Personal Knowledge

by Michael Polanyi

Chapter 1: Objectivity (Annotated Link)

• There is no absolute objectivity otherwise we would be all studying space dust.

• To say scientific theory is objective is to say general theory is closer to objectivity than sensory experience.

  • Theory can be right or wrong about the world

  • Theory is not influenced by personal illusions

  • Theory is constructed without regard to idiosyncratic approach to experience

• Theory (objectivity) has implications beyond what the creater even know, just like how solar centeric system can leads to many other implications.

• Discussion around positivistic conception of science (science is only a summary of experience. If it can not be experience or tested, then it is not science) and how relativity, despite convention perception, is actually a rejection to such claim.

• Science can start with intuitive understanding and observance into the rationality of nature.

• Preference for simplicity should redefine simplicity to be perceived by the expert (e.g.: relativity is not simple for outsiders)

Chapter 4: Skills (Annotated Link)

• Many skilful performer follows rules that they don't know.

• dustructive resonaning: deny the fesibility of something because it is not explained by accepted framework could lead to false negative, but is still indispensable.

• There are skills and connoisseurship that cannot be specified, only observed and learned by experience and tradition.

• There are two kind of mutually exclusive awareness: subsidiary (I know am holding the hammer) and focal (I am focusing on the nail that I am hitting).

  • When we focus on externality of object, what we are using become part of us.

  • We learn this way too, which is why we cannot quite explain the underlying elements well because they are in our subsidiary awareness.

• There are two kind of meaning: existential (context posses in itself, like a music) and denotative (such as a portrait).