Points for Science

It turns out that committing to read Michael Polanyi's book Personal Knowledge for my discussion group was just the beginning. After I finished it last month, all the unanswered questions and uncertainty about his case for personal knowledge consumed me to the point where I ended up doing a bit of a literature review to find out what kind of standing he has in the scientific community. It turns out that not only does he have one, but that his views are at least a little bit familiar to established scientists in a variety of disciplines within the biological sciences. I am thrilled to find his name being quoted with respect in major review papers. I admit that I am also a little smug about this.

The small discussion group I've managed (with help) to pull together is composed of a variety of people from different backgrounds. A couple of the philosophical types have what I feel is a bit of a condescending attitude towards the natural sciences. Polanyi directly attacks pure reductionism and its derivatives in his book. While there is no doubt that pure reductionism has driven much of modern scientific inquiry, tides are turning on the linear thinking approaches originating from the more extreme reductionists (I'm thinking of Crick, I suppose). Now we have papers written on systems biology, emergent properties, and new conceptual approaches in areas like genomics and molecular biology. I think the philosopher crowd is mostly unaware of this shift in scientific thinking. That is understandable given that this movement is only now gathering numbers and developing research projects that utilize these concepts practically. But the undercurrent attitude of some philosophers that scientists need to be spoon-fed metaphysics because we are too buried in exploring some trivial molecular pathway is irritating and (I believe) inaccurate. I think it is just too cool that a couple of scientists have picked up Polanyi and started self-critically integrating his ideas into research while in the meantime philosophers have more or less forgotten all about him. Teehee!