The Pumpkin or the Tiger? Michael Polanyi, Frederick Soddy, and Anticipating Emerging Technologies

The Pumpkin or the Tiger? Michael Polanyi, Frederick Soddy, and Anticipating Emerging Technologies

Imagine putting together a jigsaw puzzle that works like the board game in the movie "Jumanji": When you finish, whatever the puzzle portrays becomes real. The children playing "Jumanji" learn to prepare for the reality that emerges from the next throw of the dice. But how would this work for the puzzle of scientific research? How do you prepare for unlocking the secrets of the atom, or assembl...

Michael Polanyi

RECENTLY there fell into my hands by the kindness of its author a book which has revealed to me a new, and I think much better, understanding of the situation we are facing today in consequence of the modern scientific revolution. The author’s name is Josef Pieper, professor of philosophical anthropology at the University of Münster, and his book which so impressed me is entitled Scizolastik. (...

Michael Polanyi and Human Identity

Polanyi , MacIntyre , and the Role of Tradition Michael Polanyi , Alasdair MacIntyre , and the Role of Tradition

Introduction Modernity has reached a dead end. The optimism in which the modern world was conceived and nurtured has been replaced by a thoroughgoing skepticism that denies the possibility of making meaningful truth claims, especially when those claims bear on morality and religion. The irony is that this has occurred as we have become increasingly confident of scientific utterances. Thus, as o...

Michael Polanyi and Spontaneous Order , 1941 - 1951