Michael Polanyi

(As delivered on February 10, 1964 at Duke University) My subject today will be the positivist theory of science judged on the evidence of a historical controversy, fought out at the very dawn of science over the system of Copernicus. Rumours of his theory that the earth moves round the sun, had...

## FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY ## The Structure Of Tacit Knowing by Michael Polanyi (As delivered on February 17, 1964 at Duke University) In my previous lecture I distinguished between the explicit content of a theory and its anticipatory powers. I ascribed this surplus of meaning to the image of...

## Commitment to Science by Michael Polanyi (As delivered on February 24, 1964 at Duke University) You may well find the conclusions of my first two lectures distressing. If there is one thing in which all philosophers have agreed, all the way from Plato via Descartes to Gilbert Ryle, it is, that...

## The Emergence of Man by Michael Polanyi (As delivered on March 2, 1964 at Duke University) At the end of my first lecture I said that the Copernican revolution, completed by Newton, has placed on the same level the ultimate components of all things, including those of man and of the thoughts of...

(As delivered on March 9, 1964 at Duke University) My first three lectures dealt with our power of tacit knowing. They showed that tacit knowing achieves comprehension by indwelling, and that all knowledge consists, or is rooted, in such acts of comprehension. The fourth lecture showed how the...

For private distribution Lecture 1 Science and Reality. by Michael Polanyi (Delivered at Wesleyan University, September 29, 1965) The subject of this lecture is to introduce to you a conception which has for two and a half millennia been the guide of all major efforts to understand nature, but...

## Lecture 2 ## The Structure of Tacit Knowing. by Michael Polanyi (Delivered at Wesleyan University, October 14, 1965) In my last talk I alluded to the powers of the mind by which we establish coherence in nature: a coherence which reveals the presence of something real in nature. I said that...

My lecture, last week, dealt with some curious facts. It showed a number of instances in which we integrate experiences to something on which they bear. We are aware then of such subsidiaries, be they clues, or parts, or pointers, or names, or tools, or probes, or motions, in terms of that to which...

FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION Lecture 4 The Growth of Science in Society by Michael Polanyi (Delivered at Wesleyan University; October 28, 1965) The purpose of my lecture today is two-pronged. I want to outline the way scientific research is organised, and must be organised. And for this purpose I shall...

Lecture 5 Levels of Reality by Michael Polanyi (Delivered at Wesleyan University, November 11, 1965) I have told you how Copernicus ousted man from his central position in the universe and destroyed the theological cosmos. The heavenly sphere of divine perfection towards which, from his fallen...