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Michael Polanyi (1891–1976)

Polanyi showed that knowing always exceeds what can be said — and that this is not a defect but a condition of all understanding. “We can know more than we can tell.” His indwelling — extending the self into tools and practices until they become part of perception — sits alongside Merleau-Ponty’s habitual body as a case for knowledge as lived, not detached. His republic of science — coordination through mutual adjustment, not central planning — anticipates Ostrom’s polycentric governance. And his ontological emergence insists on genuinely irreducible higher levels. SPLectrum reads its account of the lived and the shared in Polanyi’s company.

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976). Hungarian-born physical chemist turned philosopher. He worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin before emigrating to Manchester in 1933 to escape Nazism, where he held a chair in physical chemistry — then switched to a personal chair in social studies in 1948, an extraordinary mid-career disciplinary change. His brother Karl Polanyi (The Great Transformation) was an influential political economist; his son John Polanyi won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1986). Polanyi argued that all knowledge rests on a foundation that cannot be fully articulated. “We can know more than we can tell.” The knower is not a detached observer but a participant — committed, embodied, shaped by the tradition in which they learned to see.

Key concepts

Tacit knowledge. The knowledge that resides in practice and cannot be made fully explicit. A cyclist cannot articulate the physics of balance, a diagnostician cannot reduce their judgment to rules, a native speaker cannot state the grammar they follow. The tacit dimension underlies all knowing — even the most formal and explicit knowledge depends on skills, perceptions, and commitments that remain unarticulated.

From-to structure of knowing. We attend from subsidiary clues to a focal target. A pianist attends from the feel of the keys to the music. A scientist attends from instruments and data to the pattern they reveal. The subsidiaries are not noticed in themselves — they are indwelt, functioning as extensions of the knower. To focus on the subsidiaries is to lose the focal meaning.

Indwelling. To know is to dwell in the particulars — to interiorise tools, concepts, and practices until they become part of how you perceive. A blind man’s stick is not an object he observes; it is a means through which he feels the pavement. All knowledge involves this kind of extension of the self into the world.

Personal knowledge. Knowing is a personal act — it involves commitment, risk, and responsibility. The knower stakes a claim: “I believe this to be true.” This is not subjectivism — personal knowledge is answerable to reality. But it cannot be reduced to impersonal rules. For Polanyi, the pretence of detachment is itself a distortion.

Emergence. Polanyi argued for ontological emergence — genuinely irreducible higher levels, against both reductionism and vitalism. Living organisms, minds, and societies operate according to principles that cannot be derived from the physics of their components. The boundary conditions at each level are left open by the level below. This connects to tacit knowledge: the higher level integrates what the lower level cannot articulate.

The republic of science. Scientists work within a community held together not by central direction but by mutual adjustment — each pursuing their own problems while attending to what others are doing. Coordination emerges from shared commitment to the same standards, not from planning. Polanyi developed this position partly in response to the 1930s–40s movement for centrally planned science in Britain (J.D. Bernal and others argued that science should be directed toward social needs). For Polanyi, this was a fundamental misunderstanding: you cannot plan discovery.

Where Polanyi stops

Polanyi showed that knowing is personal, tacit, embodied — but he kept the knower individual. His republic of science describes mutual adjustment, not the constitution of shared reality through language. How the tacit becomes shared, how communities build a vocabulary that mediates between what each member knows privately and what the group holds in common — these are not his questions. His from-to structure describes how one subject integrates clues; SPLectrum asks how subjects integrate with each other. And his emergence, though powerful, stays ontological — it does not address how higher levels are constituted linguistically. SPLectrum takes Polanyi’s tacit dimension seriously and asks: what happens when tacit knowledge meets shared language?

Key works

See also: The seed and Philosophy · The seed, Privacy and Decentralisation