Polanyi , Popper and Methodology : A Reply to S . Richmond

It is sometimes said that Polanyi’s ideas have been summarized, analyzed, explicated, clarified and reconstructed often enough and that we should rather use his theories as a rich source of inspiration and a common platform to work on than go on repeating them. However, when accounts of his work appear that contradict the standard interpretation, one is forced to go back to the old texts in order to check the merits of these accounts. A good example is Sheldon Richmond’s recent comparison of the theories of Polanyi, Popper and the historian of art E.H. Gombrich. Apart from a rather surprising interpretation of Polanyi’s philosophy of science, Richmond also presents a Popperian critique of it. My aim in this paper is to discuss critically his interpretation of Polanyi’s epistemology and to show that his criticism fails.