Science and religion: the realism of Michael Polanyi

seminar from group Science, Reason and Faith.
Francisco Gallardo. Pamplona, March 15, 2011.

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Francisco Gallardo, PhD in Philosophy, graduate in Physical Sciences, director of programs of study of high school Superior of Religious Sciences of the University of Navarra and member of group of research CRYF since its creation.

summary:

There are many perspectives from which the study of the relationship between science and religion is currently approached. The epistemology of Michael Polanyi (1891-1976), a Hungarian scientist and philosopher with residency program in England from 1933 onwards, offers an integrating space in which science and Humanities mutually support each other. This approach, in which notions such as "knowledge staff ", "knowledge tacit", "commitment", "tradition", "finding", ... are intertwined, manages to free experimental science from positivist and reductivist prejudices and is therefore fully compatible with an adequate openness to transcendence.

Index

Science and religion in Michael Polanyi's personalist epistemology.

2.- Brief presentation by Michael Polanyi

3.- Michael Polanyi's personalist epistemology

4.- The relationship between science and religion in a Polanyian perspective

Science and religion in Michael Polanyi's personalist epistemology.

There are numerous specific programs of study on the relations between religion and the different sciences. At the same time, the approaches are very diverse. In this respect, the typology proposal by Ian Barbour is well known. He considers the possible modes of relationship between science and religion to be: conflict, independence, dialogue and integration.¹. The question immediately arises, which of these modes is most desirable?

At the outset, we consider that the first must be ruled out: those who see a conflict between science and religion in the usual way usually start from the prejudice that religion is opposed to the development of science. On the other hand, there have sometimes been serious difficulties in reconciling certain scientific discoveries with certain religious beliefs. In fact, history sample how the effort to overcome such apparent incompatibilities has helped to better establish the methodologies of both experimental sciences and theology.

As for the other modes under consideration, each of them has serious and profound reasons:

• The methodological gap between the sciences and theology, together with the diversity of objectives, seems to suggest a relationship of independence;

• The fact that there are borderline issues, which are of interest to both theology and certain sciences, would suggest that the most appropriate relationship is one of dialogue;

• The old ambition of achieving the unity of knowledge, which would allow the organic integration of the whole of the human knowledge , seems to indicate that the most desirable in the relationship under consideration is integration.

This brief description sample the complexity of the problem, which can be approached from very different perspectives, and will in turn depend on the specific issue to be addressed. Although it may be appropriate to focus rather on relations of independence and/or dialogue in order to analyse certain specific problems, it seems to us that the unitary perspective offered by the relation of integration should not be lost sight of. In this respect, the personalist epistemology of Michael Polanyi² (1891-1976), Hungarian scientist and philosopher with residency program in England from 1933 onwards, offers an integrating space in which sciences and Humanities mutually support each other through a suggestive theory of the "knowledge staff ".

The plan I will follow at exhibition is as follows: first I will introduce the author, focusing on some aspects of his biography that are decisive in addressing the questions concerning the relationship between science and religion. Then I will briefly analyse his personalistic view of science, which highlights some aspects that make it easier to approach a broad integrative perspective that also includes the religious fact. We will then be in a position to deal expressly with the Polanyian view of the science-religion relationship, which entails a unity of method valid for both the natural sciences and the human sciences.

2.- Brief presentation by Michael Polanyi³

Michael Polanyi was born in Budapest in 1891. He studied medicine at the University of Budapest. In 1913 he moved to Karlsruhe where he started programs of study at Chemistry, which he was forced to interrupt the following year when World War I broke out and he was called up to serve in the Austro-Hungarian army as a medical officer. Nevertheless, he was able to do some work on research thermodynamics: in particular, he studied the problem of adsorption of gases on solid surfaces, work which helped him to obtain a PhD in Chemistry- physics from the University of Budapest, degree scroll in 1919. In 1920, he started working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, which after World War II was renamed the Max Planck Institute. During those years he carried out numerous investigations on crystallography by means of X-ray diffraction techniques, Chemistry of colloids, Chemistry structural, reaction kinetics, etc. Among others, he had as student Eugene Wigner, who years later was awarded the award Nobel Prize in physics.

In 1933 he moved to Manchester, where he took up the Chair of Chemistry-physics at the University of Manchester. There he worked mainly on polymerisation, pyrolysis and inorganic catalysis, and reaction kinetics. He had as a post-doctorate student Melvin Calvin, an American, who later won the award Nobel Prize at Chemistry for his research on photosynthesis. Parallel to his scientific work - he published more than two hundred articles in specialist journals - Polanyi was interested in issues of Economics and society in relation to science. Already in Berlin he had promoted seminars on Economics, which culminated in 1935 with the publication of a small book on Economics in the Soviet Union, U.S.S.R. Economics, in which he criticises the planning of the Soviet Union's science policy.⁴in which he criticised the state planning of Economics and science, as well as the totalitarian regime. A few years later, he published Full Employment and Free Trade, a book based on the theories of the Soviet Union.⁵a book based on Keynesian theories, in which Polanyi insisted on his critique of the Marxist Economics . In England, Polanyi's proposal attempt to bring state planning similar to that of Economics in the Soviet Union into the scientific sphere met with a certain echo, and Polanyi opposed it. He addressed this question in his works The Contempt of Freedom⁶ and The Logic of Liberty⁷. In 1945 he gave the Riddell Lectures at Durham University, in which he expounded his views on science, and the following year he published them under degree scroll Science, Faith and Society.⁸. In addition, in the 1940s he participated in The Moot, a society led by Joseph H. Oldham, whose members discussed a variety of intellectual, ethical and religious issues. Through the activities organised by that association he entered contact with Karl Mannheim, Walter Moberley, Arthur Koestler, Thomas S. Eliot, D. M. MacKinnon and others.⁹.

In 1948 he decided to leave his Chair of Chemistry-physics to devote himself more intensively to social and philosophical programs of study , and obtained a Chair at the School of Economics and programs of study Social, also at the University of Manchester, which allowed him to devote more time to Philosophy -his true vocation, as he noted on more than one occasion-. From then on he gave frequent lectures at various universities, both in the UK and in the United States: Aberdeen, Oxford, Berkeley, Chicago, Duke, Stanford, Yale and others. In 1947 he was invited to take part in the Gifford Lectures on Science and Religion, organised by the University of Aberdeen, which he gave from 1951 to 1952. From these lectures, reworked in subsequent years, he published his main and most extensive work, staff Knowledge, in 1958.¹⁰. The following year he published The Study of Man¹¹which is presented as an extension of the ideas developed in staff Knowledge with particular reference reference letter to Humanities.

In 1958 he was appointed Senior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford, where he moved. There he met with frequent criticism, as his ideas were openly opposed to the dominant thinking of the time: the analytic Philosophy . This partly explains why Polanyi was hardly taken into account in Europe. In the United States, however, he was better accepted, which contributed to the fact that he spent long periods there giving numerous lectures at various universities. In 1962 he held the Terry Lectures at Yale, which were published in 1966 under the title degree scroll The Tacit Dimension¹²in which he placed special emphasis on the tacit factors involved in knowledge. In 1969 Marjorie Grene, a scholar of existentialism, edited Knowing and Being, a book with various articles by Michael Polanyi¹³. And in 1974, Fred Schwartz published a number of Polanyi's articles under the title degree scroll Scientific Thought and Social Reality¹⁴.

During the last years of his life, Polanyi's ability to work was reduced by an illness that led to a progressive loss of report. However, as long as he was able, he continued to develop his ideas, helped in particular by the American philosopher Harry Prosch. With him, in 1975, he published Meaning¹⁵in 1975, some of the material for which was taken from lectures given at the University of Texas and the University of Chicago in 1969. Michael Polanyi died on 22 February 1976 in Northampton, England, at the age of eighty-four.

3.- Michael Polanyi's personalist epistemology

degree scrollIn the preface to staff Knowledge, reference letter , Polanyi notes that the two words in it may seem contradictory, in the sense that the real knowledge is often seen as something goal, universally established, and therefore impersonal. To resolve this apparent inconsistency, according to him, it is not so much a matter of revising the concept of personhood, but rather that of knowledge¹⁶. In final, Polanyi does not set out to provide new answers to the meaning of human existence or to develop a metaphysics of the person. In fact, if we can speak of personalism in Polanyi, it is above all of an epistemological, rather than an ontological, nature. Hence, following Carlo Vinti, we use the expression "personalist epistemology".¹⁷.

In this line, Polanyi insists that the role of the person in knowledge should not be ignored, and this not only in the human sciences, but also in the natural sciences. This idea is clearly expressed in the following text from The Study of Man: "The participation of the subject in the training of his knowledge, hitherto tolerated only as a defect (...), is now recognised as the true guide and dominant agent of our cognitive powers (...). The ideal of a knowledge concretised in strictly impersonal propositions now seems contradictory, meaningless, ridiculous. Our ideal must be a manifestly knowledge staff ".¹⁸. This is not precisely the approach of the Philosophy of mainstream science, which rather follows Popper in claiming to construct an epistemology "without a cognising subject", an expression with which he titles a chapter of his well-known work Objective Knowledge¹⁹. Basically, here Popper follows the line set by positivism, which considers the experimental sciences as the paradigm of knowledge.

With opposite motivations, some authors also include the experimental sciences as the realm of the purely goal, but seeing it as something that must be overcome by sciences in which the person prevails. It is an idea that, formulated with different nuances, can be found in Husserl's The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology and in the personalist philosophers. Of course, the critique is directed not so much at the sciences as at their positivist approach. Some of these authors have stressed the importance of including the factor staff also in the scientific knowledge . Thus, Mounier is convinced that scientific rationality facilitates that the experience staff is not transformed into a narcissistic delirium, but is constituted as an authentic intersubjective speech .²⁰. But in this context, it is most often the human sciences that are assumed as the main reference letter , whereby the experimental sciences must be inspired by what is appropriate, while Polanyi takes an analogous approach, but taking the experimental sciences as a point of departure.

Indeed, this author developed a scientific degree program B , and precisely from there his fields of interest progressively evolved towards epistemological issues. Alongside his scientific research , he began to take an interest in issues of Economics and society in relation to science, among which he emphasised topic the role of tradition within academic community, as a reaction to the growing Marxist influence of those years, which also had an impact on the scientific sphere. In fact, social aspects constitute in a way the starting point of his reflection on the scientific knowledge and on knowledge in general. By directing attention to these external factors, he stresses that science is first and foremost a human activity carried out with a view to specific goals, thus emphasising the experiential aspect of it²¹.

It did not escape Polanyi's notice that this basic approach, supported above all by his own experience as a scientist, clashed with the then prevailing positivist view of science, which claimed to provide a logical and scientific interpretation of the world in which all metaphysical reference letter is eliminated, considering that the knowledge is reduced to the collection of observation data and the elaboration of logical constructions.²². In this way, knowing reality would be reduced to making explicit its empirical content, beyond which there would be nothing.

The deepening of these issues led Polanyi to leave science in favour of a greater dedication to questions concerning the epistemology and Philosophy of science, in which, according to him, the solution to the questions that arose in his mind had to be found. In this new stage, his point of departure continues to be in science, in the essential question of what the scientific knowledge is like, which he then extends to other fields. In this framework, it is stressed that the knowledge is more dispositional than propositional, i.e. it must not lose sight of the fact that it is an experience staff rather than a cold elucidation of principles and their consequences, as logical positivism proposes.

The roots of this basic error lie, according to Polanyi, in what has traditionally been referred to as "Philosophy critique". This term includes not only Kantian thought, but also the rupture introduced by Descartes. The work staff Knowledge, which is subtitled Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, is intended as an alternative to Philosophy critique. It states that behind the conception of science that follows from criticism there is an underlying epistemological error, consisting in the rejection of the notion of truth, which is replaced by certainty, leading to scepticism.²³. According to Polanyi, this is a process analogous to that of the Greek Philosophy , whose crisis was also marked by a rationalism that led to scepticism, so that St. Augustine, with his appeal to the need to believe, was the first author to develop a "post-criticalPhilosophy ".²⁴.

With this inspiration from an aspect of Augustinian thought, Polanyi states that the main goal of his "post-criticalPhilosophy " is to refute a rationalism which leads to the extreme objectivism claimed by positivism.²⁵. On the contrary, he considers that all human cognitive experience, not only religious experience, is based on convictions and beliefs. In other words, faith is somehow at the basis of all truth.²⁶. In fact, in referring to his attempt to base knowledge on such beliefs, he uses the expression "fiduciary programme".²⁷. It follows that, in the Polanyian conception of knowledge, the act by which a person accepts a proposition as true plays a central role: this act is a commitment underpinned by confidence that a truth has been attained. Thomas Torrance, echoing these ideas, argues that the fundamental premises of science - in Polanyian expression, ultimate certainties - are to be understood as expressions of our commitment to fidelity to reality, which the rational knowledge presupposes and on which reason relies in any authentic tendency towards reality. Without such presuppositions, therefore, science would not be possible.²⁸.

Consequently, Polanyi asserts, "every effort made to understand something has to be sustained by the belief that there is something there that can be understood".²⁹. A fiduciary attitude towards reality is thus revealed: "from agreement with the logic of commitment, truth can only be conceived by believing in it".³⁰. Commitment has something subjective about it, staff, but it is directed towards something goal and impersonal: in commitment, the staff and the universal call for each other.³¹. In final, it is clear that for Polanyi the "knowledge staff " does not consist in the inclusion of a subjective factor in knowing, but that the participation staff of the knower refers rather to the relation of his thought and actions with objective reality, insofar as this is accessible to his understanding. Moreover, such participation staff is not realised in a cold, distant way, but rather through an intellectual passion, which pursues a sense of coherence with the objective reality.³²which pursues a sense of coherence and beauty that is intimately linked to rationality.³³.

4.- The relationship between science and religion in a Polanyian perspective

When the question of the relationship between science and religion is raised, the following warning should be made: we are dealing with heterogeneous terms, since science is knowledge, and religion refers above all to a vital experience of particular intensity. Thus, the comparison implicitly introduces a homogenisation, in such a way that it can lead to reductionism (for example, restricting religion to a set of knowledge relating to divinity). As we have already noted, from a Polanyian perspective science is understood first and foremost from experience, which also allows for a better approach to the essentials of religion. Moreover, the same language that Polanyi uses to explain knowledge, in which he gives special importance to knowledge by faith, to commitment... is also applicable to religious experience.

Polanyi did not, however, address the relationship between science and religion in its full breadth; rather, he made only cursory references, considering religion in conjunction with art or Humanities in general. Moreover, he remained ambiguous about religion for much of his life. He had Jewish ancestry, although his parents were agnostic, and provided him with a Education in this respect. However, in his middle age - in 1913 - he felt a certain attraction to Christianity, which gradually took shape until he was converted.³⁴. It is recorded that he was baptised in the Catholic Church in 1919, and shortly afterwards he met his future wife, Magda Kemeny, a Catholic. The reasons for his conversion are not clear. Polanyi himself, in a letter he wrote to Karl Mannheim, states that he became interested in Christianity around 1913, after reading The Brothers Karamazov³⁵. Drusilla Scott, who knew Polanyi, is inclined to think that he converted to Catholicism for rather practical reasons, but does not specify which ones.³⁶. When W. Scott interviewed Polanyi's wife, she told him that she did not know to what extent and in what way her husband remained a Catholic, as his later activity shows that, in relation to his way of thinking, he manifested himself rather as a Protestant.³⁷. It is not easy to answer these questions, as Polanyi did not usually discuss his beliefs even with his closest collaborators: Prosch himself expressed his perplexity when he heard about the above-mentioned data .³⁸. It is not known to what extent these events in Polanyi's life influenced the doctrine that he would develop many years later: obviously, there were changes in his way of thinking, but at the same time a certain common substratum can be observed in his thinking, which led him never to remain indifferent to questions of a religious nature.³⁹.

Another thing is that his own view of science has in fact inspired dozens of authors to approach the relationship between science and religion from a Polanyian perspective. Some have developed an epistemology of religion from the analytical Philosophy , inspired by the Polanyian Philosophy of science. Among them are Ian Barbour, Ian T. Ramsey, who has made a comparative study between Polanyi and J. Austin, Landon Gilkey, and J. Austin, who has made a comparative study between Polanyi and J. Austin.⁴⁰Landon Gilkey⁴¹, Dallas M. High, Basil

Mitchell and Jerry H. Gill. The latter set out to develop a non-dualistic epistemology of religious knowledge based on both Polanyi's tacit knowledge theory and the Philosophy of ordinary language, in the line of the second Wittgenstein, Austin and J. Wisdom⁴². And in language Francisco Conesa has made a valuable study of the thought of these authors in the field of analytical Philosophy including frequent references to Polanyi.⁴³.

From the perspective of the epistemology of knowledge in the religious field, some authors have seen a certain parallelism between Polanyian epistemology and Bernard Lonergan's theory of theological science, for example Martin X. Moleski⁴⁴Eugene Webb⁴⁵and Joseph W. Kroger. The latter claims that, although there has been no mutual influence between the two authors, the parallel is B, in particular between Polanyi's concept of discovery and Lonergan's concept of insight - in the sense of insight or penetration⁴⁶.

From a mainly theological perspective, the study of Polanyian epistemology has been approached by a number of Catholic theologians, such as Avery Dulles⁴⁷Terence Kennedy⁴⁸ and John V. Apczynski⁴⁹and also theologians belonging to various reformed confessions, such as Alexander Thomson⁵⁰Thomas A. Langford⁵¹Robert T. Osborn⁵²William T. Scott⁵³and, in particular, Thomas F. Torrance⁵⁴theologian of the Scottish Reformed Church, literary executor of Polanyi. Torrance interprets Polanyi from a preferably theological perspective: he considers Polanyian epistemology to be suitable as a framework into which supernatural realities can be integrated.

In one way or another, all these authors echo Polanyi's unitary vision of the sciences. Raymond Aron, in a article in which he compares the views of Max Weber and Michael Polanyi, states of the latter that he is a philosopher of reconciliation, in the sense that he achieves a certain rapprochement between the sciences of nature and the sciences of the spirit⁵⁵. In contrast, Dilthey and Weber emphasise the differences, incurring in a certain methodological dualism, which is very widespread in modern and contemporary culture. Thus, Weber considers that the method proper to the natural sciences is explanation, which tends to formulate universal and impersonal laws, and, on the other hand, the human sciences aspire to understanding, to an intuitive knowledge of their objects, with a more active participation of the subject in the elaboration of that knowledge. On the other hand, Polanyi aims to reconcile both conceptions of knowledge, highlighting the continuity - without absolute identity - between them in their respective fields and methods⁵⁶.

It could be added that in our contemporary era an attempt has been made to unify the natural and human sciences, but in the opposite direction: that of scientism, which applies the method of the sciences (explanation, as Weber would say) to Humanities. The Polanyian perspective is the opposite: it is the method of the natural sciences that is assimilated to that of the sciences of the mind.

This unified method which, in Weberian terms, attends more to understanding than to explanation is illustrated by Polanyi with an expression that is core topic to understand the applicability of his theory of knowledge staff in a wide range, according to different Degrees, in experimental sciences, mathematics, art and religion: dwelling in and breaking out. It is the degree scroll of the last section of Intellectual passions, chapter 6 of staff Knowledge, and could be translated as "dwelling in and breaking out".⁵⁷.

The first movement - inhabiting - consists of making the reality under study one's own, living in it, integrating oneself with it. This operation presents different Degrees according to the level of reality of the object studied, which for Polanyi is related to the Degree of commitment that the person adopts: such commitment is not the same with respect to inanimate nature or to living beings, or to mankind.⁵⁸. On a lofty Degree , dwelling occurs when we know another person, for we grasp their feelings, their way of thinking, etc., at the same time as we know ourselves. Polanyi notes that something analogous happens, albeit on a lower scale, in any act of knowing⁵⁹. In the words of The Study of Man, this process entails "the inescapable act of participation staff in our explicit knowledge of things".⁶⁰. It is a matter, in final, of dwelling in a tradition, which has been given to us.

The second movement - bursting out - evokes the finding, which entails a certain "intellectual passion" or admiration in the face of a reality that had hitherto gone unnoticed, which establishes a new contact with reality, by virtue of its rationality.⁶¹. This finding is possible insofar as it is preceded by dwelling in or indwelling, by a tradition in which one dwells. In fact, the concepts of tradition and finding are key to Polanyi's approach, to such an extent that they have given their name to the journal Tradition and Discovery, a journal that has been published since 1974, devoted to the study of his thought.

This double movement presents the Degree maximum in religious experience: thus, in the act of worship, the dwelling in a fiduciary structure is realised with the greatest intensity, and the breaking out, which involves an opening to the most sublime reality, the divinity, is also particularly intense. final And the most sublime expression of this is the Christian experience of union with the crucified God: it is the tension of the one who lives in Christ in the enigmatic status offered by the presence of an incarnate and crucified Absolute.⁶². And at a lower Degree , as Vinti points out, the parallelism with Kuhn's theory of paradigms is notorious: indwelling would correspond to normal science, which develops within the scope of a paradigm, and breaking out would consist of a paradigm shift.⁶³. In fact, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn quotation , who has developed an explanation analogous to his own.⁶⁴. But the main difference is that for Kuhn, paradigm change is not cumulative, it does not entail progress; and for Polanyi, finding involves engaging contact with a reality that in the future will yield unexpected results.⁶⁵.

(1) Cf. Ian Barbour, "Ways of Relating Science and Religion", in Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science, Harper, San Francisco 1990, pp. 3-30. A clarifying analysis of the question can be found in: Mariano Artigas, La mente del universo, Eunsa, Pamplona 2000, pp. 27-32.

(2) Not to be confused with Karl Polanyi (1886-1964), brother of the author studied here, known mainly for his work on Economics with a sociological approach , whose most widely published work is The Great Transformation. In addition, a son of Michael Polanyi, John (1929), was awarded the award Nobel Prize at Chemistry in 1986 in recognition of his work in reaction kinetics.

(3) A more detailed presentation of the author, with bibliographical references, is contained in La epistemologia di Michael Polanyi: una perspectiva realistica della scienza, Edizioni Università della Santa Croce, Roma 2004. Subsequently, the following biography was published, which is so far the most complete one: William Taussig Scott - Martin X. Moleski, Michael Polanyi: scientist and philosopher, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005.

(4) Michael Polanyi, U.S.S.R. Economics, Manchester University Press, Manchester 1935.

(5) Michael Polanyi, Full Employment and Free Trade, Cambridge University Press, London 1945.

(6) Michael Polanyi, The Contempt of Freedom, C. A. Watts, London 1940.

(7) Michael Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1951.

(8) Michael Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society, Oxford University Press, London 1946. There is a 2nd edition of 1964 published by the University of Chicago Press. Of the 1st edition there is a version in Spanish by María Dolores Cuadrado: Ciencia, fe y sociedad, Taurus, Madrid 1961.

(9) Cf. Terence Kennedy, The Morality of Knowledge. Transcendence and the Intellectual Life in the Thought of Michael Polanyi, Pontificia Univ. Lateranensis, Accademia Alfonsiana, Rome 1979, p. 8.

(10) Michael Polanyi, staff Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, 2nd ed., Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1962 (hereafter cited as PK).

(11) Michael Polanyi, The Study of Man, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1959. There is a version in Spanish by A. Cucurullo: El estudio del hombre, Paidós, Buenos Aires 1966.

(12) Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, Anchor Books, London 1966.

(13) Michael Polanyi, Knowing and Being, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1969.

(14) Michael Polanyi, Scientific Thought and Social Reality, "Psychological Issues", 8, monograph 32, International Universities Press, New York 1974.

(15) Michael Polanyi - Harry Prosch, Meaning, Chicago University Press, Chicago 1975.

(16) Cf. PK, p. vii.

(17) Cfr. Carlo Vinti, Epistemologia e persona in Michael Polanyi, "Prospettiva Persona", IV, no. 12 (1995), pp. 9-14; and second part: "Prospettiva Persona", VI, no. 20 (1997), pp. 12-16.

(18) Polanyi, The Study of Man, cit. pp. 20-21.

(19) Cfr. Karl R. Popper, knowledge goal , Tecnos, Madrid 1982, pp. 106-120.

(20) Cfr. Carlo Vinti, Epistemologia e persona: Dittico su Polanyi e Bachelard, Armando, Roma 2008, p. 15.

(21) An analogous affirmation can be found in Mariano Artigas, Philosophy de la ciencia experimental, Eunsa, Pamplona 1989, pp. 7-8.

(22) Cfr. Mariano Artigas, El desafío de la racionalidad, Eunsa, Pamplona 1994, pp. 30-31.

(23) Cf. PK, pp. 269ff.

(24) "If you do not believe, you will not understand", a phrase from the Sacred Scripture (Is 7, 9) glossed in De libero arbitrio, I, 4.

(25) Cfr. PK, p. 266. Patrick Grant states that staff Knowledge and other works have been written under the influence of the thought and language of St. Augustine, as he explains in: Michael Polanyi: The Augustinian Component, "The New Scholasticism", 48 (1974), p. 438-463. Another analysis of Polanyian thought under the Augustinian perspective can be found in R. Melvin Keiser, Inaugurating Post-Critical Philosophy: A Polanyian Meditation on Creation and Conversion in Augustine's 'Confessions', "Zygon", 22 (1987), pp. 317-337.

(26) Cf. PK, pp. 266, 286.

(27) Cf. PK, p. 299.

(28) Cfr. T. F. Torrance, Senso del divino e scienza moderna, Italian translation by Giuseppe Del Re, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Città del Vaticano 1992, p. 287.

(29) Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society, cit. p. 40.

(30) PK, p. 305 (translation).

(31) Cf. PK, p. 308.

(32) Cf. PK, p. 135.

(33) Cf. PK, p. 133.

(34) Cf. William T. Scott, The Question of a Religious Reality: Commentary of the Polanyi Papers, "Zygon", 17 (1982), p. 85; Richard Gelwick, Science and Reality, Religion and God: a Reply to Harry Prosch, "Zygon", 17 (1982), p. 26.

(35) Cf. William T. Scott, The Question of a Religious Reality: Commentary of the Polanyi Papers, "Zygon", 17 (1982), pp. 85-86.

(36) Cf. Drusilla Scott, Everyman Revived. The Common Sense of Michael Polanyi, 2nd ed., William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids (Michigan) 1995, p. 182.

(37) Cf. Scott, The Question of a Religious Reality, cit., p. 86. Cf. for example Science, Faith and Society, p. 57, where, in discussing the exercise of authority in the scientific sphere, he compares it to that of the Protestant Church, which allows free interpretation, and refers to the Catholic Church, by contrast, in a somewhat derogatory manner, as if it exercised despotic authority.

(38) Cfr. Harry Prosch, Polanyi's view of Religion in staff Knowledge: A Response to Richard Gelwick, "Zygon", 17 (1982), p. 48.

(39) William T. Scott, The Question of a Religious Reality, cit. p. 85.

(40) Cf. Ian T. Ramsey, Polanyi and J. L. Austin, in Thomas A. Langford - William H. Poteat (eds.), Intellect and Hope: Essays in the Thought of Michael Polanyi. Langford - William H. Poteat (eds.), Intellect and Hope: Essays in the Thought of Michael Polanyi, Duke University Press, Durham 1968. pp. 169-197.

(41) Cfr. Langdon Gilkey, Religion and the Scientific Future, Harper and Row, New York 1970, where the author makes frequent allusions to Polanyi's thought.

(42) Cf. Jerry H. Gill, The Possibility of Religious Knowledge, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan 1971. A more detailed consideration of this perspective can be found in Andy F. Sanders, Michael Polanyi's Post-Critical Epistemology: a Reconstruction of Some Aspects of 'Tacit Knowing', Rodopi, Amsterdam 1988, p. 242.

(43) Francisco Conesa, Creer y conocer. El valor cognoscitivo de la fe en la Philosophy analítica, Eunsa, Pamplona 1994, pp. 105-112 and 282-285.

(44) Martin X. Moleski, staff Catholicism. The Theological Epistemologies of John Henry Newman and Michael Polanyi, The Catholic University of America Press, Washington DC 2000.

(45) Cfr. Eugene Webb, Philosophers of Consciousness: Polanyi, Lonergan, Voegelin, Ricoeur, Girard, Kierkegaard, University of Washington Press, Seattle 1988.

<(46)  Cfr. Joseph W. Kroger, Polanyi and Lonergan on Scientific Method, “Philosophy Today”, 21 (1977), pp. 220.

(47) Cf. Avery Dulles, Faith, Church and God: Insights from Michael Polanyi, "Theological Studies", 45 (1984), pp. 537-550.

(48) Cf. his aforementioned work The Morality of Knowledge, in which Polanyi's thought is approached from the perspective of moral theology.

(49) Cf. John V. Apczynski, Doers of the Word. Toward a Fundational Theology Based on the Thought of Michael Polanyi, Scholar's Press, University of Montana, Missoula 1977. In this work, Apczynski sets out to develop a foundational theology based on Polanyi's epistemology.

(50) Cfr. Alexander Thomson, Tradition and Authority in Science and Theology with Reference to the Thought of Michael Polanyi, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh 1987.

(51) Cfr. Thomas A. Langford, Michael Polanyi and the Task of Theology, "The Journal of Religion", 46 (1966), pp. 45-55.

(52) Cf. Robert T. Osborn, Christian Faith as staff Knowledge, "Scottish Journal of Theology", 28 (1975), pp. 101-126.

(53) There are numerous articles by this author on Polanyi's thought. On religion in relation to science, the following articles by William T. Scott stand out: A Bridge from Science to Religion. Based on Polanyi's Theory of Knowledge, "Zygon", 5 (1970), pp. 41-62; The Question of a Religious Reality: Commentary of the Polanyi Papers, "Zygon", 17 (1982), pp. 83-87.

(54) In addition to Senso del divino e scienza moderna, already cited, from a theological perspective the following book stands out: Thomas F. Torrance (ed.), Belief in Science and Christian Life. The Relevance of Michael Polanyi Thought for Christian Faith and Life, Handsel Press, Edinburgh 1980.

(55) Cf. Raymond Aron, Max Weber and Michael Polanyi, in AA.VVV. The Logic of staff Knowledge: Essays presented to Michael Polanyi on his Seventieth Birthday, 11th March 1961, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1961, pp. 99 and 115.

(56) Cfr. Carlo Vinti, Epistemologia e persona in Michael Polanyi, "Prospettiva Persona", IV (1995), p. 10.

(57) Cf. PK, pp. 195-202.

(58) Cf. PK, p. 379.

(59) Cf. Michael Polanyi, Clues to an Understanding of Mind and Body, in Irving John Good (ed.), The Scientist Speculates, Basic Books, New York 1962, p. 72.

(60) Polanyi, The Study of Man, cit. p. 20.

(61) Cf. PK, p. 5.

(62) Cfr. PK, p. 199. A clarifying analysis can be found in Carlo Vinti, "Trattenersi all'interno ed erompere fuori (dwelling in and breaking out)". Polanyi e il filosofare nel Dio Crocifisso, in AA.VV., Filosofare in Cristo, Arti Tipografiche Toscana, Cortona 2007, p. 347-356.

(63) Cf. ibid. p. 349.

(64) Cfr. Thomas S. Kuhn, La estructura de las revoluciones científicas, Fondo de cultura económica, México, D.F. 1971, p. 82. Kuhn also quotation to Polanyi with the same motif in the Postscriptum of 1969 (cfr. ibid. pp. 292-293).

(65) Cf. Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, cit. p. 24.