new discoveries even if the products of normal science turn out to be useful on many fronts. According to Kuhn, scientific practices within normal science represent more of a filling in the blanks – or what Kuhn calls “mopping up operations” – in fulfilling the predictions of a paradigm. Kuhn, 24. 90 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 44. 91 Kuhn, 42. 92 Kuhn, 11. 93 Kuhn, 46.
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scientific achievements that have been acknowledged and passed on, but not in any sets
of rules94. Secondly, concepts and laws are never learned in an isolated manner, but
through applications. The students of Newtonian physics learn better the meaning of
terms such as “force”, “mass” and “time” when the terms are being applied in problem-
solving situations than from incomplete yet somewhat helpful textbook definitions95.
Thirdly, if a scientific community wholeheartedly accepts a certain paradigm, normal
science can proceed even without rules. Conversely, discussions and debates over rules
and theories often ensue when a paradigm is insecure. The transition from Newtonian to
quantum mechanics is marked by such debates over the general nature and standards of
physics96. Fourthly, the application of scientific rules or laws is dependent upon the
professional subspecialties. The laws of quantum mechanics can be taught to physical
physicists, but how the physicists apply the laws depends on the degree to which the
respective specialties are influenced by the laws. While quantum mechanics can be a
paradigm for many groups, some groups are more influenced by the paradigm than
others97.
The four aforementioned reasons share one key commonality: Scientific practices are not
predicated by rules, and that the rules are better understood from being applied to
scientific practices. Scientists do not form any task forces to determine what goes into
paradigms; on the other hand, paradigms do not impose upon scientists as if the latter are
automatons. In scientific practices, scientists notice both conceptual and practical tools
that help to further widen and deepen the scientific discipline. Such practices are further
elucidated as instructions and rules which serve to provide formation for future scientists.
94 Kuhn, 45–46. 95 Kuhn, 46–47. 96 Kuhn, 47–48. 97 Kuhn, 49–50.
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Anomaly and Crisis
Anomaly
As aforementioned, normal science is the terrain where scientific practices take place, as
scientists explore and articulate that which is expected to occur within the parameters of,
and hence the full implication of paradigms. What happens when the outcome of
scientists’ research does not match what is expected within the paradigms of interest,
especially after the possibility of observational, experimental or calculation errors have
been ruled out? Kuhn calls such an occurrence in scientific practices an “anomaly”98.
Wilhelm Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays serves as an example: Röntgen discovers an
unexpected glow on a barium platinocyanide screen when the discharging of cathode rays
is in process. Subsequent investigations indicate that the effect results from something
else aside from the cathode rays, and that the “something else” bears some similarity to
light99. New discoveries that emerge from anomalies bear several common
characteristics: Scientists’ awareness of an anomaly; an emergence of observational and
conceptual recognition; and a potential categorical and procedural change of paradigm
that is met with resistance100. Such resistance can be explained by the nature of
paradigms: Scientific practices that take place in normal science operates within
paradigm-dependent parameters, which include specialized usage and development of
vocabularies, concepts, skills and equipment; such a process of professionalization leads
to both a restricting of scientists’ vision and a resistance to paradigm change101. An
anomaly only appears against the backdrop of established paradigms.
Crisis and Emergence of Scientific Discoveries
An anomaly threatens the status of the existing paradigm and the normal science, both of
which help to guide scientific practices. Kuhn argues that any emergence of new theories
98 Kuhn, 53. 99 Kuhn, 57. 100 Kuhn, 62. 101 Kuhn, 64.
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is generally preceded by a period of professional insecurity as the result of a persistent
failure of the existing paradigm to provide a satisfactory answer to the anomaly102.
Examples include the unsettling of an Aristotelian worldview by Galileo’s study of
motion, as well as the birth of quantum mechanics from the difficulties surrounding
phenomena such as back-body radiation and photoelectric effect103. Such unresolved
tensions often persist for a long time within an existing paradigm, and the scientific field
of interest are said to be in a state of crisis104. A crisis is a time of uncertainty, a blurring
of the existing paradigm and a loosening of rules for scientific practices within normal
science105. In other words, scientific practices can take place both within and out of the
boundaries of the existing normal science during a crisis.
Response to Crisis
Scientists can respond to a crisis with a persistent examination of the anomaly, which
creates a competition between paradigms. Comparisons are made between the scientific
practices which take place within the existing paradigm and those which take place
within the developing paradigm; the rejection of one is the acceptance of another106. A
crisis can be resolved in three ways. Firstly, normal science prevails, as the scientific
practices of normal science are able to resolve the crisis-provoking problem. Secondly,
the crisis-provoking problem comes out on top, as the scientific practices within neither
the existing nor the developing paradigm are able to provide a satisfactory solution.
Thirdly, the new paradigm emerges victorious, as such a paradigm is able to generate
solutions to the crisis in out-competing the existing paradigm, thus winning over the
acceptance of practicing scientists107. Kuhn casts the most attention on the third option
and argues that the transitioning from the existing paradigm to the novel paradigm is a
non-cumulative process; the new paradigm neither builds upon, nor is such a paradigm a
102 Kuhn, 67–68. 103 Kuhn, 67. 104 Kuhn, 67. 105 Kuhn, 84. 106 Kuhn, 77. Scientists always lend allegiance to and operate within a paradigm. The rejection of a paradigm without taking up another is akin to the rejection of science itself. Kuhn, 79. 107 Kuhn, 84.
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better and improved version of the old paradigm: “It is a reconstruction of the field from
new fundamentals, a reconstruction that changes some of the field’s most elementary
theoretical generalizations as well as many of its paradigm methods and applications”108.
The image of a foundational reconstruction is a key point that will be revisited.
Where do scientists stand in the midst of a crisis, with the blurring and emerging of
paradigms? Kuhn cites the example of the Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli, a theoretical
physicist. Pauli’s general disposition – and a personal shift in mood and outlook – can be
discerned from correspondences written before and after the publication of Werner
Heisenberg’s paper on matrix mechanics that paves the way for a new quantum theory.
Pauli feels hopeless and dejected before the publication: “At the moment physics is again
terribly confused. In any case, it is too difficult for me, and I wish I had been a movie
comedian or something of the sort and had never heard of physics.” The pre-publication
response stands in stark contrast to Pauli’s rejuvenated stance five months after the
publication: “Heisenberg’s type of mechanics has again given me hope and joy in life. To
be sure it does not supply the solution to the riddle, but I believe it is again possible to
march forward”109. This example of Pauli also supports the understanding that a
paradigm offers a promising way forward for scientific practices.
Not all scientists undergo the same change of mind as Pauli in encountering and
identifying the emerging paradigm. In many cases, the attitudes of scientists fluctuate
regarding the existing paradigms and the corresponding practices110. Scientists’ search for
a new paradigm may seem random at times, as if different experiments are performed in a
directionless trial-and-error manner. Scientists generate speculative theories, hoping for a
successful landing that will lead to a new paradigm; if the attempt is unsuccessful, the
theories can be discarded111. During the period of transition, Kuhn refers to the ongoing
scientific practices as transitioning from normal – that is, belong to the realm of normal
science – to extraordinary, and the transition can be detected from signs such as the
108 Kuhn, 85. 109 Kuhn, 83–84. 110 Kuhn, 90. 111 Kuhn, 87.
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proliferation of competing articulations, the willingness to try anything, the expression of
explicit discontent, the recourse to philosophy and to debate over fundamentals112. Such a
transition to a new paradigm is what Kuhn calls “scientific revolution”113.
Scientific Revolution
Why “Revolution”?
Why is the word “revolution” used to describe a change of paradigms in scientific
practices, instead of simply “change”, “shift”, “modification”, or other similar words?
Does the word “revolution” capture something that the other words do not? Kuhn argues
that “revolution” evokes a sense of the political, and parallels can be drawn between the
radical changes found in both the political and the scientific. Firstly, revolution can be
understood as a growing sense of discontent regarding the inability of the existing
institution to provide adequate solutions for problems114. Secondly, the proposed changes
of scientific practices involve demand an overhaul of the existing establishment which is
met with great resistance, coupled with a kind of lawless middle period that lacks
governance115. Kuhn compares the competition between paradigms as similar to a
competition between political institutions in “a choice between incompatible modes of
community life”116. Due to such an incompatibility, progress through scientific
revolutions cannot be cumulative, even if the achievements of scientific practices in
normal science are cumulative117.
112 Kuhn, 91. 113 Kuhn, 90. 114 This sense of revolution applies to both major paradigm changes such as that of Copernicus, or more minor ones such as the discovery of oxygen or X-rays. What may be a revolution for some may not seem to be so for others; the discovery of X-rays is a major shift of paradigm for those whose research focuses on radiation theory, but not so for astronomers whose paradigms are untouched by the said discovery. Kuhn, 92–93. 115 Kuhn, 93. 116 Kuhn, 94. 117 Kuhn, 96.
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The Necessity of Revolutions
More importantly, Kuhn does not think that such a mode of competition and
incompatibility is one of the ways through which discoveries are made by scientists;
revolution is the only way:
Unanticipated novelty, the new discovery, can emerge only to the extent that his anticipations about nature and his instruments prove wrong. Often the importance of the resulting discovery will itself be proportional to the extent and stubbornness of the anomaly that foreshadowed it. Obviously, then, there must be a conflict between the paradigm that discloses anomaly and the one that later renders the anomaly law-like. […] There is no other effective way in which discoveries might be generated.118
The stark contrast between the unanticipated discovery and the anticipated result of the
existing paradigm is akin to the difference between right and wrong; the new discovery
proves the old paradigm wrong. Given the incompatibility between right and wrong,
Kuhn argues that a satisfactory explanation of an anomaly that defies the existing
paradigm implies a fundamental and necessary incompatibility. The same argument
applies to the discovery of new scientific theories:
Paradigms provide all phenomena except anomalies with a theory-determined place in the scientist’s field of vision. But if new theories are called forth to resolve anomalies in the relation of an existing theory to nature, then the successful new theory must somewhere permit predictions that are different from those derived from its predecessor. That difference could not occur if the two were logically compatible. In the process of being assimilated, the second must displace the first.119
A prominent example is the shift from Newtonian and Einsteinian physics, that Einstein’s
theory can only be accepted as right if the falsity of Newton’s theory is accepted120, and
any attempt to reconcile the two involves a fundamental change in scientists’ worldview
118 Kuhn, 96–97. 119 Kuhn, 97. 120 Kuhn, 98.
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that will destroy the distinctive character of the new theory121. Kuhn goes even further to
argue for the stark difference between two competing paradigms: “And as the problems
change, so, often, does the standard that distinguishes a real scientific solution from a
mere metaphysical speculation, word game, or mathematical play. The normal-scientific
tradition that emerges from a scientific revolution is not only incompatible but often
actually incommensurable with that which has gone before”122. When two things are
incommensurable, neither a common basis, measure nor standard are available as tools
for comparison. There are no common standards because the standards are neither raised
nor lowered, but rather changed with the changing of a paradigm123. Such a view of
incommensurability contributes to the often-futile debates between scientists who
embrace different paradigms as scientists “talk through” each other124, and Kuhn
describes scientists’ changing of allegiance from one paradigm to another as a conversion
that goes beyond proof or error125. The incommensurability between two competing
paradigms highlights a comprehensive change in scientific practices: The development of
the newer paradigm influences scientific practices by introducing a new way of
understanding and tackling a scientific problem.
121 Kuhn admits that the either-Einstein-or-Newton position does not represent the majority of the views, and Kuhn summarizes the opposition of such a position: Newtonian dynamics is still being successfully applied by engineers and physicists. Furthermore, Einstein’s theory can be used to prove Newton’s ideas in some restrictive conditions. Kuhn disagrees, as such a restriction prevents scientists from relying on the scientists’ own research and theories when entering uncharted territories, hence halting scientific development. Kuhn also doubts whether Newtonian physics can really be derived from relativistic physics. Such a view of continuity can only be achieved with a drastic change in the definition of variables in Newtonian equations: “Simultaneously we have had to alter the fundamental structural elements of which the universe to which they apply is composed.” This kind of change renders Newtonian physics un-Newtonian. Kuhn, 98–102. 122 Kuhn, 103. 123 Kuhn, 108. 124 Kuhn, 109. 125 Kuhn, 151. Kuhn has often been criticized for proposing the legitimacy of irrationality through the usage of the word “conversion”. Kuhn tries to debunk the criticism in the postscript of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, whereby the usage of the word “incommensurability” is clarified: “Two men who perceive the same situation differently but nevertheless employ the same vocabulary in its discussion must be using words differently. They speak, that is, from what I have called incommensurable viewpoints. How can they even hope to talk together much less to be persuasive.” The kind of talking through each other that I mention in the main text is what Kuhn calls a “communication breakdown”. Kuhn argues that the two scientists who operate within competing paradigms belong to “different language communities” and that the scientists need to become “translators” in order to communicate with the other. The other’s “language” – that is, the other’s paradigm – needs to be comprehended, and the scientists’ own theories need to be communicated in the other’s “language”: “Since translation, if pursued, allows the participants in a communication breakdown to experience vicariously something of the merits and defects of each other’s point of view, it is a potent tool both for persuasion and for conversion”. Kuhn, 200–203.
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Paradigm Shift as a Change of Worldview
The comprehensiveness of the change in scientific practices during a scientific revolution
is akin to a change in how scientists see the world – or, the world that pertains to the
scientists – as a whole. Kuhn likens such a change to learning to see a new gestalt: The
seeing of the new gestalt signals the abandonment of the old gestalt. Since not every
scientist actively participates in a scientific revolution, the worldview of scientists must
be re-educated as scientists learn to see a new gestalt126. Kuhn cites the discovery of the
planet Uranus as an example. Between the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,
Astronomers note the presence of a star in the position that Uranus occupies, but further
descriptions are impossible due to technological limitations. With the aid of an improved
telescope in observing the motion of Uranus among the stars, Sir William Hershel
concludes that Uranus is in fact a comet in 1781. The conclusion is disputed by Anders
Johan Lexell only a few months later, as the latter endures through fruitless attempts of
fitting the observed motion of Uranus into a cometary orbit. Lexell suggests that the
observed orbit of Uranus is probably planetary in character, and the acceptance of such a
suggestion by fellow astronomers signals a paradigm shift127. Once the planetary
character of Uranus is understood, Uranus can never be seen as a comet again.
Resolutions of Scientific Revolutions
While both competitions between paradigms and scientific revolutions may take many
years to manifest, neither competition nor revolution continues for perpetuity. How are
scientific revolutions resolved? Kuhn thinks that the changing of the minds of scientists
are very difficult even in the presence of proof, while citing similar sentiments expressed
by both Charles Darwin and Max Planck128. Kuhn does not consider such a resistance to
126 Kuhn, 112. 127 Kuhn, 115–116. 128 Kuhn is hardly alone in thinking that the minds of scientists are difficult to change. Neither Darwin nor Planck seem particularly optimistic about the prospect of scientists’ changing of minds. Towards the end of Origin of Species, Darwin writes: “Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume […] I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a
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change as antithetic to scientific progress; in fact, resistance is an integral part of that
which is scientific practice:
The source of resistance is the assurance that the older paradigm will ultimately solve all its problems, that nature can be shoved into the box that the paradigm provides. Inevitably, at times of revolution, that assurance seems stubborn and pigheaded as indeed it sometimes becomes. […] That same assurance is what makes normal or puzzle-solving science possible. And it is only through normal science that the professional community of scientists succeeds, first, in exploiting the potential scope and precision of the older paradigm and, then, in isolating the difficulty through the study of which a new paradigm may emerge.129
Resistance is part of the fabric of normal science, the necessary tenacity required of
scientists to pursue scientific interests. The same kind of attitude can be found in
scientists’ pursuits that result in scientific revolutions. Both normal science and scientific
revolutions are driven by scientists’ belief that the paradigm of choice is able to provide
satisfactory answers through the respective scientific practices. Given the personal
involvement of scientists, scientific proofs alone cannot sway scientists in a change of
opinions and minds. In addition to the superiority of the emerging paradigm in solving
scientific problems that evade the old paradigm, there also exists other factors: For
instance, there is an aesthetic component which appeals to scientists, that the theory
provided by the new paradigm is “neater”, “more suitable” or “simpler” when comparing
to that of the old paradigm130. There is also the forward-looking aspect: The favoured
paradigm is more promising in guiding and directing further research regarding problems
that remain unresolved131. Ultimately, scientists take a long time to be convinced; the
conversion of an entire group of scientists is rare, and a slow shift in the distribution of
professional allegiances to a certain paradigm is more common132. The increase of
multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. […] [B]ut I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality.” In Planck’s scientific autobiography, Planck similarly remarks that “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”. Kuhn, 151. 129 Kuhn, 151–152. 130 Kuhn, 155. 131 Kuhn, 157. 132 Kuhn, 158.
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membership in a certain paradigm leads to more research and a subsequent improvement
of the paradigm, which in turn increases the paradigm’s competitiveness until the
paradigm begins to adopt the mode of a normal science by out-competing the rival
paradigm133. Scientists’ switching of paradigms and the subsequent increase in
membership signal a change in the dominant mode of scientific practices.
While the ways in which scientific practices are conducted may change according to the
dominant theory of the day, such a change is possible only when scientists decide to trust
the new theory and subsequently modify the practices. How do scientists decide upon
which scientific problems to pursue? What motivates scientists in pursuing scientific
practices in the first place? The context of normal science needs to be examined in order
to properly understand the motivation of scientists.
Aim of Normal Science
Kuhn lists three major foci for scientific investigations within the context of the dominant
paradigm, and the three foci are never entirely distinct from each other134. The first type
of experiment focuses on scientific facts that – through the paradigm – “have shown to be
particularly revealing of the nature of things”135. Examples of the revelation of “the
nature of things” include wavelengths and spectral intensities in physics, as well as
boiling point and acidity of solutions in chemistry136. The second type strives to
demonstrate an agreement between theoretical prediction and observable fact, and the
scintillation counter that is designed to demonstrate the existence of the neutrino serves
as an example137. The third type of experiment strives to exhaust the implications of a
paradigm, an effort which involves the thorough articulation of a paradigm theory and the
resolution of ambiguities138. Examples include the determination of a universal constant
133 Kuhn, 159. 134 Kuhn, 25. 135 Kuhn, 25. 136 Kuhn, 25. 137 Kuhn, 26–27. 138 Kuhn, 27.
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such as Joule’s co-efficient139, and the articulation of quantitative laws such as Joule’s
formula relating generated heat to electrical resistance and current140. The three foci of
scientific experiments describe the objects of interest in scientific practices; however,
Kuhn thinks that the success in better articulating a paradigm through addressing the
whats does not, and cannot, account for the “enthusiasm and devotion” that scientists
show141; the motivations of scientists are to be understood through a different lens.
Motivation: To Solve Puzzles
Kuhn argues that there can be many reasons behind scientists’ being engaged in scientific
practices in the first place: A desire to be useful; an excitement to explore new territories;
a hope to find order; a drive to put established knowledge to test, and so on142. The
aforementioned reasons, however, do not adequately reflect what actually takes place
within scientists:
The scientific enterprise as a whole does from time to time prove useful, open up new territory, display order, and test long-accepted belief. Nevertheless, the individual engaged on a normal research problem is almost never doing any one of these things. Once engaged, his motivation is of a rather different sort. What then challenges him is the conviction that, if only he is skillful enough, he will succeed in solving a puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well.143
In scientific practices, scientists consider the research question of interest to be like a
puzzle, and scientists are motivated to solve the puzzle with creativity, skillfulness and
determination144; however, Kuhn is adamant about the value of scientific problems that
are viewed as puzzles: “It is no criterion of goodness in a puzzle that its outcome be
intrinsically interesting or important”145. The objects of scientific research need not
139 Kuhn, 28. 140 Kuhn, 28. 141 Kuhn, 36. 142 Kuhn, 37. 143 Kuhn, 38. 144 Kuhn, 36–37. 145 Kuhn, 36.
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possess any intrinsic value which serves as an attraction for scientists. One major
criterion of puzzles is that an attainable outcome be necessary146; with such a criterion in
mind, problems such as a cure for cancer cannot be considered a puzzle because there is
not, and may not be any foreseeable solution147. The attainable outcome also highlights
the necessary focus in scientific practices: While scientists may sincerely desire to cure
cancer, the project at hand may only entail an analysis of how the modification of a
certain protein’s amino acid sequence affects tumour growth in mice, and the scientists’
involvement may simply be the creation of the transgenic mice at one point, and the
analysis of protein-protein interaction under an in vitro setting at another. The puzzle of
interest, then, is not a cure for cancer per se but rather “how does the alteration of the
amino acid sequence affect the interaction between protein A and proteins B, C, D along
with E”. While the outcome of a puzzle needs to be attainable, how the puzzle is solved
needs not be predictable. Hence such a pursuit is a challenge to the scientists’ ingenuity
and skill.
Puzzles and Parameters
While scientists are free to choose which puzzles to tackle, such a selection takes place
within certain parameters: “One of the things a scientific community acquires with a
paradigm is a criterion for choosing problems that, while the paradigm is taken for
granted, can be assumed to have solutions. To a great extent these are the only problems
that the community will admit as scientific or encourage its members to undertake”148.
The parameters of the puzzles are determined by the boundaries which are set by the
paradigm-dependent scientific community. Paradigms provide the necessary conceptual
and instrumental tools that are needed for scientific practices149. For instance, an issue
such as “the design of a lasting peace” cannot be reduced to a puzzle form150, and
scientists have neither the vocabulary nor the tools to tackle such an issue as a puzzle.
146 Kuhn, 37. 147 Kuhn, 37. 148 Kuhn, 37. 149 Kuhn, 37. 150 Kuhn, 37.
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Moreover, the parameters provided by paradigms must also include rules which set limits
to both the kind of solutions that are deemed acceptable and the practical procedures that
are performed in striving towards the solutions151. There are necessarily limiting factors
to solving a jigsaw puzzle: There is a predetermined image of interest; the project is
limited by the very nature of the puzzle, as the jigsaw puzzle pieces must go together in
an interlocking manner until everything fits in one piece and the intended image can be
seen. While the puzzle pieces can be alternatively arranged in a non-interlocking manner
to form a contemporary piece of art, such a completed piece will not be considered a
solution152. Kuhn proposes that “rule” be more widely understood as “established
viewpoint” or “preconception”. As an example, scientists who want to measure optical
wave lengths will not build an instrument that simply correlate certain numbers to certain
spectral lines. Rather, scientists already have an “established viewpoint” in mind; that is,
the established optical theory and numbers that represent wave lengths153. Scientists’
motivation to solve puzzles requires a commitment to certain established rules that are
provided by existing paradigms. In addition to methodological commitments, there exists
a higher level of commitment involving the scientists’ worldview which Kuhn describes
as “quasi-metaphysical”. René Descartes’ influential writings give shape to the
worldview of many scientists in Descartes’ time, in that natural phenomena – and
ultimately, the universe – can be explained through the lens of corpuscularism. Scientists’
commitment to such a Cartesian worldview helps to determine the methodological
approaches taken in the scientific practices of the time154. The commitment to a particular
worldview also provides a standard for scrutinizing the scientific practices of others155.
151 Kuhn, 38. 152 Kuhn, 38. 153 Kuhn, 39. 154 Kuhn, 41. 155 Kuhn, 42. Kuhn’s discussion of scientists’ motivation in scientific practices as a desire to solve puzzles takes place within the context of paradigms during the time of normal science. What about scientists’ motivation during a crisis? Recall that the scientific experiments that lead to a crisis stem from normal science; in other words, motivations that apply during a period of normal science remain valid during a crisis. If the crisis leads to a scientific revolution, there is necessarily a period of flux in which the boundaries of the old paradigm disintegrate, while that of a new paradigm begins to take shape. How are puzzles selected during this period? Kuhn doesn’t address such a point in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but an educated guess can be taken: Since puzzles are chosen within the boundaries of a paradigm, the new puzzle is probably chosen within the still-forming parameters of the new paradigm.
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Both the motivation to solve scientific problems as puzzles and the commitment to a
certain worldview reflect a personal involvement of scientists. Scientists must decide the
kind of puzzles to tackle and the kind of worldview to embrace. Such decisions are made
whether scientific practices take place in normal science or an emerging paradigm. Such
personal involvement of scientists can become more valuable if scholars from other
disciplines – such as religion – also value personal worldviews and personal motivations
as a compass for scholarly research.
Scientific Practices and Community
The link between scientific practices on an individual and communal level is found in
scientists’ subscription to paradigms. In order that a paradigm become prominent in the
scientific community, a sufficient number of scientists must subscribe to the paradigm,
directly leading to the prevalence of certain scientific practices. Once the influence of the
paradigm reaches a critical level in the scientific community, the paradigm becomes the
standard that is followed by other scientists th1rough educational means. Students who
aspire to become scientists must study the paradigms of interest by learning the accepted
rules and standards of the current scientific practices, in order that the students both
become engaged in scientific practices and be considered members of the scientific
community156. The students are learning the fundamentals that are shared by fellow
scientists which include the specialized vocabularies, the specific theories and formulae,
the scientific instruments, the procedures of specific experiments, the acceptable
standards of results, and so on. As discussed in an earlier section, paradigms give rise to
rules, not vice versa. Similarly, scientists in training learn about scientific practices
within the context of paradigms without much explicit outlines on the characteristics of
the paradigms157. Kuhn argues that such learning is reflected in the nature of scientific
education: “Scientists, it should already be clear, never learn concepts, laws, and theories
in the abstract and by themselves. Instead, intellectual tools are from the start
156 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 11. 157 Kuhn, 46.
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encountered in a historically and pedagogically prior unit that displays them with and
through their applications”158. Scientists are educated primarily through concrete
applications but not abstract concepts.
In addition to learning through applications, Kuhn also stresses the importance of books –
such as scientific textbooks, books that popularize science and philosophical works about
science – in educating others about scientific practices159. Books, along with teachers, are
the two sources of authority from which students learn scientific theories and discoveries
that are part and parcel of scientific practices. The outcome of past scientific revolutions
are recorded in textbooks to illustrate the foundation of the current normal science160; in
other words, textbooks do not illustrate the revolutionary process through which the
current normal science comes about. When scientific revolutions take place and the
normal science is overthrown, normal science-embracing textbooks need to be rewritten.
The rewriting of textbooks continues the trend of only mentioning that which pertains to
the normal science of the day, as the content of the textbooks “inevitably disguise not
only the role but the very existence of the revolutions that produced them”161. While the
outcome of a scientific revolution is documented, taught and propagated, the process
which leads to the outcome is not, thus rendering the nature of scientific revolutions
invisible162.
Summary
I have argued that scientific practices change according to the ebbs and flows of scientific
revolution. I have also argued that scientific problems are chosen and solved like puzzles
as scientists see fit, and such a choice reveals both the inner motivation and the
worldview of scientists that can potentially act as a common ground for science-religion
dialogue. Other scholars have already taken Kuhn’s insights on revolutions to consider
158 Kuhn, 46. 159 Kuhn, 136. 160 Kuhn, 137. 161 Kuhn, 137. 162 Kuhn, 136.
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other academic disciplines in a different light, so there is potential to the appropriation of
other Kuhnian insights in an attempt to speak a common language across disciplines.
Kuhn’s insights regarding the dynamics of a scientific revolution controversially deviate
from a more conventional understanding of the formation of scientific knowledge, as
scientific practices before and after the revolution can be seen as incommensurable with
each other, and that the key pursuit in scientists’ practices comes from a desire that is
personally-driven but not knowledge-driven.
Both interpretive frameworks of Polanyi and Kuhn are grounded in scientific practices
and show promises in providing a common language in a science-religion dialogue. In
what ways are the two approaches similar and different? How do such similarities and
differences affect the ability to engage in a science-religion dialogue? Is one interpretive
framework preferable over another, and if so, for what reasons? The aforementioned
questions provide the framework of the following chapter.
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Chapter Three: Critical Engagement of Polanyi and Kuhn
In the following comparison of the thoughts of Polanyi and Kuhn on scientific practices, I
argue that despite significant similarities, a philosophical difference exists beneath the
divergence of thought between Polanyi and Kuhn with regards to knowledge, truth, and
the personal involvement of scientists. The discovery of the philosophical underpinnings
of Polanyi and Kuhn is important in setting the stage for a critical assessment of the ways
in which science can potentially interact with religion.
On Scientific Practices: Similarities Between Polanyi
and Kuhn
Motivations and Passions
Both Polanyi and Kuhn consider the personal involvement of scientists in scientific
practices to be important. Such importance is most evident in the discussion of the
passions behind the motivations of scientists.
Whereas Polanyi explicitly names the passions (intellectual, heuristic, and persuasive),
Kuhn does not; nevertheless, Kuhn speaks of “desire”, “excitement”, “hope”, and “drive”
when describing that which attracts scientists to pursue scientific practices163. According
to Kuhn, the aforementioned desires are not what ultimately motivate scientists in
scientific practices; the most fundamental desires is to solve puzzles in a competent
manner164. The solving of puzzles requires that scientists be creative, skillful and
determined165. Such descriptions compare favourably to a part of what Polanyi calls
intellectual and heuristic passion166: The intellectual passion of scientists provides the
163 Kuhn, 37. 164 Kuhn, 38. 165 Kuhn, 36–37. 166 A complete parallel between Kuhn’s ideas and Polanyi’s intellectual and heuristic passion is not being endorsed here. In fact, there are some stark differences between the two authors regarding another aspect of intellectual passion of scientists; that is, the kind of vision that ultimately attracts scientists in scientific
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necessary persistence in the scientists’ pursuit of a discovery, whereas heuristic passion
provides scientists with the drive to engage in scientific practices in a resourceful and
creative manner167. Moreover, Kuhn’s insistence that scientists must persuade others to
convert to the scientists’ own paradigm resonates with what Polanyi describes as
persuasive passion, as both authors stress that proof and evidence alone cannot change
the mind of scientists168. Both argue that the purpose of such persuasion is to convert a
scientist’s personal worldview, with Kuhn adding that such conversion is necessitated by
the incommensurability of paradigms. Intimately linked to the conversion of scientists is
the scientists’ commitment: According to Polanyi, scientists are committed to both an
independent standard – and ultimately, an obligation towards truth – that is beyond the
scientists169, and a belief that the results of the scientists’ research do indeed reflect reality
even at the risk of being wrong170. For Kuhn, scientists commit to both a personal
worldview that influences the decisions made in scientific practices, and the adoption of
paradigms either in normal science or during a crisis171. The commitment to a certain
paradigm results in the slow rate of conversion from one paradigm to another, and also
the resistance to the suggestion of a new paradigm172.
The Authority of the Scientific Community
In addition to similarities on the individual level, there are also similarities between the
views of Polanyi and Kuhn regarding scientific practices on the level of the scientific
community, with the key similarity being the authority of the community. For Polanyi,
the scientific community is made up of scientists who inherit scientific practices from
practices. The issue of scientists’ visions will be addressed in the next section when the differences between Polanyi and Kuhn are examined. 167 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 143. 168 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 151; Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 150. 169 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 63. 170 Polanyi, 310. 171 Thomas S. Kuhn, ‘The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research’, in Scientific Change: Historical Studies in the Intellectual, Social, and Technical Conditions for Scientific Discovery and Technical Invention, from Antiquity to the Present (Symposium on the History of Science (1961: Oxford, England)), ed. Alistair Cameron Crombie (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1963), 375; Martin X. Moleski, ‘Polanyi Vs. Kuhn: Worldviews Apart’, Tradition and Discovery 33, no. 2 (2006): 8–9. 172 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 151–152.
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mentor scientists and in turn the latter’s mentors from the past:
Science exists as a body of wide-ranging authoritative knowledge only so long as the consensus of scientists continues. It lives and grows only so long as this consensus can resolve the perpetual tension between discipline and originality. Every succeeding generation is sovereign in reinterpreting the tradition of science. With it rests the fatal responsibility of the self-renewal of scientific convictions and methods. To speak of science and its continued progress is to profess faith in its fundamental principles: and in the integrity of scientists in applying and amending these principles.173
The consensus between scientists is not a unanimous decision on everything pertaining to
scientific practices; rather, the consensus is dynamic with room for tensions and
reinterpretations. While the traditions that are passed on through the scientific community
are authoritative, traditions can only remain authoritative through the practicing scientists
who continue to assent to such traditions; such an understanding of authority points to the
intimate link between the individual and the communal. For Kuhn, the scientific
community is authoritative in determining the kind of scientific practices and knowledge
that are performed and propagated. Authority is shaped by the dominant paradigm that is
adopted by the scientific community. While individual scientists certainly participate in
the scientific community through scientific practices, Kuhn argues that the scientific
community is not an entity that is simply a collection of the voice of individual scientists:
When important decisions need to be made regarding the general direction of scientific
practices, the responsibility lies not on the shoulders of individual scientists but rather of
the scientific community, as if the latter takes on a role that is greater than the sum of the
parts174. The similarities between the thoughts of Polanyi and Kuhn have been well-
documented, and the two scholars clearly have an admiration for each other’s work175.
Despite the similarities, major differences ultimately set Polanyi and Kuhn apart,
revealing the underlying philosophical differences. In the next section, I discuss two key
differences: The ways in which scientific practices contribute to scientific progress, and
the teleology behind scientific practices.
173 Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society, 16. 174 Kuhn, ‘The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research’, 394–395. 175 Kuhn, 375–393.
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On Scientific Practices: Differences Between Polanyi
and Kuhn
Scientific Progress
Polanyi: Cumulative
For Polanyi, scientific community is where scientific progress takes place. Polanyi sees
scientific progress as cumulative in several ways. Firstly, tradition is the foundation of the
scientific community. Scientists are trained by mentors, who in turn are mentored by
earlier scientists. The scientific knowledge that are embedded in scientific practices are
passed on through tradition. Scientific progress can be traced through such a line of
tradition. The inheritance of a scientific tradition also includes a necessity to reinterpret
such a tradition, as well as a renewing of scientific convictions and methods176. The
constant need for renewal must be distinguished from a complete overhaul in which the
new product bears no resemblance to the inherited scientific practices. Major renewals
take place within the tradition that has been passed on. The discoveries of tomorrow are
built upon the achievements of the past.
Secondly, the scientific community has enough room to house more than just one
perspective. The consensus amongst scientists is not rigid, and the consensus is able to
handle the constant tension between discipline and originality177. Polanyi does not
elucidate how the balancing act occurs, but an educated guess can be taken based on how
Polanyi considers the interactions between fellow scientists. Scientists often disagree
with each other, and the persuasive passion of scientists can lead to a resolution of such
disagreements. Persuasive passion is necessary because scientific practices and the
generated knowledge fundamentally personal, according to Polanyi’s understanding of
personal knowledge. Persuasion takes place between two scientists who are connected in
a network of accreditation between other scientists, but not between two strangers
176 Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society, 16. 177 Polanyi, 16.
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without any previous ties. Disagreements may persist beyond the current generation of
scientists, and a resolution may only surface later. Such a delay of resolution does not
eliminate the fact that both scientists are working within a shared accreditation; the
shared commonality is the foundation of the cumulative nature of scientific progress.
Kuhn: Paradigm-Dependent Progress and Regress
Kuhn argues that scientific progress can be better understood by looking at how progress
is understood in other disciplines. In disciplines such as history, philosophy, arts and
literature, students have direct access to the works of the pivotal players of the respective
fields from past to present178, which gives the students a broader historical appreciation of
the fields of interest, and especially an appreciation for the competing ideas: “ (The
student) has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable
solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately evaluate for himself”179.
Such a perspective is congruent with Kuhn’s conception of paradigms and scientific
revolutions: In the face of competing paradigms, scientists must judge the evidence at
hand and make a personal decision to pledge allegiance to one paradigm.
Scientific progress is defined by the dominant paradigm of the time. Insofar as the
paradigm of normal science is successful in providing scientists with the tools to solve
scientific problems, the resolution to such problems can be considered as progress within
normal science180. When a crisis happens and a new paradigm begins to emerge, the
ensuing success can also be considered as progress181. In other words, there is scientific
progress in both normal science and the aftermath of a scientific revolution. More
importantly, such a progress is determined by the group of scientists who are behind the
scientific achievements, as Kuhn argues that the definition of scientific progress partly
“lies simply in the eye of the beholder”182. The beholders are the scientists who subscribe
178 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 165. 179 Kuhn, 165. 180 Kuhn, 166. 181 Kuhn, 166. 182 Kuhn, 163.
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to the problem-solving potential of certain paradigms, and the scientists inevitably
consider the success in the scientists’ own practices as progress. Scientists determine
what defines scientific progress according to the success or failure of the scientists’ own
subscribed paradigms. When a group of scientists out-competes another with a new
paradigm, a new normal science is established and the victor considers such advancement
as progress. When the group of victorious scientists are subsequently defeated by another
group of scientists because the latter’s paradigm proves to be even more successful, then
the former will consider such a happening as regress. Given the competitive nature
between opposing paradigms, Kuhn’s view of scientific progress is non-cumulative. The
present does not build upon the past; rather, the present is the victor over the past. A
scientific revolution overthrows the previous paradigm, just as a revolution overthrows a
past regime.
Continuity or Rupture?
Scientific practices play different roles in various stages of scientific progress for Polanyi
and Kuhn: While both think that scientists try to change the minds of other scientists,
Polanyi considers such confrontation as an integral part of scientific practices, whereas
Kuhn sees such an act of conversion – and ultimately the success of the conversion – as a
break from the past. Scientists either participate in a continual construction of the corpus
of scientific knowledge or a winner-take-all competition which may result in a
revolution183. The differences between the two scholars can be visualized as such:
Polanyi’s idea of scientific progress is like a system of roads that has sufficient room to
encompass disagreements and tensions between scientists; Kuhn’s idea of scientific
progress sees the paths traveled by scientists as disconnected segments that are isolated at
both ends, first by the revolution that opened the new path and then by the next
revolution that closed it. For Kuhn, the progress made by normal science in exploring the
path created by a revolution is incommensurable with what came before and what comes
after; each normal science – through the respective paradigms – has different standards
183 Granted, crisis and scientific revolutions seldom take place, and not all scientists are participants.
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and is not contingent upon the previous paradigm184.
An Evolutionary Kind of Progress
Kuhn also argues that scientific progress resembles development of a certain kind: “The
developmental process described in this essay has been a process of evolution from
primitive beginnings – a process whose successive stages are characterized by an
increasingly detailed and refined understanding of nature. But nothing that has been or
will be said makes it a progress of evolution toward anything”185. The success of a certain
paradigm – and, by extension, the success of scientists’ puzzle-solving – is illustrated by
an increasingly improved understanding of nature. More importantly, the competition
between two paradigms can be compared to the competition between two species as is
seen in evolution: The one who is more successful in solving key puzzles of interest is the
“fitter” of the two, and the former propagates the problem-solving method by setting the
standard for future generations. There may come a time of crisis in which the dominating
paradigm must be readjusted, just as a species needs to evolve to better adapt to
environmental stress. The paradigm continues until such a paradigm fails to provide
solutions to certain problems, and is rendered extinct by another paradigm that provides
solutions to solving the said problems186.
184 Kuhn’s idea of scientific progress drastically differs from the more traditional concept that progress is characterized by the accumulation of scientific knowledge, that such an accumulation depends on an independent standard that can serve as a kind of arbiter. Martin Moleski criticizes Kuhn’s idea regarding progress as such: If there is no universal criterion to evaluate scientific knowledge across different paradigms due to their incommensurability, then how can there be any progress? Moleski also rejects Kuhn’s idea of a progress that is determined by the scientific community. Moleski, ‘Polanyi Vs. Kuhn’, 16. 185 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 170–171. 186 Analogies are never completely waterproof, and at times can raise more questions than provide answers. For example, while the comparison between scientific progress with evolution does well to highlight the aspect of competition between paradigms, such a comparison also seems to assume that there is always a better-adapted paradigm on the horizon, and no paradigms dominate forever. Certainly, the more adapted of the two species wins out in the evolutionary process often enough. A species can also adapt to the environment through hundreds and thousands of generations. For instance, the homo sapiens from more than 100,000 years ago would be quite different from that of today. Can such an adaptation be compared to a paradigm? If a paradigm continues to adapt to the pertinent problem of the times to the extent that the current paradigm looks drastically different from the original version, what criteria are employed to ensure that the evolved paradigm has remained the same paradigm, or has the adapting paradigm evolved or mutated into another paradigm altogether? Can a successful paradigm reach the pinnacle of evolution and be invincible against others?
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Such a comparison to evolution highlights the importance of directionality, or a lack
thereof: “A sort of progress will inevitably characterize the scientific enterprise so long as
such an enterprise survives. In the sciences there need not be progress of another sort. We
may, to be more precise, have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of
paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the
truth”187. The implicit goal of a scientific enterprise is that such scientific enterprise and
the operating paradigm “survive”, that the scientific enterprise not be rendered obsolete
by others who operate with another paradigm; in other words, survival per se can be
considered as progress in the eyes of the followers of a paradigm. Such a mode of
survival harkens to the process of evolution, in that the survival of a species is considered
through the success or failure of the species’ propagation of progenies. Kuhn links the
evolutionary process to the lack of a telos: Just as there needs not be a goal in evolution
other than survival, scientific progress needs not be associated with a pursuit of truth188.
Polanyi and Kuhn differs greatly on whether any teleos in scientific practices is
necessary, and such a difference is the topic of discussion in the next section.
Teleology of Scientific Practices
Different Motivations
The difference between Polanyi and Kuhn regarding the teleology of scientific practices
can be clearly seen in the motivations of scientists. Kuhn argues that the motivation
which underlies all other motivations is a desire to solve puzzles in a competent manner.
Puzzles do not appear out of the blue, and scientists must decide to see puzzles as
puzzles. In other words, the motivation comes from a desire to solve scientific problems
that scientists have chosen to consider as such. Polanyi argues that the motivations of
scientists have everything to do with the scientists’ goal in scientific practices. Scientists
187 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 171. 188 In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn does not address the issue regarding truth until the last few pages. Kuhn’s move seems to be intentional, as Kuhn does not think that truth – or, the ways in which truth has been understood in scientific practices – contributes much in the Kuhnian vision of scientific practices. Kuhn, 170–173.
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are attracted by an intellectual beauty that is characterized by a contact with reality189.
Heuristic passion stems from scientists’ intellectual passion as a desire to discover such
intellectual beauty190. Equipped with a new discovery, scientists are driven by persuasive
passion to convince others of the new findings which are believed to be reflective of a
part of reality191. In the eyes of Kuhn, scientists are attracted by what stems from within;
that is, the satisfaction of solving a puzzle. For Polanyi, scientists are attracted by
something from without, a glimpse of reality which subsequently becomes the object of
scientific pursuits.
Kuhn: A Context-Dependent Scientific Practice
Are teleologically self-directed scientific practices problematic? Kuhn doesn’t think so;
in fact, Kuhn has serious doubts about the need for any kind of telos in scientific
practices, especially in how the goal of scientific practices has been traditionally
understood:
We are all deeply accustomed to seeing science as the one enterprise that draws constantly nearer to some goal set by nature in advance. But need there be such a goal? Can we not account for both science’s existence and its success in terms of evolution from the community’s state of knowledge at any given time? Does it really help to imagine that there is some one full, objective, true account of nature and that the proper measure of scientific achievement is the extent to which it brings us closer to that ultimate goal?192
Kuhn rejects an objectivity that is simply “out there” around which scientists revolve;
nature per se cannot be the goal for scientists193. On the other hand, not having an
189 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 135. 190 Polanyi, 143. 191 Polanyi, 150. 192 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 171. 193 Kuhn opposes the idea that nature is the objective standard by default after which scientists pursue, but Kuhn is not hostile towards the idea of understanding nature. For example, one of the characteristics of a paradigm is that a paradigm is “particularly revealing of the nature of things”; scientists try to bring nature and theory into closer agreement through scientific practices; scientists try to force nature to fit into a “preformed and inflexible box” that is the paradigm; an anomaly signifies some difficulties in the fit between paradigm and nature; scientific experiments seen as puzzle-solving involves a comparison between a paradigm and nature. In short, scientists explore and examine nature through scientific practices,
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objective, “out there” nature as an aim does not mean that scientific practices have no aim
at all. The aim goes from being dictated by nature to being dictated by the scientists, as
scientists decide on what problems to solve194. The success resulting from scientific
practices is not so much an explicit aim of scientists but rather a product of prevailing
against other competing paradigms. On a smaller scale in scientific practices, scientists
determine the goal; on a larger scale of paradigms and scientific community, there needs
not be any overarching goals at all.
Kuhn’s rejection of nature that is “out there” as the aim of scientific practices has another
implication, on which Kuhn elaborates in the postscript of The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions:
One often hears that successive theories grow ever closer to, or approximate more and more closely to, the truth. Apparently generalizations like that refer not to the puzzle-solutions and the concrete predictions derived from a theory but rather to its ontology, to the match, that is, between the entities with which the theory populates nature and what is “really there”. Perhaps there is some other way of salvaging the notion of ‘truth’ for application to whole theories, but this one will not do. There is, I think, no theory-independent way to reconstruct phrases like ‘really there’; the notion of a match between the ontology of a theory and its “real” counterpart in nature now seems to me illusive in principle.195
Kuhn does not envision scientific practices as contributing to the exploration of a nature
that is “really there”, an approach which Kuhn terms “ontological”. Kuhn does not deny
that nature exists, or that the relationship between theory and nature is important in
scientific practices; rather, nature must not be considered in a theory-independent manner.
If there must be some context to the topic of discussion, then a theory-independent nature
– and, by extension, truth – is a non-starter. The notion of truth does not factor into
but such an improved understanding of nature is not the explicit goal that scientists pursue. Kuhn, 25; 27; 82; 135; 145. 194 Once again, the choices made by scientists are not free of constraints, as the former depend on the parameters which are established by the dominant paradigm that the scientific community has previously adopted. 195 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 206–207.
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Kuhn’s analysis of scientific practices196. Kuhn’s understanding of truth – as either a
reluctance or indifference to engage truth – corresponds to a kind of scientific progress in
the mould of Darwin: “Science may not be moving towards greater truth; rather ‘one
damned thing after another’ as Darwin has taught us to understand organic evolution”197.
How is the context determined, then? Since the scientific community holds the authority
in establishing the criteria for scientific practices, such context may be determined by
“the collective aspirations of the community of scientists, or of its leading members”198.
Imre Lakatos makes a similar observation that truth, according to Kuhn, is determined via
a consensus from scientists in the scientific community199. If truth is context-dependent,
is Kuhn venturing into the territory of relativism? Kuhn foresees such a criticism and
responds as such: “Though the temptation to describe that position as relativistic is
understandable, the description seems to me wrong. Conversely, if the position be
relativism, I cannot see that the relativist loses anything needed to account for the nature
of and development of the sciences”200. Neither does Kuhn admit to being relativistic, nor
does Kuhn bother to explain away the criticism. If such a view is relativistic, so be it;
scientific progress continues forth. Moleski suggests that Kuhn’s denial of being
relativistic is more of a rhetorical move, as “Kuhn’s reluctance to affirm the role of truth
in the progress of science leaves him with a very stunted epistemology”201. The claim of
relativism harkens back to Kuhn’s view that whether scientific progress is taking place
lies in the eye of the beholder: Given that scientists operate under the dominant paradigm
of the scientific community, relativism takes place on the communal level: Both the
standards for scientific progress and the parameters for problem-solving are relative to
196 Struan Jacobs, ‘Michael Polanyi and Thomas Kuhn: Priority and Credit’, Tradition and Discovery 33, no. 2 (2006): 32. 197 Moleski, ‘Polanyi Vs. Kuhn’, 11. 198 Maben Walter Poirier, ‘A Comment on Polanyi and Kuhn’, The Thomist 53, no. 2 (1989): 261. 199 Lakatos also considers Polanyi as a subscriber of such a line of thought, that truth is determined by consensus. Maben Walter disagrees with Lakatos’ interpretation: For the former, while Kuhn does appear to hold the position of “truth by consensus”, Polanyi’s position – as I shall discuss in the next section – has more of an individual rather than a communal focus; or rather, the seemingly communal emphasis is grounded by the responsibility of individual scientists. Imre Lakatos, ‘Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes’, in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, Artech House ITS Series v. 4 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 92; Poirier, ‘A Comment on Polanyi and Kuhn’, 261–264. 200 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 207. 201 Moleski, ‘Polanyi Vs. Kuhn’, 19.
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the decisions of the scientific community that operates without any independent
standards. The meaning of scientific practices originates from the scientists themselves:
Scientists creatively develop a paradigm and determine what constitutes scientific
progress. Scientists are not in search of any meaning or truth that is “out there” but only
the success of the scientists’ own ideas.
Polanyi: Truth and Reality as Arbiters
The question that Kuhn tries to avoid is the most important one for Polanyi. Polanyi
argues for a clear telos in scientific practices: Scientists are in pursuit of a truth that is
independent of scientists; there is indeed a reality that is “out there”, and scientists strive
to gain an ever-improved understanding of reality through the interpretative framework
that is personal knowledge. The recurring theme in Polanyi’s thought is scientists’ pursuit
of truth in reality through scientific practices: Scientists’ motivations are driven by an
attraction to, and a desire to pursue the truth in reality; scientific progress is cumulative,
as an increase in scientific knowledge allows scientists to edge closer to the truth.
While Polanyi does see the scientific community and the more prominent members of the
community as authoritative, the scientific community per se does not wield such
authority; rather, the authority from the scientific community hinges upon the decisions
made by individual scientists through the latter’s personal knowledge. In addition to
feeling the desire to find out what is real, scientists also make a decision to pursue contact
with reality202. Pursuing reality also gives scientists a point of reference: “For Polanyi, it
is commitment to the real (to the universal criterion) that serves as the reference point,
that keeps scientists within the straight and narrow, and not arbitrary decision-making by
sanctioned authorities” (Italics original)203. Standards in scientific practices are
determined by scientists, and the scientists’ intentions make all the difference. A reference
point such as a pursuit of truth invites scientists to participate in something that is greater,
and the same dynamic of participation applies on the level of the scientific community.
202 Poirier, ‘A Comment on Polanyi and Kuhn’, 263. 203 Poirier, 263.
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Conversely, if standards are arbitrarily established by authoritative scientists, then the
reference point is the scientists, and the reference point can change according to who is in
charge. For Polanyi, the meaning behind scientific practices is sought by pursuing the
truth of reality that is “out there”, and scientists are personally invested in such a pursuit
because scientists are drawn to the prospect of coming into contact with truth in reality.
Suitable Analogy to Describe Scientists?
The difference in understanding scientific practices extends to an understanding of
scientists. Poirier offers two analogies to who scientists are in the eyes of Polanyi and
Kuhn, respectively: Polanyi’s scientists are like discoverers of truth and reality; scientific
practices are then acts of discovery since a previously-hidden reality is now
discovered204. On the contrary, scientists in the eyes of Kuhn are creators, as scientists are
people “who, through the sheer power of their creative imagination, bring forth a new
vision (i.e., a new paradigmatic order) around which they construct a world, proselytize
in its favour, and eventually succeed in imposing it on the scientific community, usually
by converting the more youthful members of the community to their way of seeing
things”205. How are the two analogies helpful in providing more insight into the role of
scientists and scientific practices? Discoverers venture into the unknown in search of
something that is already there; creators venture into the unknown to create something
that does not exist in the first place. Discoverers can be creative with the means of
discovery, but such a creativity does not change that which is about to be discovered.
Creators can also be creative, and such creativity affects both the means of creation and
the object that the creators intend to create206.
204 Poirier, ‘The Polanyi-Kuhn Issue’, 58–59. 205 Poirier, 57. 206 According to Poirier, there are two types of scientists in Kuhn’s conception of a scientific community. Firstly, there are those who fit into the category of “great scientists”, creative scientists who are able to both construct innovative paradigms and convince others to subscribe to the new perspective. Secondly, there are scientists who essentially function as “under-labourers” who – convinced of the correctness of a paradigm – perform the less exciting work of working out obscure aspects of the paradigm. Given the respective traits, “great scientists” can be associated with scientific revolutions and “under-labourers” with normal science. Poirier does not see the work of the “great scientists” in a favourable way, most probably because the “great scientists” in a Kuhnian sense do not pursue truth in reality. “Great scientists” have no foundation to ground any convictions. Hence such scientists share much in common with politicians in
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Self-made purpose or being attracted to truth in reality; self-made meaning or meaning
found in contact with reality. Are scientific practices about the scientists or something
other than the scientists? According to Kuhn, scientific practices are personal in that
scientists are both the beginning and the end: Scientists see certain situations as puzzles,
and the resolving of puzzles speaks to the scientists’ own creativity while providing
personal satisfaction to a job well done. According to Polanyi, scientific practices are
personal through the interpretive framework of personal knowledge: Scientific practices
are personal pursuits towards a reality that is beyond the scientists, and such pursuits
require that scientists incorporate the knowledge as one’s own.
While many of Kuhn’s ideas are insightful, I find Polanyi’s vision of the personal
involvement of scientists to be more convincing. Firstly, the personal aspect of Kuhn’s
view of scientific practices gets lost in the midst of scientific revolutions, as the collective
of scientists seems to diminish the involvement of individual scientists. The power of the
collective is to be expected when the analogy of choice is that of a revolution, in which
the collective has a stranglehold on the behavior of the individuals involved. Secondly,
Kuhn’s idea of a non-cumulative scientific progress which results in a fragmentation of
scientific knowledge is unrealistic. Even if scientists disagree over the extent of scientific
progress out of a difference in paradigms, such a disagreement does not inevitably lead to
an incommensurability, that the new-found knowledge cannot be considered as a part of a
greater corpus of knowledge. Polanyi’s portrayal of the scientific community is more
accommodating to different opinions: There is room for many because of shared
commonalities through the inherited scientific tradition.
When scientific practices are personal in a Polanyian sense, not only are scientists
attracted by and pursue reality; the commitment and belief that are inherent in personal
knowledge make a demand on scientists:
achieving goals through a campaign of charms; Poirier even calls associate “great scientists” with mesmerizers. While I sympathize with much of Poirier’s inputs regarding the Polanyi-Kuhn comparison, the great scientist/ under-labourer comparison is not something that I desire to bring into the conversation, as I think that the category of “creator” captures the point for the purpose of my thesis. Poirier, 56–58.
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It is the act of commitment in its full structure that saves personal knowledge from being merely subjective. Intellectual commitment is a responsible decision, in submission to the compelling claims of what in good conscience I conceive to be true. It is an act of hope, striving to fulfil an obligation within a personal situation for which I am not responsible and which therefore determines my calling. This hope and this obligation are expressed in the universal intent of personal knowledge.207
Through the framework of personal knowledge, scientific practices become a noble duty
that goes beyond the satisfaction derived from solving scientific problems as puzzles; the
corresponding responsibility provides a direction and meaning which are akin to that of a
personal calling. Such convictions are not uncommon from reputable scientists, as if there
is something attractive about the nature of the scientific work that draws such scientists to
conduct research with dedication and reverence: Such a “something” can be a greater
understanding about nature, or the truth that underlies nature. The “something” lies beyond
the scientists’ dictate. Such an attitude can be observed in many established scientists who
are authorities in the scholars’ respective disciplines208. In Kuhnian terms, the scientists
who are influential in shaping the paradigms do not go about scientific practices as Kuhn
envisions.
Summary
I have argued that the thoughts of Polanyi and Kuhn regarding scientific practices are
similar in both the emphasis on motivating passions as a driving force and the authority of
207 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 65. 208 The view that scientists are in pursuit of something greater can be expressed in a myriad of ways. Albert Einstein describes it as a religious attitude: “A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man”; John Polanyi (the son of Michael Polanyi), the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986, describes science as a search for truth; Satoshi Omura, the Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine in 2015 for the work on avermectins in treating tropical diseases, expresses a “profound respect for Nature”, and describes avermectins as “a splendid gift from the Earth”. Albert Einstein, The World as I See It (New York: Covici Friede, 1934), 5; ‘John C. Polanyi – On Being a Scientist: A Personal View’, accessed 26 April 2018, https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1986/polanyi-article.html; Satoshi Omura, ‘Nobel Lecture: A Splendid Gift from the Earth: The Origins and Impact of Avermectin’ (7 December 2015), https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2015/omura-lecture.pdf.
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the scientific community. I have argued that the thoughts of Polanyi and Kuhn regarding
scientific practices differ in whether scientific progress is continuous and whether any kind
of teleology exists behind scientific practices. I have also argued that such differences
directly contribute to the contrasting ways in which scientific practices can be personal, and
the understanding of the meaning behind scientific practices. Not only do the philosophical
differences between the two scholars depict drastically different portrayals of scientists as
either creators of meaning or discoverers of truth; the said portrayals can also serve as a
bridge for or a barrier to a science-religion dialogue. How does such a dialogue look like if
scientists are creators of meaning, and how so if scientists are discoverers of truth? Are
there any similarities between the search for meaning in scientific practices and in religious
practices? The fittingness of the interpretive frameworks of Polanyi and Kuhn with regards
to facilitating a science-religion dialogue is put to test in the next chapter, with particular
foci on the philosophical underpinnings of scientific practices such as that of progress,
teleology, and the personal nature of practices.
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Chapter Four: Science and Religion, Matters of Faith How do the thoughts of Polanyi and Kuhn regarding scientific practices contribute to a
dialogue between science and religion, as well as matters of faith? I argue that the usage
of Kuhn’s interpretive framework leads to the creation of different silos of knowledge
that discourage dialogue between disciplines. I also argue that the usage of Polanyi’s
interpretive framework enables a better facilitation of a science-religion dialogue because
personal knowledge offers both a common language for both science and religion through
an understanding of practices, as well as a common interest in the pursuit of truth.
The Silos of Kuhn
As aforementioned, other scholars have described Kuhn as a relativist due to both Kuhn’s
insistence on scientific progress as being non-cumulative and the reluctance to attribute
any notions of truth into scientific practices. While Kuhn’s consistent objection to such
an accusation may signify that Kuhn never intends to appear as being relativistic, many
other scholars have taken Kuhn’s work to be as such209. David Bloor and Barry Barnes
advocate for the “Strong Programme” in the sociology of scientific knowledge, an
approach that is highly influential in the development of the field of science and
technology studies. Bloor and Barnes adopt Kuhn’s major insights regarding paradigms
and scientific revolutions while taking an explicitly relativistic stance210. Kuhn’s
understanding of incommensurability can be taken as an example of relativism: The
209 Kuhn spends much time to counter the claim of relativism, but to little effect. Jan Golinski describes Kuhn’s unwillingness to accept the power of Kuhn’s words as that of a “reluctant prophet”: “Toward the end of his life, he voiced his revulsion at prevailing relativistic attitudes that had appropriated and (in his view) misread his work. The image of Kuhn in his last years was of an unwitting pioneer of postmodernism, a reluctant prophet embarrassed by the honours paid to him by the unashamed relativists who followed in his wake”. Jan Golinski, ‘Thomas Kuhn and Interdisciplinary Conversation: Why Historians and Philosophers of Science Stopped Talking to One Another’, in Integrating History and Philosophy of Science, ed. Seymour Mauskopf and Tad Schmaltz, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2011), 18, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-1745-9_2. 210 Barry Barnes, ‘Realism, Relativism and Finitism’, in Cognitive Relativism and Social Science, ed. Diederick Raven, Jan de Wolf, and Lieteke van Vucht Tijssen (New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers, 1992), 131–47.
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views of scientists who subscribe to competing paradigms are incommensurable because
scientists cannot come to any kind of agreement with each other. Incommensurability
leads to either the abandonment of the losing paradigm or the creation of another
specialty in order that each paradigms continue to develop according to the respective
worldviews without conflicts211. When theories and knowledge are developed under non-
overlapping paradigms, different silos of discipline are established and continue to
develop in an independent manner. For instance, scholars distill significance from The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions in ways that are independent of Kuhn’s own intents:
Philosophers focus on the notion of incommensurability, whereas historians hone into the
question of historical causality of scientific changes. Ironically, Kuhn’s text does not
bring philosophers and historians of science together; the different foci of worldviews
actually drive philosophers and historians further apart, eliminating the possibility of any
conversations. Scholars are no longer interested in working towards a grand narrative, but
rather a narrower focus in specific situations212.
How does theology fit into such a picture? While Kuhn welcomes scholars from other
disciplines to apply Kuhnian insights into the scholars’ respective expertise, Kuhn never
ventures outside of the philosophy of science. If Kuhn were to treat theology as a
legitimate discipline, theology would be one of the many silos of academic disciplines,
and one that would have very little to do with anything that can be considered scientific.
Just as incommensurability exists between different scientific disciplines,
incommensurability also exists between different disciplines in general. Can any dialogue
take place in the midst of incommensurability? To put it another way: How would
Kuhnian scientists approach the prospect of a science-religion dialogue? In the postscript
of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn describes scientists who subscribe to
competing paradigms as belonging to different language communities, and that scientists
must learn the other’s language in order to communicate213; however, the purpose behind
learning the language of the other is to convert the other to subscribe to the scientists’
211 K. Brad Wray, ‘Assessing the Influence of Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions’, Metascience 21, no. 1 (1 March 2012): 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-011-9603-8. 212 Golinski, ‘Thomas Kuhn and Interdisciplinary Conversation’. 213 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 200–202.
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own paradigm214. The spirit of scientific revolutions lives on: The goal of the dialogue is
neither to establish nor to build upon any common ground; anything that takes place
within the context of a dialogue is used with the ultimate goal of defeating the opponent.
When faced with the prospect of a science-religion dialogue, Kuhnian scientists would
either take the silo approach and treat theology as a discipline that is independent of
science, or the Kuhnian scientists would try to find a common language in order to
convert theologians to the scientists’ own paradigm. While the latter type of interaction
can still be considered as a kind of dialogue, such a dialogue is both competitive and
confrontational.
Kuhn in Theology
The previous section addresses the approach of a Kuhnian scientist towards theology;
how about a Kuhnian theologian? While theology has never been Kuhn’s
preoccupation215, some scholars have found Kuhn’s insights to be applicable in the realm
of religion.
Dirk-Martin Grube suggests that Christianity represents a paradigm shift from Judaism.
The resurrection of Christ is the anomaly that the existing paradigm – Judaism – fails to
214 Kuhn, 203. 215 In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn briefly mentions theology while describing scientific education; namely, that the narrow and rigid nature of scientific education are only comparable to the education of “orthodox theology”. Yet no explanation has been provided on what Kuhn means by orthodox theology. I mention only one other publication of Kuhn on such a topic: Kuhn’s presentation on the function of dogma in scientific research in the Symposium on the History of Science at Oxford in 1961. Kuhn describes the “dogmatism in mature science” as “a deep commitment to a particular way of viewing the world and of practicing science in it.” Through scientific education, such a commitment provides the rules of scientists to follow as puzzle-solvers. Dogmatism for Kuhn seems to equate to both a commitment on the individual level and a resistance to change on an institutional level. At no point does Kuhn try to make a direct comparison to religion or theology. Perhaps some may argue that the narrow and rigid pattern of education represents a similarity between the two disciplines. I provide two counter-arguments: Firstly, Kuhn never elaborates upon any understanding of the kind of education that takes place within “orthodox theology”, and whether Kuhn’s view actually reflects how theological education takes place is unclear. Even granting such a point to Kuhn does not diminish my second point: A comparison between methods of knowledge propagation is categorically different from saying that the contents of the respective knowledge have anything to do with each other. Kuhn, 166; Kuhn, ‘The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research’, 349.
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come to terms with216; the belief that Jesus Christ is the Messiah also links the person of
the Messiah with the description of the Suffering Servant in the Book of the prophet
Isaiah, resulting in a drastic re-interpretation of what being the Messiah entails217. Just as
scientists who subscribe to competing paradigms seem to have different worldviews, so
different worldviews exist between Jews and Christians. On the other hand, Grube thinks
that Christians and Jews are entitled to each group’s respective beliefs, thus giving
legitimacy to both in the spirit of religious pluralism218. Grube does not speak of a
winning or losing paradigm, or even a competition between the two. Grube’s approach
contradicts how Kuhn describes scientific revolutions as akin to the evolutionary process:
Evolution doesn’t simply generate diversity through differentiation; evolution also
favours the species that can better adapt and survive. A more favourable interpretation is
that the difference between Judaism and Christianity is more comparable to the creation
of another specialty, with neither party gaining the upper hand; yet Grube plays down
such an aspect of competition.
Another example is work of the historian John O’Malley, who uses Kuhn’s notion of
paradigm shifts to evaluate some of the key developments in the history of Christianity:
The reformation under Pope Gregory VII in the midst of the Investiture Controversy in
the eleventh century; the Lutheran reformation in the sixteenth century and the Second
Vatican Council in the twentieth century. O’Malley distinguishes between “reform” and
“reformation”: “Reform” represents changes that take place within a given frame of
reference, whereas “reformation” involves significant changes in principles that also
replace the ones of old219. Kuhn’s idea of paradigm shifts applies to the latter case.
O’Malley is clear about what to adapt – or not to adapt –from Kuhn, as O’Malley is
mainly interested in Kuhn’s discussion of paradigms and paradigm shifts, but not in
216 Dirk-Martin Grube, ‘Christian Theology Emerged by Way of a Kuhnian Paradigm Shift’, International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 79, no. 1–2 (15 March 2018): 186–187, https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2017.1422988. 217 Grube, 190. 218 Grube, 189. 219 John W. O’Malley, ‘Developments, Reforms, and Two Great Reformations: Towards a Historical Assessment of Vatican II’, Theological Studies; Woodstock, Md., Etc. 44, no. 3 (1 September 1983): 376–377.
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Kuhn’s idea of puzzle-solving220. O’Malley argues that a paradigm shift is evident in all
three movements, with a particular focus on the Second Vatican Council. For instance,
the drastic changes in the perceived attitude and practice that result from the Council lead
O’Malley to conclude that something more than “reform” is taking place221. O’Malley
also refers to the key concept of the Second Vatican Council – aggiornamento, or
updating – as a rhetorical understatement, since a word such as “renewal” feels less
threatening than “reformation”222. O’Malley also subscribes to the idea that goes in
tandem with a paradigm shift: The adoption of a new paradigm signals a break from the
old. To be sure, O’Malley’s view is one of the two main interpretations of the Second
Vatican Council, one that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI calls the “hermeneutic of
rupture”, with the other view being the “hermeneutic of continuity”223.
The two aforementioned examples show that some scholars do find Kuhn’s ideas to be
useful, especially in the realm of the history of Christianity and of the Church. Yet neither
are Kuhnian theologians in the strictest sense of the word: Neither Grube nor O’Malley
220 O’Malley, 377. 221 The following quote, albeit lengthy, illustrates how O’Malley sees the goal of the Second Vatican Council: “Put in the most generic terms, the aims of the Council were as follows: To end the stance of cultural isolation that the Church was now seen as having maintained; to initiate a new freedom of expression and action within the Church that certain Vatican institutions were now interpreted as having previously curtailed; to distribute more broadly the exercise of pastoral authority, especially by strengthening the role of the episcopacy and local churches vis-à-vis the Holy See; to modify in people’s consciousness and in the actual functioning of the Church the predominantly clerical, institutional, and hierarchical model that had prevailed; to affirm the dignity of the laity in the Church; to establish through a more conciliatory attitude, through some new theological insights, and through effective mechanisms a better relationship with other religious bodies, looking ultimately to the healing of the divisions in Christianity and fruitful ‘dialogue’ with non-Christian religions; to change the teaching of the Church on ‘religious liberty’ and give new support to the principle of ‘freedom of conscience’; to base theology and biblical studies more firmly on historical principles; to foster styles of piety based more obviously on Scripture and the public liturgy of the Church; to affirm clearly that the Church was and should be affected by the cultures in which it exercises its ministries; finally, to promote a more positive appreciation of ‘the world’ and the relationship of the Church to it, with a concomitant assumption of clearer responsibility for the fate of the world in ‘the new era’ that the Council saw opening up before its eyes”. O’Malley, 393–394. 222 O’Malley, 396. 223 Benedict XVI, Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia, Offering Them His Christmas Greetings (Vatican City: The Holy See, 2005), https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2005/december/documents/hf_ben_xvi_spe_20051222_roman-curia.html. The positions of both the hermeneutic of rupture and continuity have been well-documented. For a further elucidation of the respective positions, please refer to O’Malley’s as well as Lamb and Levering’s book. John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008); Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering, Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
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adopts the entirety of Kuhn’s interpretative framework, as selected parts of Kuhn’s theory
are utilized: O’Malley takes a broad stroke approach and focuses on the general
characteristics of a paradigm shift without going into the issue of incommensurability,
whereas Grube softens Kuhn’s stance on the competition between two paradigms. Neither
adopts Kuhn’s reluctance to discuss matters of truth: While O’Malley does not explicitly
engage in a discussion on truth, O’Malley is also a Catholic priest and should be
sympathetic to Jesus’ claim that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). On
the other hand, Grube values the contribution of religion and favours religious pluralism.
Polanyi: Truth, Reality and Theology
A Polanyian scientist would readily be open to a science-religion dialogue. Indeed,
Polanyi’s approach already shares some common vocabularies with religion, given that
words such as “truth” and “reality” are used to describe scientists’ motivations behind
scientific practices. Polanyi describes the backbone of personal knowledge with an
example that carries a strong religious undertone, with the thoughts of St. Augustine of
Hippo: “We must now go back to St. Augustine to restore the balance of our cognitive
powers. […] He taught that all knowledge was a gift of grace, for which we must strive
under the guidance of antecedent belief: Nisi credideritis, non intelligitis”224. While the
phrase is taken from a discussion on faith-related matters, Étienne Gilson argues that the
accompanying attitude also reflects St. Augustine’s personal experience in the search for
224 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 266. The translation of the Latin phrase is: “Unless you believed, you understand not” (translation mine). I provide my own translation for the following reason: Polanyi is citing from St. Augustine’s De Libero Arbitrio, and the original is Nisi credideritis, non intellegetis (De Libero Arbitrio, Book 1, par. 4), while Polanyi has intelligitis appearing in lieu of intellegetis. The translation employed by Polanyi is “unless ye believe, ye shall not understand”; however, Credideritis is the perfect active form of crēdō (to believe), and intelligitis is the present active form of intelligō (to understand), which leads to my own translation. Moreover, non intelligitis can also be translated into “you do not understand”, but such a translation invites the question: “What do you not understand?” This is clearly not the point, as the meaning of St. Augustine’s saying points to understanding in general. Elsewhere, a quick search on Google Scholar reveals that the said phrase has intelligetis in place of intelligitis in the majority of the available literature. Intelligetis is the future active form of intelligō, and the latter part of the phrase is translated as “you shall not understand”, which corresponds to Polanyi’s translation. Perhaps there is a spelling error on the part of Polanyi, or that the word was mis-spelt in Polanyi’s source on St. Augustine. For the sake of consistency, I provide my own translation based on what appears in Polanyi’s book.
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truth225. Elsewhere, Polanyi references a similar theme that is widely attributed to St.
Anselm of Canterbury: “Unless he presumes that the substance and method of science are
fundamentally sound, he will never develop a sense of scientific value and acquire the
skill of scientific enquiry. This is the way of acquiring knowledge, which the Christian
Church Fathers described as fides quaerens intellectum, ‘to believe in order to know’”
(Translation original)226. Personal knowledge shares similar roots with the great
theologians of old: Belief is foundational in the search for knowledge. Therefore,
personal knowledge is inherently open to a dialogue between science and religion, as
Polanyi’s epistemology applies to how both scientific and theological knowledge are
attained227. For example, personal knowledge is on display in Polanyi’s friendship with
the author and journalist Arthur Koestler, with the topics of the correspondence between
the two ranging between science, religion and psychology. Polanyi and Koestler shared
both similarities and differences in thoughts, but the friendship continued out of a mutual
respect for the other’s convictions228.
225 According to Gilson, St. Augustine tries to search for truth through reason in vain, until “[…] he discovered that faith held possession in perpetuity of the very truth his reason had been unable to grasp. In theory, then, it seems quite logical to start from reason in order to come to faith; in practice, however, is not the opposite method the better? Is it not better to believe in order to know, rather than to know in order to believe, or even in order to know? At any rate, St. Augustine’s own experience taught him that it was better, and he in turn wants to persuade us that it is so.” Étienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, Random House Lifetime Library (New York: Random House, 1960), 27. 226 Michael Polanyi, Science, Faith, and Society, 15. Fides quaerens intellectum is more commonly translated as “faith seeking understanding”, which is consistent with quaerens being the present active participle of quaerō. 227 The consideration of Polanyi’s contribution to a dialogue between science and religion is founded upon overlaps in epistemologies. Such an epistemological perspective is not the only way to perceive the said dialogue. In fact, some scholars propose that the focus should not be cast upon issues of knowledge and truth, but rather a sociological or anthropological consideration of science and religion. According to such scholars, the key conflicts between science as religion lies not in epistemology but rather in sociology or anthropology. Such a perspective lies beyond the scope of the chapter, but Polanyi’s epistemology remains relevant at least through the sociological lens, as personal knowledge is grounded upon practices. John H. Evans and Michael S. Evans, ‘Religion and Science: Beyond the Epistemological Conflict Narrative’, Annual Review of Sociology 34, no. 1 (2008): 87–105, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.34.040507.134702. 228 Lee Congdon, ‘Believing Unbelievers: Michael Polanyi and Arthur Koestler’, in Emotion, Reason and Tradition: Essays on the Social, Political and Economic Thought of Michael Polanyi, ed. Struan Jacobs and R. T. Allen (Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2005), 21–40, http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0418/2004012170.html.
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Vocation
With conviction comes a responsibility towards the object of conviction. Polanyi’s argues
that the personal involvement and the responsibilities of scientists are akin to that of a
personal calling, or a vocation. Scientists are responsible for the pursuit of the truth and
to ensure the validity of the scientific work. The vocation of scientists can readily be
compared to the idea of a religious vocation. I hereby focus on simply one aspect of the
Christian vocation in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s The Christian State of Life. Von Balthasar
describes the calling of Christians as a call to love, and the criterion of such a love is not
determined by Christians, but rather by the love of the incarnate God: “This is my
commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12)229. Such a call
to love makes a strong demand:
For this love to which we are called is not a circumscribed or limited love, not a love defined, as it were, by the measure of our human weakness. It does not allow us to submit just one part of our lives to its demands and leave the rest free for other pursuits; it does not allow us to dedicate just one period of our lives to it and the rest, if we will, to our own interests. The command to love is universal and unequivocal. It makes no allowances. It encompasses and makes demands upon everything in our nature: “with thy whole heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.230
The demand of such a calling considered in a Christian manner is not compartmentalized,
because love cannot be compartmentalized; indeed, a calling to love affects the whole
person, as love “encompasses and makes demands upon everything in our nature”. When
considered through the lens of love, a Christian calling gives a person a definitive
orientation. Since love serves as the foundation, a Christian calling does not impose in an
oppressive way: “The more intimately one is involved in love, the more his love comes to
bear the inner form of a vow in which he exchanges his freedom from bonds for the bond
of love. Thus the bond that seemed to him, in the beginning, to be exactly the opposite of
the freedom of love, to be a burden and a duty, appears now to be ever more clearly
229 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Christian State of Life (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 26. 230 Von Balthasar, 27.
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identical with the freedom of love”231. The wish of the beloved is a command for the
lover: I want to do it; I must do it, and I shall freely do it because I love her. Love as a
gift of self may have the appearance of a loss of freedom, but love as such paradoxically
grants freedom. The command to love feels less and less like a duty, but more and more
like a second nature.
Points of convergence are already apparent despite a rough sketch of the nuanced
thoughts of von Balthasar on the Christian vocation. Firstly, there is the level of
engagement in a calling: The all-encompassing nature of a Christian vocation that is
characterized by a giving of self can be compared to the involvement of the person in
Polanyi’s framework of personal knowledge, as “we take in the object as a part of us and
we pour ourselves out into it”232. Both vocations call for an opening and giving of self.
Secondly, responsibility comes with being called. Both Polanyi and von Balthasar speak
of a kind of obligation that comes with a calling. While von Balthasar nuances the
explanation of such an obligation through the lens of love and freedom, Polanyi describes
the obligation of scientists through the lens of duty. While Polanyi does not describe
scientists’ relationship with the object of scientific practices in the language of love,
Polanyi does speak of the passionate nature of scientific practices: Scientists are attracted
to a kind of beauty that arouses the intellectual passion of scientists233. Similarly, both
beauty and truth – along with goodness – are the transcendentals that are found in
creatures and reflect the Creator God who is perfect beauty, truth, and goodness234.
While Polanyi’s corpus of work does include some musings on theology, the chosen
focus lies in the contribution of Polanyi’s epistemology to theology. The decision to not
directly tackle Polanyi’s opinions on religion is twofold: Firstly, Polanyi’s writings on
religion takes up a very small portion of Polanyi’s corpus, and the focus of my thesis lies
in Polanyi’s writings on scientific practices. Secondly, Polanyi’s exact stance on matters
231 Von Balthasar, 39. 232 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 60. 233 Polanyi, 135. 234 The Holy See, ‘Catechism of the Catholic Church’, 41, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PC.HTM.
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of religion is difficult to pinpoint:
Because Polanyi was very reserved about his religious commitments, it is sometimes difficult to determine exactly where he stood on theological issues. There are ambiguities in his writings which allow strong theistic interpretations (Gelwick, Scott, Torrance, Apczynski, Bulles, and others) as well as atheistic interpretations (Grene, Prosch, Wetherick, Weightman, and others). Because of Polanyi’s lack of formal training in theology and because of his independence from any particular Christian tradition, it may be somewhat unfair to expect precision and clarity from him in his reflection on religious issues.235
Since Polanyi’s own theological opinions can be a moving target, I choose to focus on the
interpretation of Polanyi by trained theologians236. Indeed, the late Avery Cardinal Dulles
shares the same opinion: “Polanyi’s value for theology lies less in what he explicitly
stated about theological questions than in the transfer value of what he had to say about
science. It was in the field of science, not theology, that he spoke with special
authority”237. I thus turn to Dulles and Moleski in exploring what a Polanyian theologian
is like.
Personal Knowledge and Theology
While the key role of belief in Polanyi’s epistemology may present an obstacle to
scholars who are allergic to the word “belief” for one reason or another, Polanyi’s
interpretive framework is a natural ally to scholars who values the role of belief. With
Polanyi’s epistemology, both theology and science share a similar epistemological
grounding in virtue of a similar method in knowledge acquisition238. The shared
epistemological foundation can also partly explain the aforementioned pursuit of truth.
235 Martin X. Moleski, Personal Catholicism: The Theological Epistemologies of John Henry Newman and Michael Polanyi (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 142. 236 Moleski also notes that the employment of the same epistemology may yet result in different theologies; indeed, such is the case in Moleski’s comparing the epistemologies and theologies of John Henry Cardinal Newman and Polanyi, respectively. The theological nuances are mainly discussed in the fourth chapter and the conclusion of Moleski’s book, Personal Catholicism: The Theological Epistemologies of John Henry Newman and Michael Polanyi, Moleski, 139–169. 237 Avery Dulles, ‘Faith, Church, and God: Insights from Michael Polanyi’, Theological Studies 45, no. 3 (1 September 1984): 550, https://doi.org/10.1177/004056398404500306. 238 Moleski, Personal Catholicism, ix.
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Dulles remarks that Polanyi speaks “in almost the same terms” as John Henry
Newman239, and Moleski has compared in great detail Newman’s notion of the illative
sense with Polanyi’s personal knowledge240.
As the role of belief is influential in Polanyi’s conception of a scientific community, a
similar influence can also be seen in a religious community, namely the Church: The
members’ trust in the authority of the community’s leaders is essential in the transmission
of knowledge through practices. Dulles sees the content of such a transmission as more
than theological knowledge, but rather the transmission of the Christian revelation:
“Applied to the Church, Polanyi’s principles would indicate that adherence to Christian
revelation is inseparable from adherence to the Church and trust in her leadership to
uphold and transmit the revelation”241.
Similar to Maben Poirier’s analogy of an explorer to describe Polanyi’s vision of a
scientist’s identity, Dulles also takes up the same analogy in comparison to the Church:
“The Church is, to be sure, committed to preserving a precious patrimony handed down
in Scripture and tradition, but she must continually rethink and re-articulate her faith in
relation to new sociocultural situations and in relation to a growing body of human
knowledge. The theological community, as a kind of intelligentsia of the Church, could
perhaps be designated as a society of explorers”242. The image of the explorer serves as a
counterbalance to that of a community who is sustained by authority and assent:
Exploration implies a venturing into the unknown and a stretching of boundaries,
whereas authority implies guidelines and the maintenance of order. Dulles argues that the
Church has room for both exploration and authority, and such an image provides an
operating milieu for theologians. Moleski describes the tension between creativity and
stability as such: “As Polanyi showed, the way to make fresh, new discoveries that
transform the scientific tradition is first to dwell within the tradition, absorbing the tacit
vision by assimilating the articulate elements into one’s own interpretative framework.
239 Dulles, ‘Faith, Church, and God’, 538. 240 Moleski, Personal Catholicism. 241 Dulles, ‘Faith, Church, and God’, 540. 242 Dulles, 544.
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The only way to contribute to Christianity’s future is to embrace its past and present”243.
In both the scientific community and the Church, transformation comes from within.
Such a view on change is unsurprisingly contrary to that of John O’Malley, the latter of
whom favours a more fundamental change of vision – and more importantly, a break with
the past – that is more akin to Kuhn’s conception of a revolution.
From Scientific to Religious Practices
One of the more unique contributions of Polanyi’s epistemology to religion and theology
can be seen through the lens of “practices”: Just as a better understanding of scientific
practices can debunk the myth that scientists simply follow certain precepts, a better
understanding of religious practices can debunk the myth that believers live their lives
through a rigid following of certain rules. Religious practices touch upon all aspects of the
life of faith such as the sacraments, matters of devotion, and the teachings of the Church.
Religious practices can be engaged on an impersonal and objective level, in which matters
of faith are treated in a detached manner, keeping a critical distance between matters of
faith and the believers. Conversely, religious practices can be engaged in a purely
subjective manner, in which believers become sole arbiters of values regarding matters of
faith without any consideration of other pre-established criteria. If religious practices are to
be considered through a Polanyian lens, the key issue is that of personal appropriation:
Christianity, even more than the scientific community, needs mature believers who have personally appropriated the patrimony and who can transmit it by example and formative influence. What Polanyi said about scientific apprenticeship applies a fortiori to Christian discipleship, which involves a far more comprehensive dependence of the novice upon the master. Although Polanyi did not specifically address the question of religious education, his statements about scientific education may be taken as an implicit warning against the tendency to transfer the matrix of religious education from the family and the home to the school, considered as an academic institution. If Polanyi was correct, religious faith cannot ordinarily be transmitted by formal instruction in the impersonal situation of the classroom, though such instruction may help one to understand and cherish the faith that one has.244
243 Moleski, Personal Catholicism, 186. 244 Dulles, ‘Faith, Church, and God’, 541.
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Christian apprenticeship is akin to scientific discipleship: A personal appropriation of
faith is of utmost importance, as believers become formator for others in ways that go
beyond formal instructions. Religious practices are based on such a personal
appropriation of faith. Dulles’ observation of the transfer of religious education from the
home to the school is thought-provoking: In a school, religious education takes the form
of a class. While the possibility of the teachers being good Christian examples cannot be
dismissed, matters of faith are both distilled and compartmentalized into one of many
school subjects. Religious education may still take the form of the parents or
grandparents instructing the children; such an education at home, however, does contain
an extra dimension: Children are in constant contact with the parents or grandparents.
Matters of faith are expressed through family devotions, customs, or simply through a
Christian approach to life that quietly but assuredly bears the joys and sorrows through a
trust in the Lord. Religious practices communicate, teach, and transmit aspects of the
faith on a personal level, from the ones whose faith are better appropriated to others
whose faith are not as well appropriated. The transmission of religious practices can take
place through an intentional teaching moment, an observation of a living example or a
personal encounter. Polanyi’s idea of incorporating something external – be it a tool or a
concept – into the person can be a helpful guide: Matters of faith are not simply external
matters that can be filed away in the back of the mind to be recalled and applied at the
right moment; matters of faith are incorporated and become a part of the person.
Religious matters are practiced without being noticed, just as the grip of a hammer is not
the focal awareness in an act of hammering a nail, and that the hammer is being used an
extension of the person.
A personal example helps to better illustrate the correlation of religious practices and
personal appropriation of faith. The relic of St. Francis Xavier went on a cross-Canada
tour in January of 2018, and the relic made an appearance at the parish where I served as
a deacon on Sundays. Thousands of pilgrims had to queue up outside of the church, and
the accumulated wait for venerating the relic being two hours in total. I spent the entire
afternoon talking to queued-up pilgrims. I noticed that the pilgrims were very conscious
about not being at the church to worship the relic as if an object took the place of God,
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and that the pilgrims treated the long wait in line as simply a part of the pilgrimage. The
pilgrims were aware that the purpose of the pilgrimage was to ask for intercessory
prayers from the saint through the veneration of the relic. The pilgrims understood what
“communion of saints” meant in practice. The pilgrims understood that the grace of God
operates through the physical reality. While some materials from catechism or high
school religion classes might have been retained, the pilgrims articulated a theological
understanding in personal and unique ways, indicating a personal appropriation of being
Catholic. I also consider such a personal appropriation of faith through practice as an
example of the sensus fidelium, the senses of the faithful.
Another example of the personal nature of religious practices can be seen from the
apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia by Pope Francis, particularly pertaining to the role
of the family in Chapter 7. Francis refers to the family as “the first school of human
values”245. More importantly, Francis highlights the importance of having good personal
examples in the passing on of values: “Values are best embodied in a few exemplary
persons, but also realized imperfectly and to different degrees in others”246. The image of
persons as embodied values bears a striking similarity to that of scientists as persons who
have embodied learning and technical training. The degrees to which each person
embodies values vary, just as the degrees to which each scientist embodies scientific
training. When matters of moral instructions are considered within the context of a
family, parents are the primarily responsible for being the embodiment of values. Such a
responsibility is carried out through the religious practices of parents:
Parents rely on schools to ensure the basic instruction of their children, but can never completely delegate the moral formation of their children to others. A person’s affective and ethical development is ultimately grounded in a particular experience, namely, that his or her parents can be trusted. This means that parents, as educators, are responsible, by their affection and example, for instilling in their children trust and loving respect.247
245 Francis, ‘Amoris Laetitia: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on Love and Family’, The Holy See, 19 March 2016, http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia_en.pdf, 274. 246 Francis, 272. 247 Francis, 263.
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Formalized education cannot replace personal examples; the family remains the primary
venue of formation. Parents are the primary educators through living examples, and
parents need to take ownership of such a responsibility. By delegating such a
responsibility to schools or other education programs – and more importantly, a lack of
experiencing of values thereof at home – turns formalized education into a disembodied
experience that lacks conviction. Children must learn from parents both through words
and practice, with an emphasis on the latter: “It is essential that children actually see that,
for their parents, prayer is something truly important. Hence moments of family prayer
and acts of devotion can be more powerful for evangelization than any catechism class or
sermon.”248 The family is more than just a school of values but also a school of the heart
through the joys and struggles of life. Such a proposed way of formation is not an either-
or scenario; the transmission of faith through the family does not negate the role of
formal education and teaching. While a disposition to “put the teachings into practice” is
an important part of a personal appropriation of values, putting teachings into practice
remains only a part of a more holistic approach. There is more to faith than having strong
convictions towards a list of precepts:
The institutional dimension of the Church is not the enemy of the personal dimension; the structure springs forth from the Person of Jesus. It is all too easy for both Catholics and non-Catholics to focus on subsidiary elements of the Church (dogma, sacraments, discipline) at the expense of the whole, but that does not mean that we can discard the subsidiaries at will. Memorizing a physics textbook is not enough to produce a good scientist; memorizing the catechism of the Church is not enough to produce a personal relationship with Jesus. In each case, the data is insufficient without a personal reorganization, a flash of insight, the opening of the eyes of the mind and heart to a new vision of reality, a discovery that transforms the person from within.249
Polanyi’s insight on the personal nature of knowledge is particularly important not solely
because religious practices can be understood on an epistemological level with a
248 Francis, 288. 249 Moleski, Personal Catholicism, 186. Moleski is not referring to the focal-subsidiary difference in human awareness when the word “subsidiary” is used in this quote; rather, Moleski refers to the whole-subsidiary difference. When the whole is the focus, the parts fall into the subsidiary awareness. The focus can also be diverted onto the subsidiaries (that is, shifting subsidiary awareness into a focal awareness, with the object being the subsidiaries of the whole), and such a shift can be misleading to the extent that the whole is forgotten. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 57–58.
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Polanyian framework; the framework resonates with the life of faith because the
foundation of faith is a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, an encounter through which
the lives of believers are transformed.
Summary
I have argued that Kuhn’s approach does not foster a dialogue between science and
religion because of Kuhn’s compartmentalization of disciplines and the reluctance to
discuss matters with an eye towards truth. I have argued that Polanyi’s approach is more
conducive to a science-religion dialogue given the insistence of the value of truth in
Polanyi’s epistemology, as well as acknowledging the personal nature of the vocation of a
scientist. I have further argued that Polanyi’s interpretive framework can be applied to
understand religious practices as a personal appropriation of the faith, turning the
interpretive framework into a common ground between science and religion. The starting
point of a science-religion dialogue has often been the respective content of the
disciplines. The comparison between Polanyi and Kuhn illustrates that such a dialogue
can be re-imagined by beginning from the standpoint of practices. The great advantage of
adopting Polanyi’s understanding of personal knowledge is that such an adoption
bypasses the customarily perceived obstacles of a dialogue between science and religion
by providing both a common means and end: Scholars from both disciplines are in search
of a truth that are independent of the scholars’ own arbitration, and the ways in which
knowledge is learned and appropriated take place through practices in both a scientific
and a religious setting. The link between scientific and religious practices is found within
the person who engages in such practices.
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Conclusion
I have argued that different understandings towards scientific practices can either make a
science-religion dialogue to be more constructive or confrontational. I have argued that
Polanyi’s conception of personal knowledge provides a more helpful framework because
personal knowledge serves as a common cognitive framework for both scientific and
religious practices. The framework of personal knowledge acts not only as a bridge
between science and religion, but also as a useful tool to better understand religious
practices. Practices – both scientific and religious – are primary means to teach and
transmit knowledge, and practices reveal inner motivations of practitioners. When
scientific and religious practices are considered in real life through Polanyi’s personal
knowledge, the ideological differences that seem to prevent opportunities for dialogue are
nowhere to be found, eliminating the perceived incompatibility between science and
religion.
Moreover, the Polanyian framework contextualizes scientific practices among the general
field of knowledge. In the book Science as Salvation, Mary Midgley succinctly
underscores the importance of context: “We do not need to esteem science less. What we
need is to esteem it in the right way. Especially we need to stop isolating it artificially
from the rest of our mental life”250. The isolation of science disconnects science from
other disciplines of knowledge, with the former sometimes appearing as the most
superior form of knowledge. Like science, disciplines such as history and language are
attempts to both understand the world and to articulate such an understanding. Polanyi’s
theory of personal knowledge further develops Midgley’s thoughts by acting as a
common framework that unites the different ways of understanding the world. Such a
contextualization both retains the importance of science and avoids over-glorifying
science as the only meaningful mode of knowledge.
250 Mary Midgley, Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and Its Meaning (London ; New York: Routledge, 1992), 37.
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The involvement of the person in scientific practices also reveals other ramifications.
Polanyi stresses a personal commitment within the framework of personal knowledge in
general, and in scientific knowledge in particular. How is such a personal commitment
applicable to a scientific technology that can be seen as an extension of scientific
knowledge? Polanyi understands technology as applicable knowledge251, and sees a sharp
divide between science and technology252; Polanyi is critical of technology because of the
utilitarian motive that underlies the latter253. While Polanyi neither sees technology and
science as reconcilable, nor does Polanyi provide any remedies to such a perception of
technology, can a responsible usage of technology be envisioned through Polanyi’s
theory of personal knowledge, just as religious practices have been re-imagined through
the lens of personal knowledge?
The personal commitment that is required of scientists in the journey to discovery can be
traced back to scientists’ desire to pursue what is true in reality254. The pursuit of truth
can be considered as being a part of a greater pursuit of the transcendentals that is truth,
goodness and beauty. Can technology possibly be re-imagined as being guided by
scientists’ desire of truth, goodness and beauty? Such an approach is drastically different
from one that is utilitarian. The Polanyian approach requires that scientists be bound by a
pursuit of something that is greater than the scientists. The same can be applied to such
an approach towards technology, that the scientists’ pursuit be one that is motivated by
something greater – that is, something that touches upon goodness, truth and beauty –
rather than gaining an advantage over others. With such a motive, scientists are also
called to be responsible in scientific pursuits. Responsibility necessarily carries an ethical
dimension, and such a dimension can be informed by a theological ethics that seriously
takes the transcendentals into account. While much has been written on the ethics of the
products of technology, much less has been done with examining the possible redemption
of the technological process from discovery to production, particularly through the
251 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 175. 252 Polanyi, 178. 253 Polanyi, 180–182. 254 Polanyi, 135.
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experience of the scientist. Polanyi’s understanding of personal knowledge can provide
the tool for such a possibility.
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