The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Michael
Polanyi
Science and Technology
Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical
Philosophy
Harper Torchbooks, NYC, 1962, 174-184
In the list of three kinds
of learning of which animals are capable I have placed trick learning before
sign learning, since motoricity is fully developed in
the lower animals before they achieve the capacity for recording complex
perceptions. Yet the capacity to perform
a useful action presupposes some purely intellectual control over the
circumstances in which the action is to take place. Technology always involves the application of
some empirical knowledge and this knowledge may be part of natural science. Our contriving always makes use of some
anterior observing.
Putting it this way, we
become aware of the incommensurability of the two things combined in a
technical performance. Suppose you
hammer in a nail. Before starting, you
look at the hammer, the nail and the board into which you will drive it; the
result is knowledge which you can put into words. Then you hammer in the nail. The result is a deed: something is now firmly
nailed on. Of this you can have
knowledge, but it is not itself
knowledge. It is a
material change which counts as an achievement. Knowledge can be true or false, while action
can only be successful or unsuccessful, right or wrong.
It follows that an
observing which prepares a contriving must seek knowledge that is not merely
true, but also useful as a guide to a practical performance. It must strive for applicable knowledge.
The conceptual framework of
applicable knowledge is different from that of pure knowledge. It is determined primarily in terms of the
successful performances to which such knowledge is relevant. Take hammering again. This performance implies the conception of a hammer,
which defines a class of objects that are (actual or potential) hammers. It will include, apart from the usual tools of
this kind, rifle butts, shoe heels and fat dictionaries, and establish at the
same time a grading of these tools according to suitability. The suitability of an object to serve as a
hammer is an observable property, but it can be observed only within the framework
defined by the performance it is supposed to serve.
There are three kinds of
observable things which can be defined by their participation in practical
performances: (1) materials, (2) tools, including all manner of installations,
and (3) processes. Timber, textiles,
fuels, are technical materials; hammers, engines, houses, railways, are tools
or installations; fermentation, cooking, smelting, are technical processes. Many of these technical conceptions comprise a
variety of otherwise disparate objects (for example, different kinds of
textiles, from cotton and wool to nylon and glass fibres,
and different means of lighting, from candles to discharge lamps), but all
these objects are specially prepared, shaped or otherwise so contrived as to
make them technically suitable. To this
extent these classes of objects or processes are known, and the individual
objects or processes themselves are intelligible only within the framework of a
useful performance which they successfully serve. Pure knowledge, lacking this framework, and pure science in particular, ignore these
classes and cannot understand these contrivances. We cannot eliminate instrumentality from
technical knowledge, any more than we can represent natural science in terms of
practical procedure.
A gap is opening up here
between two kinds of knowledge, both of which refer to material things: one
derived from an acknowledged purpose, the other unrelated to any such purpose. The disparity of science and technology which
I am examining here will prove relevant later to the relation between the science of inanimate things, in which no purpose is
apparent, and that of living beings which can be understood only in
teleological terms. We should keep this
prospect in mind while proceeding to elucidate further the characteristic
logical structure of technology.
Primitive technology may be
regarded as a mere extension of bodily skills employed for the satisfaction of
bodily appetites. And even in highly
complex and predominantly articulate branches of technology, like the
manufacture of cloth or the production of steel, there is involved a
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measure of unspecifiable know-how
which is essential to the efficiency of labour and
the quality of its product. Manufacturing
experience remains a valuable qualification to a technician, and its possession
by the aggregate of a country’s technicians is a great national asset. But even though the teachings of technical
science can become effective only by their skilful execution, the foundation of
modern man’s technical mastery lies in the explicit exposition of technology by
textbooks, journals, patents, etc.
Technology teaches action. This is made plain when it speaks in imperatives,
as it often does in cookery books or directions for the use of machinery. The symbol at the head of a prescription is an
imperative prefacing an order to make up a medicine; crafts like weaving or
welding are taught in imperatives. All
technology is equivalent to a conditional command, for it is not possible to
define a technology without acknowledging, at least at second hand, the
advantages which technical operations might reasonably pursue. It is true, of course, that anything a man
does or can conceivably do, could be described as the pursuit of an advantage
if we imputed to him the purpose of achieving the consequences of this action;
but a technology which would teach all such imputable purposes would be as
meaningless as a science which would give a list of all observable facts. A technology must therefore declare itself in favour of a definite set of advantages, and tell people
what to do in order to secure them.
Technology teaches only
actions to be undertaken for material advantages by the use of implements
according to (more or less) specifiable rules.
[1]
Such a rule is an operational principle. As implements are
defined and understood in terms of an action which they serve, they are defined
and understood likewise in terms of the operational principle which tells how
to perform such an action. [2]
I have spoken before of the
operational principles which we observe subsidiarily
in the performance of a skill, and also of the operational principles applied -
again for the most part subsidiarily - in achieving
scientific knowledge. I have shown
symbolic operations carried out according to certain explicit rules and have
noted that such operations require that symbols should be manageable, just as
tools have to be serviceable. Modern
electronic devices used for the automatic control of technical processes show
that some highly formalized operational principles of technology can be readily
affiliated to mathematical operations. The
meaning of technical implements resembles that of mathematical symbols, in so
far as they are both intended for use in a certain range of operations,
1. ‘Material advantages’ should exclude inter alia
the achievement of symbolic expression or of human interactions. Thus the construction of churches and prisons
or the manufacture of handcuffs are tasks of
technology, but the ultimate uses of these objects are not part of technology. The word ‘implement’ is meant to designate all
three classes of useful things: materials, devices and processes. Action according to ‘specifiable rules’
excludes artistic performances.
2. Operational principles will be
taken to include here the constructional principles which tell us the way
technical devices, like machines or houses, are to be built.
in the service of which they can be replaced by a whole
class of equally serviceable, though otherwise disparate, entities. This kinship can be pursued through the whole
subsequent analysis of operational principles.
The difference between
scientific knowledge and an operational principle of technology is recognized
by patent law, which draws a sharp distinction between a discovery, which
makes an addition to our knowledge of nature, and an invention, which
establishes a new operational principle serving some acknowledged advantage. New inventions rely as a rule on known facts
of experience, but it may happen that a new invention involves a new discovery.
Yet the distinction between the two will
still hold: only the invention will be granted protection by a patent, and not the discovery as such.
The reason is obvious. A patent has two functions, namely, publicly
to disclose its subject matter, and to grant a monopoly in respect to its use. If applied to new knowledge its first function
would preclude the second: once such knowledge is publicly disclosed it can no
longer be anyone’s monopoly. But the
patent can grant and enforce a monopoly for the practice of any new operational
principle; it can restrain unauthorized persons from using the new invention which
it makes generally known. [1]
Invention has it in common
with discovery that it can claim to be what it is only if it is surprising. It must be separated from its antecedents by a
considerable logical gap. I have
mentioned already that in case of doubt the courts undertake to assess whether
this logical gap is wide enough to warrant the acknowledgment of an invention. This width measures the ingenuity of the
invention.
But a new operational
principle may be acknowledged by patent law, and yet not be an invention in the
technological sense. A new ingenious
process for extracting tap-water from champagne may be an invention in the
sense of patent law, but it would not be acknowledged as such by technology. For in addition to the disclosure of a new
operational principle, technology requires that an invention should be economic
and thus achieve a material advantage.
Hence any invention can be
rendered worthless, and indeed farcical, by a radical change in the values of
the means used up and the ends produced by it. If the price of all fuels went up one
hundred-fold, all steam engines, gas turbines, motor-cars and aeroplanes, would have to be thrown on the junk heap. A brilliant invention is often rendered nonsensical
overnight by a better invention: tram-cars are as absurd today as the
horse-drawn buses which they once displaced. By contrast to this, the validity of a
scientific observation cannot be affected by changes in the value of goods. If diamonds became as cheap as salt is today,
and salt as
1.
The
law could try to grant a monopoly for the future practical applications of a
new discovery; but no patent law does this, for it is impracticable. The law endorses thereby once more the sharp
distinction between a knowledge of the facts of nature
(achieved by discovery) and the knowledge of an operational principle (achieved
by invention).
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precious as diamonds are now, this would not invalidate any
part of the physics and chemistry of diamonds or of salt. If either of the two minerals became so rare as to be practically inaccessible, this might affect
the interest attached to their study, but it would leave unimpaired the
validity of its results. Nor is there
any true parallel in science to the extinction of an invention by the emergence
of a more profitable way of achieving the same advantage.
The beauty of an invention
differs accordingly from the beauty of a scientific discovery. Originality is appreciated in both, but in
science originality lies in the power of seeing more deeply than others into
the nature of things, while in technology it consists in the ingenuity of the
artificer in turning known facts to a surprising advantage. The heuristic passion of the technician centres therefore on his own distinctive focus. He follows the intimations, not of a natural
order, but of a possibility for making things work in a new way for an
acceptable purpose, and cheaply enough to show a profit. In feeling his way towards new problems, in
collecting clues and pondering perspectives, the technologist must keep in mind
a whole panorama of advantages and disadvantages which the scientist ignores. He must be keenly susceptible to people’s
wants and able to assess the price at which they would be prepared to satisfy
them. A passionate interest in such
momentary constellations is foreign to the scientist, whose eye is fixed on the
inner law of nature.
Hence there arises a
conflict of values which makes it difficult to mix the two occupations. From his experience of developing atomic weapons
in Los Alamos during the Second World War, J. R. Oppenheimer wrote: “The
scientist is irritated by the practical preoccupations of the man concerned
with development, and the man concerned with development thinks that the
scientist is lazy and of no account and is not doing a real job anyway. Therefore the laboratory very soon gets to be all
one thing or all the other.” [1]
This sharp division between
science and technology is entirely compatible with the existence of domains
which in one respect or another form a transition between them. The older crafts which still form the
1. J. R. Oppenheimer, ‘Functions of the International Agency in Research
and Development’, Atomic Scientific Bulletin, 1947, p. 173. See also V. B. Wigglesworth,
‘The Contribution of Pure Science to Applied Biology’, The Annals of Applied
Biology, 42 (1955), pp.
34-44. Speaking of pure scientists
working on practical war-time problems, Wiggles-worth writes: ‘In the pure
science to which they were accustomed, if they were unable to solve problem A
they could turn to problem B, and while studying this with perhaps small
prospect of success they might suddenly come across a clue to the solution of
problem C. But now they must find a
solution to problem A, and problem A alone, and there
was no escape. Furthermore, there proved
to be tiresome and unexpected rules which made the game unnecessarily
difficult: some solutions were barred because there was not enough of the raw
material available: others were barred because the materials required were too
costly; and yet others were excluded because they might constitute a danger to
human life or health. In
short, they made the discovery that applied biology is not “biology for the
less intelligent”, it is a totally different subject requiring a totally different
attitude of mind’ (p. 34).
majority of modern industries were invented by mere trial and
error, without the aid of science. By
contrast, electrotechnics and much of chemical
technology are derived from the application of pure science to practical
problems. Hence there is the following
interrelation between science and technology. To the extent to which a technical process is
an application of scientific knowledge it contributes nothing to science, while
empirical technology, which is itself unscientific, may well offer - for this
very reason - important material for scientific study.’
We have, correspondingly,
two forms of enquiry that lie between science and technology. Technologies founded on an application of
science may form a scientific system of their own. Electrotechnics and
the theory of aerodynamics are examples of systematic technology which can
be cultivated in the same way as pure science. Yet their technological character is
apparent in the fact that they might lose all interest and fall into oblivion,
if a radical change of economic relationships were to destroy their practical
usefulness. On the other hand, it may
happen that some parts of pure science offer such exceptionally ample sources
of technically useful information that they are thought worth cultivation for
this reason, though they would otherwise lack sufficient interest. The scientific study of
coal, metals, wool, cotton, etc., are branches of such
technically
justified science.
Systematic technology and
technically justified science are two fields of study lying between pure
science and pure technology. But the two
fields may overlap completely. The
discovery of insulin as a cure for diabetes was an important contribution to
science, owing to the intrinsic interest of its subject matter; it was also the
invention of an operational principle serving to cure diabetes. The same quality applies over large parts of
pharmacology. It holds, indeed, wherever
a process inherent in nature is interesting to science owing to the importance
of its outcome, while at the same time it can also be operated at will for
achieving this desirable outcome. Such
coincidences between science and technology are fully accounted for by the same
principles which define them in general as completely disparate domains. [2]
1. On the range of undisclosed knowledge buried in
empirical technology, see p. 52 above.
2. In the address by Wigglesworth
just cited (p. 178, n. 1), the author describes the varying relationships which
obtain between pure and applied science in the biological field. These two ‘totally different subjects’ may
contribute to each other’s good in a number of ways. E.g. for the pure scientist ‘one of the most
efficient correctives to the dangers of over-specialization is provided by the
stimulus of contact with practice’ (p. 36). On the other hand, applied biology may turn to
pure science for the systematic explanation of its practical discoveries (p.
38); and of course the applied biologist ‘in thinking about any practical
problem... is continually making use of the whole range of scientific knowledge
that exists about all its component parts’ (p. 40). Yet the authorities are warned that this
mutual advantage depends in the last analysis on the independence of pure
biology from the narrower demands of the applied subject: ‘.... the D.S.I.R. makes
grants for any research proposals which are of exceptional “timeliness and
promise”. The difficulty is that the
most original ideas are at the outset both unpromising and untimely. Only research which is totally unfettered can
advance into the most unpromising fields... I very much doubt whether it would
have been reasonable for the [A.R.C. to have supported, for example, Darwin’s
experiments on the curving of bean shoots or the early experiments of the Wents on the growth of the oat coleoptile
- because no one could have foreseen the impact that these observations were
going to have on the agriculture of the future... But at least the Research
Councils should take great care not to impede the advance of pure science... Knowledge is a delicate plant, and... it is an undesirable practice to keep pulling plants up to
see how the roots are getting on’ (pp. 42-3).]
HHC: [bracketed] displayed on page 180 of original.
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Nothing could have appeared
more obvious until recently than this difference between pure science and
technology. It is unquestioningly embodied
in the general framework of higher education, as shown by its division into
universities and colleges of technology; it is expressed in the current
distinctions between pure and applied chemistry, pure and applied physics, pure
and applied mathematics, etc., in the description of university chairs,
journals and international congresses; it determines the conditions of
employment of scientists in universities on the one hand and industrial
laboratories on the other; it underlies the operation of the patent law.
This framework survives
practically unchanged in the countries not subject to Marxism and has not been
altogether abandoned in the Soviet Union either. But since the rise around 1930 of the
Neo-Marxian theory of science, which became within the subsequent decade the
official doctrine of the U.S.S.R. and gained widespread influence outside it,
the distinction between science and technology, even where still upheld in
practice by the continued operation of these institutions, is violently
challenged in principle.
This is part of the drive,
described earlier on, for subordinating cultural values to a radically utilitarian
conception of the public good: a materialistic outlook paradoxically imbued by
inordinate moral aspirations. Such an
attack is of course double-edged. It
denies the effectiveness of pure intellectual passions in guiding scientific
discovery, by affirming that every important step in the progress of science
occurs in response to a specific practical interest; while it also denounces
the pursuit of science for its own sake as irresponsible, selfish, immoral. Taken literally, the two attacks are mutually
incompatible, for something that does not really happen
cannot be denounced as morally wrong. But the materialistic interpretation of
culture is a disguised imperative: it both declares that culture really is, and
decrees that it ought to be, the servant of welfare. This is part of the Laplacean
system in which morality must seek the sanction of science by representing
itself in terms of scientific predictions. [1]
I am not much concerned
here with the question how serious this menace to science may prove in
practice. While the official repudiation
by Stalinist orthodoxy of science pursued for its own sake led to the
persecution and death in 1942 of Russia’s most distinguished biologist, N. I. Vaviov, and had resulted by 1948 in the suppression or
serious distortion of various branches of biology, it seems otherwise to have
imposed on natural scientists little more restraint than the obligation falsely
to declare their work
1. The mechanism of this transformation will be examined in the next
chapter.
to be guided by its practical usefulness. And this may be all. People may perhaps continue indefinitely to
cultivate pure science, while professing a theory of science which exposes this
occupation as a pretence or condemns it as an abuse. Yet the spread of this doctrine among
scientists in countries where they are not compelled to subscribe to it, does
raise the question which is relevant for us here, whether the distinctive passions which animate the cultivation of
science may be superseded one day by other passions, or may even simply fade
away for lack of response to them.
I have answered the last
question in the positive sense, when warning that science may be once more
discredited, as it was by St. Augustine, if it cannot avoid denaturing our
conception of man. [1] The appreciation of natural science is of recent origin
and its tradition is rooted in a limited area. It is a single shoot of one civilization among
many others of equal antiquity and richness. The Greeks never developed a systematic
natural science, nor did Byzantium or China, despite their technological
achievements. [2] Today we can speak confidently of sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century science only because, with modern hindsight, we can easily
separate the genuine works of science from unscientific admixtures. Kepler’s Harmonics,
published in 1619, was imbued with astrology, and it is typical in this
respect of much subsequent writing among scientists for the following two or
three generations. I have mentioned
already that Glanvill, one of the founders of the
Royal Society in 1660, argued persistently for the acknowledgment of
witchcraft. Another
founding fellow, John Aubrey. published little
else than a treatise on occult phenomena. [3] The Cartesian spirit dominating France at that time was a-prioristic rather than experimental. Newton himself still occasionally used
religious arguments in science; for example when he suggested that God gave the
world an atomic structure, as most conducive to his purpose. The great controversies of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries show that the struggle against intrusion
of extraneous points of view into science have never ceased and that
grave differences continue to persist in respect to these issues between a
dominant majority and various dubiously established minorities of scientists. Yet we may acknowledge that by the time
Newton’s influence became prevalent, and particularly through his Optics, the
method of observational science became effectively consolidated. Since then, in spite of such uncertainties and
vagaries as I have described in the section on Scientific Controversies, we may
recognize a coherent body of men, standing in the same scientific tradition,
moved by the proper temper and true appreciation of science. Arago acclaiming Leverrier’s discovery of Neptune in 1846 as ‘one of the
noblest titles of his country to the gratitude and
1. P. 141 above.
2. Stephen Runciman, Byzantine
Civilization, London, 1936, ch. IX, and Joseph Needham, Science and
Civilization in China, 2, Cambridge, 1956, pp. 26-9, 84.
3. Lytton Strachey, Portraits
in Miniature, London, 1931, p. 23.
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admiration of posterity’ [1] expressed this in clear accents. No contribution to knowledge could be more
useless than was the discovery of this remote new planet.
Actually, up to that time
natural science had made no major contribution to technology. The industrial revolution had been achieved
without scientific aid. Except for the
Morse telegraph, the great London Exhibition of 1851 contained no important
industrial devices or products based on the scientific progress of the previous
fifty years. The appreciation of science
was still almost free from utilitarian motives.
But these sentiments were
held within a very small area and were shared at no time by more than a
minority of the local population. The
migration of science overseas and into Asian and African countries occurred
slowly at a later period, when the medical, industrial and military value of
science had greatly increased and could serve to recommend the reception of
science to industrially less developed countries. These auspices did not favour
a true appreciation of science. In all
parts of the world where science is just beginning to be cultivated, it suffers
from a lack of response to its true values. Consequently, the authorities grant
insufficient time for research; politics play havoc with appointments;
businessmen deflect interest from science by subsidizing only practical
projects. However rich the fund of local
genius may be, such an environment will fail to bring it to fruition. In the early phase in question, New Zealand
loses its Rutherford, Australia its Alexander and its Bragg, and such losses
retard further the growth of science in a new country. Rarely, if ever, was the final acclimatization
of science outside Europe achieved, until the government of a country succeeded
in inducing a few scientists from some traditional centre to settle down in
their territory and to develop there a new home for scientific life, moulded on their own traditional standards. [2]
Encircled today between the
crude utilitarianism of the philistine and the ideological utilitarianism of
the modern revolutionary movement, the love of pure science may falter and die.
And if this sentiment were lost, the
cultivation of science would lose the only driving force which can guide it
towards the achievement of true scientific value. The opinion is widespread that the cultivation
of science would always be continued for the sake of its practical advantages. It was expected, for example, that Lysenko’s theories, if false, would be soon abandoned by
the Soviet Government because they could produce no useful results. This expectation overlooked the fact that such
questions cannot be decided in practice. Lysenko’s theories
are actually the theoretical conclusions which Michurin
in Russia and
1. See W. M. Smart, ‘John Couch Adams and the Discovery of Neptune’, Nature, 158, (1946), pp. 648-52. Or listen to Ball commenting on the fact that Lalande would have discovered Neptune in 1795 if only he
had believed what he saw on the 8th and 10th of May in that year. ‘But had he done so, how
lamentable would have been the loss to science. The discovery of Neptune would then merely
have been an accidental reward to a laborious worker, instead of being one of
the most glorious achievements in the loftiest department of human reason’ (Sir
R. S. Ball, The Story of the
Heavens, London, 1891, p. 288).
2. On tradition, see also p. 53 above.
Burbank in the U.S. derived from their substantial
successes as plant-breeders. [1] Almost every major systematic error which has deluded men
for thousands of years relied on practical experience. Horoscopes, incantations, oracles, magic,
witchcraft, the cures of witch doctors and of medical practitioners before the
advent of modern medicine, were all firmly established through the centuries in
the eyes of the public by their supposed practical successes. The scientific method was devised precisely
for the purpose of elucidating the nature of things under more carefully controlled
conditions and by more rigorous criteria than are present in the situations
created by practical problems. These
conditions and criteria can be discovered only by taking a purely scientific
interest in the matter, which again can exist only in minds educated in the
appreciation of scientific value. Such
sensibility cannot be switched on at will for purposes alien to its inherent
passion. No important discovery can be
made in science by anyone who does not believe that science is important - indeed
supremely important - in itself. [2]
In saying this, I have
acknowledged that values which I deem to be transcendent may be known only
transiently to a small minority of mankind. There is no contradiction in this: it
correctly reflects the fact that universal validity is not an observed fact. When we say that a statement is generally
accepted or that no sane person would deny it, etc., we are saying something
about the attitude of people towards the statement, which accredits the
statement only if we accredit those people’s judgment of it. But there is no general warrant to do this:
the maxim ‘quod semper, ubique, ab omnibus’
has often proved erroneous. The
standards by which we observe or appraise can never be derived from statistical
surveys.
Indeed, we cannot look at
our standards in the process of using them, for we cannot attend focally to
elements that are used subsidiarily for the purpose
of shaping the present focus of our attention. We attribute
absoluteness to our standards, because by using them as part of ourselves we
rely on them in the ultimate resort, even while recognizing that they are
actually neither part of ourselves nor made by ourselves, but external to
ourselves. Yet this reliance can take
place only in some momentary circumstance, at some particular place and time,
and our standards will
1. See T. Dobzhansky, ‘The Fate of Biological
Science in Russia’, Proceedings of the Hamburg Congress on Science and Freedom, London, 1955, p. 216. The attempt to define science in terms of its
practical success has already been shown to be logically untenable (see p. 169 above).
2. Some parallels from remoter fields may throw light on the principle
involved here. Suppose it were decided
by psychiatrists that a general increase in psychoneurotic ailments could only
be checked by a restoration of religious faith; this would not make us all
believe in God. In fact no ulterior
advantage can make us believe in God, while if we do believe in God no
consequent disadvantage can make us lose our faith. Or suppose that the people of the United
States came clearly to the conclusion from a study of British experience that
they would live together more intimately if their common affections were
attached to a King and a Royal Family. This would not in itself produce such
affections, or establish a monarchy in the U.S. No genuine affections can ever be produced by
ulterior motives; they must discover and uphold their satisfaction in
themselves.
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be granted absoluteness within this historical context. So I could properly profess that the scientific values upheld by the tradition of modern science are eternal, even though I feared that they might soon be lost for ever. This duality will be stabilized later within the concept of commitment.
184