Michael Polanyi

Description
Michael Polanyi was one of the great figures of European intellectual life in the 20th century. An acclaimed physical chemist in the first period of his career, Polanyi became a celebrated philosopher after World War II. He taught in Germany, England, and the United States and associated with many of the leading intellects of his time. As he witnessed the great wars and social revolutions of the twentieth century, Polanyi realized that the misleading ideals of objectivity derived from science were poisoning society at large. Polanyi was so convinced of the need to set things right that he left the laboratory and embarked on a career in economics, social analysis, and philosophy to discover and affirm the foundation of personal knowledge on which authentic science and humane societies are based. Theologians and religious thinkers were among the first to appreciate his philosophical ideas and in his late writing Polanyi tried more directly to discuss religion and religious knowledge, generating much scholarly debate. He was convinced that his philosophy of science would support a renewal of the religious and ethical traditions on which Western civilization depends. His biography has remained unwritten partly because of his many and scattered interests in a wide variety of fields, including six subfields of physical chemistry, epistemology, economics, patent law, social and political theory, aesthetics, and theology. In order to do full justice to this remarkable figure, the late William Taussig Scott spent seventeen years investigating Polanyi’s work in science and the humanities, chasing down every source, and even studying Polanyi’s native Hungarian in an effort to prepare himself to write this biography. He conducted some 125 interviews with people who knew Polanyi well–family, colleagues and friends–and pursued research in Budapest, Berlin, Karlsruhe, Manchester, New York, Oxford, and Chicago, in Hungarian, German, and English. Following Scott’s death, Martin X. Moleski, S.J., brought the project to completion. This long-awaited volume will be the definitive resource on Polanyi and his work.