Anthropological Materials in the Making of Michael Polanyi's Metascience

摘要

This essay has presented direct and indirect evidence that twentieth century anthropological work was an important resource contributing to Polanyi’s understanding of key features of science. Polanyi was a figure who in the early 1940’s developed ideas about the role and importance of tradition in science and society. By the time of his 1946 Riddell lectures, he was keenly interested in differences between magical, medieval Christian, and modern scientific outlooks and attempted to describe how a scientific worldview arose. As he began, in the late 1940s, to prepare his Gifford Lectures, Polanyi paid particular attention to the anthropological writing of Lévy-Bruhl and Evans-Pritchard, applying it in his lectures to challenge the critical philosophical tradition, which he held had significantly shaped modern thought and especially mid-century accounts of science. Polanyi’s “post-critical” or “fiduciary” philosophy, his constructive philosophical alternative to the critical philosophy, worked out in his middle period, drew on the work of Lévy- Bruhl and Evans-Pritchard to focus attention on frameworks and emphasize the importance of belief and commitment in scientific practice.