The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Struan Jacobs
*Polanyi’s presagement of the incommensurability
concept
Studies in History and Philosophy
of Science
33
(2002), 105-120
|
Content |
Kuhn and Feyerabend have little to
say about the thought of Michael Polanyi, and the secondary literature on
Polanyi’s relation to them is meagre. I argue that Polanyi’s view, in
Personal knowledge and in other writings, of conceptual frameworks
‘segregated’ by a ‘logical gap’ as giving rise to controversies in science
foreshadowed Kuhn and Feyerabend’s theme of incommensurability. The similarity between the thinkers is, I
suggest, no coincidence
Were Kuhn and Feyerabend influenced
in their analysis of science by Michael Polanyi? Their respective principal works each
cite Polanyi once (Kuhn, 1962, p. 44 n. 1; Feyerabend, 1975, p. 166). Among the few thinkers to comment on
Polanyi’s effect on Kuhn is MacIntyre (1980, p. 67), who states that Kuhn was
‘indebted’ to Polanyi for his account of science but that ‘Kuhn nowhere
acknowledges any such debt’. [1] Hoyningen-Huene (1993, p.119 n. 269 and text) took umbrage at MacIntyre’s
*Faculty of Arts, Deakin
Untversity,
E-mail
address: swjacobs@deakin.edu.au
(S. Jacobs).
1. As can be seen from my previous
sentence in the body of the article, MacIntyre’s remark is not quite correct; it
is, however, close to the mark. Kuhn refers to Polanyi once in The
structure of scientific revolutions, praising his account of tacit
knowledge, and once in his essay collection The essential tension (Kuhn,
1977, p. 262). Puller (1992, p.
260) addresses a similar view to that of MacIntyre concerning Polanyi’s impact
on Kuhn’s writing ‘it is not hard to see that Kuhn owed more to Polanyi than the
couple of footnotes to Personal knowledge would
suggest’.
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thinly veiled allegation that Kuhn
had plagiarised from Polanyi. Nevertheless it is indicative of the
common tendency to ignore, rather than to explore, whether Polanyi contributed
to Kuhn’s thought that Hoyningen-Huene mentions Polanyi on only two pages of his
monograph on Kuhn and cites no text of Polanyi in its extensive bibliography
(25-odd pages). [2]
In this paper I argue that Polanyi
presaged Kuhn and Feyerabend’s motif of incommensurability. The paper is motivated by a concern to
shed light on this neglected [3] aspect of
Polanyi’s writing, examining an important moment in the history of one of the
major metascientific themes in recent decades.
Kuhn (1983, pp. 669, 684 n. 2) has
noted that he and Feyerabend independently introduced the term
‘incommensurability’ into the ‘philosophy of science… in 1962’. Kuhn is vague on how he acquired the
concept of incommensurability. He
recalls that reading Aristotle in 1947 proved ‘decisive’ for him in
disclosing
a global sort of change in the way
men viewed nature and applied language to it, one that could not properly be
described as constituted by additions to knowledge or by the mere piecemeal
correction of mistakes. That sort
of change was shortly to be described by Herbert Butterfield as ‘putting on a
different kind of thinking-cap,’ and puzzlement about it quickly led me to books
on Gestalt psychology and related fields. While discovering history, I had
discovered my first scientific revolution… (Kuhn, 1977, p.
xiii)
Kuhn’s footnote, in this case,
records that his ‘own understanding of the transformation of modern science’
was, like that of Butterfield, ‘greatly influenced by the writings of Alexandre
Koyré, especially his Etudes galiléennes (Paris, 1939)’. Was Kuhn effectively in possession of the
concept of incommensurability when he wrote The Copernican revolution
(1957)? Heilbron (1998, p. 508)
suggests an affirmative answer, but Westman (1994, pp. 83-85) has carefully
argued that Kuhn’s account of scientific revolution in The structure of
scientific revolutions is more radical than is his account in the Copernican
study. In The Copernican
revolution, writes Westman (1994, p. 83), ‘scientific facts’ for Kuhn
‘appear to exist independently of concepts. Theories can organize facts, but they do
not inevitably determine the character of observation. Thus in a revolution there is no change
in the epistemological status
2 Again, Westman (1994) and Krige
(1980) never mention Polanyi.
3. Besides the works cited in the
last note, Polanyi is omitted from the historiographical works on scientific
revolution of Bernard Cohen (1985) and Ploris Cohen (1994), and from the
analyses of incommensurability by Brown (1983) and Sankey (1994
1997).
To forestall misunderstanding, I
should point out that I am not devoting my paper to the history of the idea of
incommensurability. I am interested
in Polanyi as a, and I believe the, main source of the idea in Kuhn and
Feyerabend. There were thinkers
besides Polanyi who prefigured the theme of incommensurability, although I am
aware of no evidence of their having affected Polanyi, Kuhn or Feyerabend on
this topic. Giedymin (1982, p. 192)
points out that a concept of incommensurability found favour with LeRoy, Duhem
and Ajdukiewicz, although not with Poincaré. (See also Giedymin, 1978, pp. xxxi
ff.) I am indebted to one of the
referees for drawing my attention to incommensurability in the writings of the
conventionalists.
106
of earlier observed phenomena: they
are simply reorganized using different concepts’. Westman’s interpretation is borne out by
Kuhn’s description of disclosures of ‘phenomena’ and of ‘order in fields of
experience’ as ‘permanent achievements’ (Kuhn, 1957, p. 264; emphasis
added). So long as science remains
a ‘continuous tradition’, Kuhn considers that scientists will ‘be able to
explain the phenomena first elucidated by Newtonian concepts, just as
Polanyi’s Personal knowledge, published in 1958, may well have contributed to Kuhn’s more radical understanding of scientific revolutions. Kuhn had certainly read Polanyi’s book by July 1961 (and also Polanyi’s 1951 essay collection The logic of liberty), for he declared (Kuhn, 1962, p. 392) at a symposium held at the
I have… recently recognized… [that]
Mr. Polanyi himself has provided the most extensive and developed discussion I
know of the aspect of science which led me to my apparently strange usage [of
the word paradigm].
In his perceptive and challenging
book, Personal knowledge, Mr. Polanyi repeatedly emphasizes the
indispensable role played in research by what he calls the ‘tacit component’ of
scientific knowledge… I agree that neither the methodological nor the
substantive requisites for sound research can be fully
articulated…
There is reason, indeed, to believe that Kuhn was reading Personal knowledge in 1959
. [5]Paul Feyerabend deals directly with
the origins of his idea of incommensurability on several occasions. In Science in a free society
Feyerabend (1978, p. 114) indicates that discussions with U. B. M. Anscombe
led him to the idea of ‘conservation principles’, an idea, Feyerabend suggests,
that came to play an important part in the development of his understanding of
incommensurability. [6] In the
same work Feyer-
4. Documents presented by
Hoyningen-Huene (1995, p. 357) make it clear that Kuhn was using the term
incommensurability in 1961.
5. The evidence for this surmisal is
in Kuhn’s script ‘The essential tension’, for a conference in 1959. Variants of a number of themes in
Polanyi’s Personal knowledge are to be found in this composition of Kuhn,
including: knowledge of the kind that Polanyi described as tacit, anomalies as
ubiquitous in science, cognitive tradition (a more robust concept of tradition,
at any rate, than is to be found in Kuhn’s Copernican revolution,
scientific training as illiberal and even authoritarian, and the idea of the
scientific community (the expression, scientific community, made famous by Kuhn,
seems to have been coined by none other than Polanyi - see Jacobs & Mooney,
1997).
6. Interestingly however, neither
‘Anscombe’ nor ‘conservation principles’ appears in the index of Against
method. Polanyi is mentioned
only once in Against method but none of his works is cited, and there is
no mention of Polanyi in Feyerabend’s autobiography, Killing time
(Feyerabend, 1995).
107
bend (1978, pp. 66-68, 114-117)
notes that Wittgenstein’s work contributed to Feyerabend’s working out of the
idea of incommensurability. Of
greater interest to us, however, is Feyerabend’s late recollection that
‘somewhere along the way I read an interesting paper by Michael Polanyi on the
world view of the Azande’ (Feyerabend, 1991, pp. 492, 501). This impressed Feyerabend as ‘a concrete
application of Wittgenstein’s advice to look and see and not to wander off on an
abstract tangent’. Preston (1997,
pp. 30-31) has indicated that the essay of Polanyi’s to which Feyerabend alludes
- The stability of beliefs - exerted a great influence on Feyerabend’s thinking
during the early 1960s in the construction of ‘What Feyerabend referred to as
his own preferred “model for the acquisition of knowledge”’ and that it raised
an important issue for Feyerabend in the form of ‘Whether we can give good
reasons’ for our preferring science to systems such as Azande
witchcraft.
In the present paper two of
Polanyi’s writings that illuminate his ideas about frameworks and which
importantly presage Kuhn and Feyerabend’s ideas of incommensurability will be
discussed. These writings are
Polanyi’s ‘The stability of beliefs’ (1952), and a section on ‘Scientific
controversy’ in chapter 6 (‘Intellectual passions’) of Polanyi’s masterwork,
Personal knowledge. (Most of
the 1952 essay is reproduced in Personal
knowledge.)
2. Language embodies worldview
Polanyi’s aim in ‘The stability of
beliefs’ (Polanyi, 1952, p. 218) is to describe the principles by which
conceptual frameworks keep their followers’ minds in thrall. While ‘The stability of beliefs’ contains
no explicit discussion of what, if any, relations exist between conceptual
frameworks, it does present a proposition that has significant implications for
the question of framework relations: ‘theories of the universe’ permeate
languages. The resistance of belief
systems to criticism was not a new theme in Polanyi’s oeuvre in 1952. He had discussed the persistence of
tradition and the power of orthodoxy in science over a number of years. The
novelty in Polanyi’s thinking in 1952 was that he was treating the theme of
resistance comparatively, extending his argument beyond science to other
belief systems. The 1952 essay also
shows that Polanyi had become acutely aware of the extent to which worldviews
penetrate into language, and that he had sensed that this may have important
ramifications for relations between frameworks of belief
As the basis of his argument,
Polanyi gives a precis of his epistemology as he had explicated it in
Science, faith and society (Polanyi, 1946) and ‘Scientific beliefs’
(1951). Polanyi (1952, pp. 218-219)
considers that ‘discovery, verification and falsification’ of propositions in
science do not obey ‘any definite rule’ but proceed with the aid of ‘certain
maxims’ which defy both precise formulation and rigorous evaluation. The maxims are ‘premisses or beliefs…
embodied in… the tradition of science’. Sustained by this tradition, science is
governed by the coherent opinion of its practitioners, who employ the ‘idiom of
science in which its interpretative framework is expressed’ (Polanyi, 1952, p.
219). The belief of scientists that
science is true is a personal conviction which they cannot factually
justify.
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Among the many different understandings of the world besides science, Polanyi in ‘The stability of beliefs’ cites Azande witchcraft, Marxism and psychoanalysis. These conceptual frameworks Polanyi (1952, p. 219-220) variously describes as ‘reflected in’, ‘expressed in the use of’, ‘embedded in’, ‘embodied’ in and ‘upheld’ by their corresponding languages, which form ‘idioms of belief’. Polanyi traces this view back to Lévy-Bruhl,
[7] and finds abundant confirmation of it in Evans-Pritchard’s investigation of Azande witchcraft. Azande belief is ‘embedded in an idiom which interprets all relevant facts in terms of witchcraft and oracular powers’ (Polanyi, 1952, p. 220). Evans-Pritchard had been struck by how effectively the Azande reason “in the idiom of their beliefs” ‘ while noting that ‘ “they cannot reason outside, or against, their beliefs because they have no other idiom in which to express their thoughts”’ (quoted in Polanyi, 1952, p. 221; emphasis added by the present author). Polanyi went on to develop a general view of the linguistic embodiment of belief systems. He contended that the worldview of each language lies implicit in its ‘vocabulary and structure’ (Polanyi, 1952, p. 221). A vocabulary is likened by Polanyi to the theory of chemical compounds, being ‘a definite theory of all subjects that can be talked about’ and of the ascription to these subjects of ‘recurrent features’ which the words mark. Each such world theory includes certain conceptions while excluding others. A language constrains what questions can be formulated, and answers to these questions serve to confirm the theory implicit in the language.The thesis of worldviews as embodied
in languages - predating the publication of Whorf’s essay-collection (1956) - is
repeated by Polanyi in Personal knowledge (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 80, 94,
112, 287, 289). With reference to
the theories of Evans-Pritchard and Lévy-Bruhl, Polanyi explains in Personal
knowledge that each ‘descriptive term’ of ordinary language ‘implies a
generalization affirming the stable or otherwise recurrent nature of some
feature to which it refers’, and together these ‘recurrent features constitute…
a theory of the universe which is amplified by the grammatical rules according
to which the terms can be combined to form meaningful sentences’ (Polanyi, 1958,
p. 94).
Polanyi indicates that it is
impossible for frameworks of belief to be evaluated from within. Using a given language to challenge its
embodied theory issues in self-contradictions. The worldview can only be questioned
after its language has been exchanged for another (Polanyi, 1952, pp. 221-222).
Polanyi (1952, p. 218) quotes from
Koestler and Horney who had regarded the ‘interpretive powers’ of
their
7. A remark of Lévy-Bruhl (1928, p.
233) conveying some of the flavour of his thinking is:
Do not let us propound to primitives questions which escape their mentality, posed in terms involving a system of metaphysics of which they have not the remotest idea. Let us avoid asking them how they solve problems that they have never even considered. The fate of the individual in the Beyond creates no uneasiness in a primitive’s mind, and he has little to say about it. Let us not try to discover in his representations the distinction we make between soul and body. On the contrary, let us endeavour to grasp them without distorting them… and not force them into the framework which befits our own concepts.
Further revealing passages are to be
found on pp. 54, 170 and 278 of Lévy-Bruhl’s book.
109
respective Marcian and Freudian
frameworks ‘as evidence of… [their]
truth’. As their faith collapsed,
the two thinkers came to view the ‘powers’ of the doctrines as ‘excessive and
specious’.
Worldviews are immanent or
indwelling in languages, Polanyi argued in 1952, being shapers as well as
instruments of thought. The
implication is that no language can serve as a neutral medium for comparing
belief systems embedded in other languages.
In sections of Personal knowledge
to which we now turn, Polanyi’s focus differs from that in ‘The stability of
beliefs’, and he carries out his analysis at a lower level of generality. Having previously juxtaposed science with
non-scientific idioms and world theories, Polanyi now turns his attention to
systems of belief within science.
Polanyi’s account of ‘intellectual
passions’ constitutes an important part of the background to his theory of
scientific controversy. The
expression ‘intellectual passion’ has an unusual ring to it on account of its
connecting faculties that we commonly take to be contrasting opposites. The expression is reminiscent of Pascal’s
‘lessons of the heart’. ‘Intellectual passion’ is applied by
Polanyi to feelings of attraction or of antipathy to beliefs. Polanyi is particularly interested in the
composition of the emotions of inquirers and in the part that their emotions
play in science. Intellectual
passion is understood by Polanyi as essential to making scientific discoveries
but as fallible and capable of misdirection.
Intellectual passions have cognitive
or affirmative content with a corresponding ‘selective function’
in regard to knowledge. An
inquirer is attracted to a discovery, her passion aroused by and affirming the
interest, value and beauty of the discovery to science (Polanyi, 1958, pp.
134ff.). For Polanyi (1958, p.
145), a theory’s beauty is ‘a token of its contact with reality’. Paraphrasing Polanyi, Allen (2000, p. 38)
writes of ‘the felt conviction’ of the value of statements ‘which selects them
as worthy of pursuit’. The
selective function of intellectual passion contributes to the constitution and
definition of science at the time. Galileo’s commitment to heliocentricism
over Ptolemaic astronomy Polanyi attributes not to reasoned argument but to
Galileo’s ‘passionate appreciation of… [its] greater scientific value’, while
his adversaries were emotionally committed to retaining humanity’s privileged
position in the universe (Polanyi, 1958, p. 152).
Intellectual passions combine a
conative component with a heuristic function. In its heuristic function
intellectual passion guides a scientist by evoking ‘intimations of specific
discoveries’, and through its conative aspect intellectual passion sustains the
often protracted pursuit of those discoveries (Polanyi, 1958, p. 143). As an example, Polanyi (1958, pp. 7, 143)
quotes from Harmonices Mundi (Book 5, Chapter 10), where Kepler recalls
how he ‘ “prophesied two-and-twenty years ago… that for which I have devoted the
best part of my life to astronomical contemplation”’, namely how it is that the
sun as centre of the cosmos ‘apprehends the celestial music performed by the
planets’. (Intellectual passion, as noted, is not always
reliable.)
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There is a persuasive function of
intellectual passions which Polanyi sees as coming to the fore in scientific
controversies. Passionately
committed to their established conceptual framework, most scientists are
antagonistic toward a new system of belief and its implications. Driven by intellectual passion in its
persuasive capacity, the putative discoverer tries to attract scientists away
from orthodoxy to her new framework and its ‘class of alleged facts’ (Polanyi,
1958, p. 150). The claimed
discovery may never become part of socially accredited knowledge: it ‘must
conquer or die’ (Polanyi, 1958, p. 150).
There are two reasons why scientific
controversy forms a major topic for Polanyi. He sees controversy as shaping the
content of science, its values and methods, and at the meta level Polanyi’s
analysis of scientific controversy informs his extensive argument against
‘objectivism’ (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 158, 170). A bloodless caricature of science,
‘objectivism’, as regarded by Polanyi (1958, pp. 16-17, 214), affirms that the
content of scientific statements is ‘entirely determined by observation’ and
logic, exclusive of personal factors. Were objectivism true, Polanyi (1958, p.
159) argues, scientists would settle their differences by way of facts, reasoned
argument, external criteria and ‘systematic and dispassionate empirical
investigations’. Polanyi, as we
have noted, sees scientific controversies arousing intense emotions and defying
rational negotiated settlement. Objectivism may be at a loss to account
for scientific controversies; so then how does Polanyi explain
them?
In a Polanyian scientific controversy, supporters of a heterodox conceptual framework endeavour to wrest ‘scientific value’ away from orthodoxy and its upholders. Frameworks in a scientific controversy are described by Polanyi as ‘alternatives’ or ‘rivals’, but, as we shall see, his use of such terms is figurative. (‘Incommensurability’ is not among the terms he uses in this context in Personal knowledge
. [8]) Conceptual frameworks cited by Polanyi (1958, pp. 151-158) include Freud’s psychology, Eddington’s a priori system of physics, Rhine’s ‘Reach of the Mind’ and Lysenko’s biology, the astronomical theories of Ptolemy and Copernicus, Pasteur’s account of alcoholic fermentation as a living function of yeast and the view of Wohler, Liebig and Berzelius that yeast in fermentation is a chemical precipitate, extra-sensory perception, epiphenomenalism and volitional neurology.Given what Polanyi writes about
scientists’ passionate commitment to established conceptual systems, and the
malleability he attributes to those frameworks, the wonder is that new
conceptual frameworks are even conceived of, let alone that
some
8. Polanyi (1958, p. 174) does,
however, use the term in other contexts, writing for example of the
‘incommensurability’ of elements ‘in a technical performance’. And in The logic of liberty (1951)
discussing Rousseauan romanticism, Polanyi writes ‘Creative genius claimed to be
the renewer of all values and therefore to be incommensurable. This claim was to be extended to whole
nations; according to it, each nation had its unique set of values which could
not be validly criticized in the light of universal reason’ Polanyi, 1951, p.
100).
111
of them eventually oust traditional
ones from science. A framework is
able to explain ‘most of the evidence’ but never all of it, and adherents,
impressed by the framework’s ‘coherence’, set aside ‘for the time… being facts,
or alleged facts, which it cannot interpret’ (Polanyi, 1958, p. 151). The supporters expect that
these pieces of evidence will eventually be explained, or else be explained away
as spurious beliefs (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 13, 47, 51, 138, 158, 167). Polanyi stresses the resistance of
frameworks, resistance, and the lack of interest of their protagonists in
subjecting frameworks to criticism. He writes that ‘discrepancies’ are often
classed as ‘anomalies’, a prize example being ‘the perturbations of the
planetary motions that were observed during 60 years preceding the discovery of
The framework undergoes what Polanyi
(1958, pp. 18, 105-106) describes as ‘programmatic’ development, as its
conceptions are used to assimilate, and are adapted to, unprecedented
instances-the ‘tacit art’ of simultaneously applying and reshaping conceptions.
A case in point is Urey’s addition
of deuterium to the isotopes of hydrogen, while Soddy vainly objected that this
violated the meaning of ‘isotope’, which required isotopes of an element to be
chemically inseparable from each other. A Polanyian framework also develops
through the unfolding of its theoretical implications, with new facets of
reality discovered (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 5, 104, 147, 160). The ancient atomists, seventeenth-century
corpuscularians and John Dalton, for example, ‘beheld and described the dim
outline of a reality which modern atomic physics has since disclosed’ in detail
(Polanyi, 1958, p. 104).
Although the theme of commitment to orthodoxy is in the foreground of Polanyi’s discussion, occasionally he mentions that anomalies may eventually cause frameworks to be questioned. In what is perhaps his clearest reference to this type of development, Polanyi (1958, p. 18) writes that ‘every system of thought has of course some loose ends tucked away… Yet it is a fact that time and again men have become exasperated with the loose ends of current thought and have changed over to another system, heedless of similar deficiencies within that new system’. Otherwise Polanyi has little to say concerning the sorts of circumstances that arouse scientists’ affirmative and conative intellectual passions, urging scientists to discover frameworks and prompting others to switch their allegiance to new frameworks. [
9In one very revealing passage
Polanyi (1958, p. 151) writes that
two conflicting systems of thought
are separated [or ‘segregated’] by a logical gap… Formal operations relying on
one framework of interpretation cannot demonstrate a proposition to
persons who rely on another framework. Its advocates may not even succeed in
getting a hearing from these, since they must first teach
9. See also Polanyi’s discussion,
transposed from ‘The stability of beliefs’, which has obvious relevance to
scientific controversies (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 286ff.)
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them a new language, and no one can
learn a new language unless he first trusts that it means
something.
The idea of the logical gap
between frameworks controls Polanyi’s understanding of scientific
controversy. Polanyi (1958, p. 151)
believes that conceptual frameworks in a controversy have this logical gap ‘in
the same sense as a problem is separated from the discovery which solves the
problem’. The logical gap between a
problem and its undiscovered solution consists for Polanyi (1958, p. 123) in the
fact that no rule or logical procedure leads from existing knowledge to the
solution which is unpredictable. (Maxims may be of limited assistance to a
discoverer trying to cross the gap but they are inherently vague (Polanyi, 1958,
p. 125; Prosch, 1986, pp. 143, 223).) As Polanyi (1958, pp. 125, 143) explains
it, the logical gap between a problem and its solution can only be crossed
heuristically, by the inquirer trying to guess right. The first crossing occurs with an
intellectual leap, an act of originality producing illumination. The solution is at once a Gestalt mental
reorganisation and an emotional upheaval, the discovery being discontinuous with
previous knowledge.
Polanyi uses the analogy of the gap between a problem and its solution to throw into relief his contention that conceptual frameworks in a scientific controversy are logically disconnected or ‘segregated’. Typically, no relation of entailment, contradiction or disjunction exists between the frameworks. The width of the logical gap is shown, says Polanyi (1958, p. 151; emphasis added), by the fact that, compared with supporters of an established scientific framework, supporters of a new system ‘think differently, speak a different language, live in a different world
. [10]Conceptual frameworks are needed in order to make ‘sense of experience’, each framework incorporating a unique ‘vision of reality’ (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 60, 150). Adherents of two frameworks in a controversy belong to the same ‘material universe’, but perceptually and cognitively their worlds are different (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 47, 151). With radically different ontologies, conceptual frameworks separated by a logical gap have no facts in common (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 158, 167). [
11]The ultimate source of difference
between Polanyian frameworks lies in their premisses which are implicit
in the conduct of researchers and represent objects of fiduciary commitment.
An explicit statement of a
scientist’s premisses, writes Polanyi (1958, pp. 59, 165), can only ‘reveal the
premisses of past scientific achievements. The actual premisses of science, at the
moment of writing, are present only in the as yet unformed discoveries maturing
in the minds of scientific investigators intent
10. Polanyi’s foreshadowing of the
idea of incommensurability is clear here. As Popper (1976, p. 40) would later
address it, ‘two logically incompatible theories will be, in general,
“conrnensurable”. Incommensurability
is intended to be much more radical than incompatibility: while
incompatibility is a logical relation and thus appeals to one logical framework,
incommensurability suggests the non-existence of a common logical
framework.’
11. Constraints of space prevent us
from exploring certain issues with which Polanyi deals that are related to ones
we have been considering. One such
issue is that controversies change scientists’ principles and values. An example is the triumph of
Copernicanism, which, on Polanyi’s reckoning (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 152-153, 158,
201), established the principle of moral and religious indifference in science
and promoted the idea of empiricism.
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on their work’. (Polanyi’s idea is not unlike
Collingwood’s idea of ‘absolute presuppositions’; see Allen, 1990, p. 55.) Resources essential to
scientific research are embedded in the premisses of a conceptual framework.
Among the resources are substantive
ideas, principles of procedure, appreciations of cognitive value (derived from
past controversies), indications as to ‘questions that it should be reasonable
and interesting to explore’ and ‘the kind of conceptions and empirical
relations’ that need to be upheld as plausible (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 135, 158-161,
170). Formal and substantive
elements of knowledge, express and tacit, are inextricably bound
together.
The rules of scientific procedure
which we adopt, and the scientific beliefs and valuations which we hold, are
mutually determined. For we
proceed according to what we expect to be the case and we shape our
anticipations in accordance with the success which our methods of procedure have
met with. Beliefs and valuations
have accordingly functioned as joint premisses in the pursuit of scientific
inquiries. (Polanyi, 1958, p.161; emphasis added)
‘Formal operations relying on one
framework of interpretation cannot demonstrate a proposition to persons who
rely on another framework’ (Polanyi, 1958, p. 151). Arguments from premisses in support of a
proposition appear ‘wholly specious’ from the adversary’s point of view
(Polanyi, 1958, p. 158). In 1874
van’t Hoff explained optical isomerism in terms of asymmetric molecules, their
atoms tetrahedrically arranged around a catbon atom. Kolbe, whose conceptual framework
involved a high valuation of experimentalism, dismissed van’t Hoff s work as ‘a
tissue of fancies’. Kolbe found it
impossible to argue rationally with ‘such wild ideas’ (Polanyi, 1958, p.
158).
Premisses for Polanyi also determine
what counts as credible evidence. What impress scientists as predictive
successes and confirmations inside their own framework have no evidential worth
in the eyes of scientists who are hostile to that framework. Polanyi (1958, pp. 156-157) finds an
illustration of this in the controversy over alcoholic fermentation that began
in 1839 and dragged on for the best part of forty years. From 1835 several scientists, on the
basis of microscopic observations, were suggesting that fermentation is a
product of live yeast cells. According to the dominant conceptual
framework, yeast as the initial cause of alcoholic fermentation is a chemical
agent. Wöhler, Liebig and
Berzelius disputed whether the experimentation conducted in support of the live
yeast theory was reliable. Supporting the conceptual framework of
reductionist explanation to physics and chemistry, Wöhler and his allies fought
the other framework as a piece of discredited vitalism.
Because premisses differ so
profoundly between conceptual frameworks and form descriptions of different
worlds, even if scientists were prepared to learn the other framework’s
language, its concepts and terms would still not suffice for a rational
assessment of the comparative merits of the orthodox and unorthodox systems from
a neutral position. This is a
matter of logic, not of psychological attitude (for example, resistance, lack of
empathy or feeling of antipathy). The lack of a neutral vantage point from
which scientists can independently evaluate evidence and
arguments
114
makes it understandable to Polanyi
that scientific disagreements may be deep, acrimonious and long lasting. Since arguments and evidence are internal
to conceptual frameworks they do little to restrain intellectual passions. Choices between frameworks in science are
based on passion, with no framework-independent resources to mediate (Polanyi,
1958, p. 152).
Adversaries in scientific
controversies justify their ‘comprehensive rejection’ of the other
framework by depicting it as ‘altogether unreasonable’. They resort to ad hominems,
denigrating the opponent as ‘a fool, a crank or a fraud’ (Polanyi, 1958, p.
151). Controversies in science
remind Polanyi (1958, pp. 151-152) of ideological clashes between Marxists,
Nazis and their various enemies. ‘And once we are out to establish such
charges we shall readily go on to expose our opponent as a “metaphysician”, a
“Jesuit”, a “Jew”, or a “Bolshevik”, as the case may be’.
There is an unintended irony in Polanyi’s analysis: as noted earlier according to his account of the logical gap, conceptual frameworks are not logically in conflict. Frameworks are not alternatives describing the same world in incompatible terms; they are mutually indifferent
. [12] Conceptual controversies are fomented by passionate partisans who labour under an illusion, being blind to this indifference.Notwithstanding the widespread
hostility they provoke, new conceptual frameworks may attract some support.
For this to occur, however,
‘proponents of a new system’ must first win others’ ‘intellectual sympathy for a
doctrine they have not yet grasped’ (Polanyi, 1958, p. 151). Understanding an alien framework depends
on scientists developing an empathic respect for it, for only then can its alien
language be learned on the trusting assumption that it is meaningful. (Kolbe made no such concession to van’t
Hoff and his allies, referring to them as ‘ “weeds of a trivial… and empty
Philosophy of Nature” ‘; quoted by Polanyi, 1958, p. 155.) Protagonists of a conceptual
framework use rhetorical devices to persuade doubters of its merits. When previously incredulous or hostile
scientists become convinced of a framework’s truth, they undergo a ‘conversion’
that leads them into the ranks of the ‘dis-
12. There is some sliding by Polanyi
on this matter. Facts, Polanyi
explains, depend on frameworks and are not common between two frameworks that
are logically disconnected from each other. Two frameworks sharing facts would,
indeed, be logically congruent,not logically , segregated’. Facts which are not described by… [a]
theory’ are regarded by it ‘as irrelevant to itself. Such a theory functions as a
comprehensive idiom which consolidates that experience to which it is apposite
and leaves unheeded whatever is not comprehended by it’ (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 47,
150, 287). Polanyi suggests that
facts relevant to a framework are at least delineated and probably in large part
formed, by the framework, rather than existing anterior to and independent of
it. He writes, ‘Our acceptance of facts which
makes sense of the clues offered by experience to our eyes and ears’ is a
process which ‘premisses’ underlie; premisses that differ radically between
frameworks (Polanyi, 1958, p. 162). In contrast to such thinking, however,
Polanyi believes that the Ptolemaic and Copernican frameworks accounted for many
of the same facts (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 152, 157 n. 3). But this would appear to be a
rule-proving exception for Polanyi. Typically, he considers that
controversies include what is to count as factual evidence, and they serve to
show ‘the power of scientific theory over scientific facts’. Polanyi (1958, p. 167) writes that
adversaries in framework controversies ‘do not accept the same “facts” as facts,
and still less the same “evidence” as evidence. The terms are ambiguous precisely to the
extent to which the two opposing opinions differ. For within two different conceptual
frameworks the same range of experience takes the shape of different facts and
different evidence’.
115
ciples’ who ‘form… a school’
(Polanyi, 1958, p. 151). In time a
new framework may displace the orthodoxy with which it has been understood to
conflict, gaining accreditation from the community of
science.
A concept of scientific revolutions
is intimated in Personal knowledge. As already noted, Polanyi (1958, pp.
150, 152) understands scientific frameworks holistically, as ‘virtually complete
systems’, and he often gives the impression that there is no question of
antagonists in a scientific controversy selecting items from a framework and
combining them with their own framework. Adversaries reject the other system in
toto. This, combined with
Polanyi’s thesis of the logical gap, suggests a concept of scientific
revolutions, foreshadowing that of Kuhn. [13] Such a concept is apparent when Polanyi (1958, p. 196)
mentions that ‘scientific discovery, which leads from one… framework to its
successor, bursts the bounds of disciplined thought’. Indeed, Polanyi (1958, p. 276) explicitly
refers to ‘revolutionary discoveries’, citing ‘the heliocentric system’ and the
discoveries ‘of genes, of quanta, of radioactivity or of relativity’. There is, however, a decisive difference
of orientation and interest between Polanyi and Kuhn. Kuhn developed his historiography of
science with revolution as its leitmotgf whereas Polanyi developed no
explicit historiography (it is telling that the terms ‘revolution’ and
‘scientific revolution’ are not in the index of Personal knowledge). Polanyi’s concern in the section of
Personal knowledge that we have investigated was not to weave ideas of
orthodoxy and heterodoxy, stasis and flux, into a theory of historical pattern.
His principal concern, we recall,
was to expose the logical empiricist or ‘objectivist’ account of science as
contrary to the facts (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 159, 265). Explaining the relative impotence of
facts and reasoned argument in, and in deciding the outcome of, scientific
controversies, Polanyi underlined the decisive part played by scientists’
intellectual passions.
We know that Kuhn was acquainted
with Polanyi’s Personal knowledge from quite early in the piece,
referring favourably to one of its themes (tacit knowledge) in The structure
of scientific revolutions. It
is highly probable that Feyerabend commenced reading Polanyi’s book at some time
between 1958 (the year of its
13. Polanyi did not consistently
think in terms of radical mutations or supersessions in the way that his thesis
of the logical gap would appear to have required of him. In one place in Personal knowledge,
for example, Polanyi (1958, p. 196; emphasis added) talks of discovery
‘occasionally… demolishing a hitherto accepted structure [conceptual framework
or parts of it, in order to establish an even more rigorous and
comprehensive one in its place’. This claim doubly contradicts the thesis
of the logical gap, firstly in suggesting the possibility of piecemeal cognitive
alteration as distinct from acceptance/rejection of entire frameworks, and
secondly in indicating that conceptual frameworks may be comparable. Another proposition made by Polanyi
(1958, p. 157, n. 4 and text) that is difficult to reconcile with his thesis of
the logical gap, and which would serve to make it a less drastic thesis than so
much of Polanyi’s discussion otherwise suggests, affirms that ‘an apposite new
conception can reconcile two alternative systems of interpretation which
hitherto violently opposed each other’. What Polanyi forgets in this instance is
his view that frameworks of interpretation that are separated by a logical gap
are not logical ‘alternatives’.
116
publication) and 1962, the year in
which he and Kuhn presented the term ‘incommensurability’ in print. That both men knew Polanyi’s book (and
that Feyerabend read Polanyi’s ‘The stability of beliefs’, in the 1950s one
surmises) suggests that Polanyi’s idea of the logical gap between frameworks of
belief may well have conditioned Kuhn and Feyembend as they developed their
understandings of incommensurability. The resemblances between their notions of
incommensurability and Polanyi’s idea of the logical gap separating frameworks
of belief are striking.
Other commentators, however, have seen the situation differently than I do. Poirier, for example, contrasts Polanyi’s realism with Kuhn’s relativism. In Polanyi’s account, writes Poirier (1989, pp. 271-272; cf. Polanyi, 1958, pp.
5-6, 64),A theory is the product of insight…
into the real. To the extent that
this insight is truly about what is real, it is a wager that the insight… will
uncover more of that order than is presently known. And, if more of the order is uncovered,
then it is held that the original contact with reality was true,… since it
eventually brought more of the true order, existing independently of man, into
the ken of men.
We cannot avoid drawing attention to
the fact that, for Polanyi, man the scientist does not experience himself
as being in charge of the constituents of his insight. He is not inventor of his vision, as… is
the case for Thomas Kuhn. Rather,
he comes upon it, so that it might be said that he is responding to the
beckoning of the real…
Given all of this, how can anyone
claim that Polanyi is ontologically a relativist?
What Poirier omits here is the very
notion we have closely studied above, that Polanyian frameworks of belief are
separated by a logical gap. Poirier’s failure to discuss the
logical gap gives a false impression of the difference between Kuhn and
Polanyi.
There is, however, a tension in
Personal knowledge itself which may go some way toward explaining why I
interpret Polanyi as having affinities with Kuhn (and Feyerabend) and why
Poirier interprets them as fundamentally different thinkers. On the one hand Polanyi (1958, pp. 47,
315-316) explicitly affirms realism and disclaims cognitive relativism,
notwithstanding that he denies an external criterion of truth (Polanyi, 1958, p.
265). This is the strand of Polanyi’s thinking
on which Poirier focuses. A
cognitive relativist would allow that truth is internal to, and constituted by,
frameworks, so that frameworks on either side of a logical gap could both be
true in their own terms. Polanyi
explicitly foreswears such a view. He conceives of truth as objective, a
condition of correspondence between frameworks and reality. In the controversy involving Hegel and
astronomers over Bode’s Law, for example, Polanyi does not allow that Hegel’s
Naturphilosophie and the astronomers’ frameworks of belief were equally
valid in their own terms. The jury
may remain out on whether Bode’s Law is a ‘mere coincidence’ without ‘any
rational foundation’, but, says Polanyi (1958, pp. 154-155), ‘the astronomers
were right and Hegel was wrong’, for the reason that ‘the astronomers’ guess lay
within a conceivable scientific
11
7system, and… was a competent guess…; while Hegel’s inference was altogether unscientific, incompetent. Again, Aristotelians and Copernicans ‘agreed on what they meant by “true”; namely, that truth lies in the achievement of a contact with reality… I believe accordingly - in view of the subsequent history of astronomy - that the Copernicans were right in affirming the truth of the new system, and the Aristotelians and theologians wrong in conceding to it merely a formal advantage’ (Polanyi, 1958, p. 147).
[14]Polanyi’s thinking on the logical
gap between conceptual frameworks runs counter, however, to his anti-relativist
strand. Frameworks on either side
of a logical gap are not contradictories; they do not make incompatible claims
about the same subject matter. Their respective supporters ‘live in
different worlds’. One framework in
a Polanyian scientific controversy does not logically exclude the other. The doctrine of the logical gap implies
that both frameworks can be true in their own terms, each generating its own
evidence, with no framework-independent position for discriminating between
them. The truth of Copernicus, say,
does not - tracing out the implications of Polanyi’s idea of the logical gap - logically entail the
falsity of Ptolemy. Copernicus’
system replaced that of Ptolemy and it intimated many important discoveries.
But given what Polanyi writes about
the disconnection between the two systems, one cannot infer from the truth of
Copernicus the falsity of Ptolemy. Towards the end of Personal knowledge
(p. 322), Polanyi raises the question: ‘How can we claim to arrive at a
responsible judgment with universal intent, if the conceptual framework in which
we operate is borrowed from a local culture…?’. He epitomises his answer ‘Believing as I
do in the justification of deliberate intellectual commitments, I accept these
accidents of personal existence as the concrete opportunities for exercising our
personal responsibility’ (Polanyi, 1958, p. 322).
As a response to cognitive
relativism, most readers would judge Polanyi’s answer as vapid and unconvincing.
[15] Polanyi’s
analysis of frameworks and of logical gaps is strongly suggestive of relativism.
As Gellner (1991, p. 201; emphasis
added), in another context, wrote in summary of Lessing: ‘from the inside’
different ‘visions’ ratify themselves. When supporters ‘compete to vindicate
their own faith, each endorsing his own, the charm only works
inwards’. It seems likely
that Polanyi’s thesis of the logical gap between frameworks unwittingly opened
the gates of metascience to the relativist forces that Kuhn and Feyerabend
headed up.
This paper has benefitted from
comments made by my colleague Dr. Helen Modra and by two referees for Studies
in History and Philosophy of Science. I thank
14. Further examples given by
Polanyi (1958, pp. 12, 148-149) include de Broglie’s ascription of wave
characteristics to particles, and the falsity of the Newtonian conception of
space as shown by Einstein.
15. Sanders (1988, pp. 205-206)
writes that it is mainly on account of modern science and its concomitant
naturalistic outlook, qualified by ideals like truth, justice and charity, that
Polanyi takes our local culture as superior’. Sanders considers that in this way
Polanyi avoids cognitive relativism. Other commentators (the present one
included) would argue that the thesis of the logical gap provides no grounds for
such comparative evaluation of conceptual frameworks Sanders (mis)attributes to
Polanyi.
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