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We Do Not Accept A Religion Because It Offers Us Certain Rewards. The Only Thing That A Religion Can Offer Us Is To Be Just What It, In Itself, Is: A Greater Meaning In Ourselves, In Our Lives, And In Our Grasp Of The Nature Of Things...a Religion Exists For Us Only If, Like A Piece Of Poetry, It Carries Us Away. It Is Not In Any Sense A 'hypothesis.

-Michael Polanyi

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We Do Not Accept

Michael Polanyi

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We Do Not Accept A Religion Because It Offers Us Certain Rewards. The Only Thing That A Religion Can Offer Us Is To Be Just What It, In Itself, Is: A Greater Meaning In Ourselves, In Our Lives, And In Our Grasp Of The Nature Of Things...a Religion Exists For Us Only If, Like A Piece Of Poetry, It Carries Us Away. It Is Not In Any Sense A 'hypothesis.

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I Shall Reconsider Human Knowledge By Starting From The Fact That We Can Know More Than We Can Tell.

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Our Reliance On The Validity Of A Scientific Conclusion Depends Ultimately On A Judgment Of Coherence; And As There Can Exist No Strict Criterion For Coherence, Our Judgment Of It Must Always Remain A Qualitative, Nonformal, Tacit, Personal Judgment.

The Process Of Philosophic And Scientific Enlightenment Has Shaken The Stability Of Beliefs Held Explicitly As Articles Of Faith.

No Inanimate Object Is Ever Fully Determined By The Laws Of Physics And Chemistry.

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The First Thing To Make Clear Is That Scientists, Freely Making Their Own Choice Of Problems And Pursuing Them In The Light Of Their Own Personal Judgment, Are In Fact Co-operating As Members Of A Closely Knit Organization.

And The Actual Achievements Of Biology Are Explanations In Terms Of Mechanisms Founded On Physics And Chemistry, Which Is Not The Same Thing As Explanations In Terms Of Physics And Chemistry.

These Maxims And The Art Of Interpreting Them May Be Said To Constitute The Premisses Of Science But I Prefer To Call Them Our Scientific Beliefs. These Premisses Or Beliefs Are Embodied In A Tradition, The Tradition Of Science.

The Information In Dna Could No More Be Reduced To The Chemical Than Could The Ideas In A Book Be Reduced To The Ink And Paper: Something Beyond Physics And Chemistry Encoded Dna.

A Free Society Is Regarded As One That Does Not Engage, On Principle, In Attempting To Control What People Find Meaningful, And A Totalitarian Society Is Regarded As One That Does, On Principle, Attempt Such Control.

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Admittedly, The Body Of Scientists, As A Whole, Does Uphold The Authority Of Science Over The Lay Public. It Controls Thereby Also The Process By Which Young Men Are Trained To Become Members Of The Scientific Profession.

Admittedly, Scientific Authority Is Not Distributed Evenly Throughout The Body Of Scientists; Some Distinguished Members Of The Profession Predominate Over Others Of A More Junior Standing.

Discoveries Are Made By Pursuing Possibilities Suggested By Existing Knowledge.

I Shall Suggest, On The Contrary, That All Communication Relies, To A Noticeable Extent On Evoking Knowledge That We Cannot Tell, And That All Our Knowledge Of Mental Processes, Like Feelings Or Conscious Intellectual Activities, Is Based On A Knowledge Which We Cannot Tell.

So Long As We Use A Certain Language, All Questions That We Can Ask Will Have To Be Formulated In It And Will Thereby Confirm The Theory Of The Universe Which Is Implied In The Vocabulary And Structure Of The Language.

My Title Is Intended To Suggest That The Community Of Scientists Is Organized In A Way Which Resembles Certain Features Of A Body Politic And Works According To Economic Principles Similar To Those By Which The Production Of Material Goods Is Regulated.

I Hold That The Propositions Embodied In Natural Science Are Not Derived By Any Definite Rule From The Data Of Experience, And That They Can Neither Be Verified Nor Falsified By Experience According To Any Definite Rule.

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We Cannot Ultimately Specify The Grounds (either Metaphysical Or Logical Or Empirical) Upon Which We Hold That Our Knowledge Is True. Being Committed To Such Grounds, Dwelling In Them, We Are Projecting Ourselves To What We Believe To Be True From Or Through These Grounds. We Cannot Therefore See What They Are. We Cannot Look At Them Because We Are Looking With Them.

We Do Not Accept A Religion Because It Offers Us Certain Rewards. The Only Thing That A Religion Can Offer Us Is To Be Just What It, In Itself, Is: A Greater Meaning In Ourselves, In Our Lives, And In Our Grasp Of The Nature Of Things...a Religion Exists For Us Only If, Like A Piece Of Poetry, It Carries Us Away. It Is Not In Any Sense A 'hypothesis.

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Personal Participation Is The Universal Principle Of Knowing.

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