Who is Michael Polanyi? Michael Polanyi · 2017. 1. 20. · 1958: Michael Polanyi: “Personal Knowledge” 1966: Michael Polanyi: “The Tacit Dimension” 1969: “Der Positivismusstreit

Michael Polanyi

Marcel Kyas

Háskólinn í Reykjavík

2017-01-20

Who is Michael Polanyi?

Figure 1: Michael Polanyi

• 11.3.1891 (Budapest) –22.2.1976 (Northampton, UK)

• polymath• medicine• physical chemistry• economics• social sciences• philosophy

M. Kyas (RU) Michael Polanyi 2017-01-20 2 / 19

Pearl of Computation?

• Was friends with Alan Turing• His work influenced Hubert

Dreyfus’ critique of AI

• Founded Society for Freedomin Science with John Baker in1940

• Contributed to the analysis ofmonetary systems (1945)

• Contributed to the philosophyof science

• Influenced knowledgemanagement

Figure 2: The ‘Money Circle’


Why Michael Polanyi?

• As a first year student, we hadto prove convergence ofinfinite series

• Students asked the teacher:• How did you get the limit?• How did you choose n0?• How did you know which

test to use?• The teacher answered:

• It just came to me• I tried• I was lucky

• I taught concurrentprogramming

• Students had huge issues withprogramming assignments

• It did work!• I see this error, but it goes

away!• Sometimes it just stops!• Why does my machine

crash?

• I could identify the issue withinminutes

• To students, this was likemagic

• How did you do this?


https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13681265

Freedom in Science

[S]cientists, freely making their own choice of problems andpursuing them in the light of their own personal judgment, are infact co-operating as members of a closely knit organization.

Such self-co-ordination of independent initiatives leads to a jointresult which is unpremeditated by any of those who bring itabout.

Any attempt to organize the group ... under a single authoritywould eliminate their independent initiatives, and thus reducetheir joint effectiveness to that of the single person directing themfrom the centre. It would, in effect, paralyse their co-operation.


Positivism dispute

• Logical positivism: When is aphilosophical method valid?

• must be communicated inlanguage

• must beobservable/empirical ordeduced from observables

• Observables areinter-subject conventions

• Are economics and socialscience actually sciences?

• Is social science a normativeobligatory statement inpolitics?

• 1935: Karl Popper “Logik derForschung”

• 1937: Max Horkheimer “Derneueste Angriff auf dieMetaphysik”

• 1958: Michael Polanyi:“Personal Knowledge”

• 1966: Michael Polanyi: “TheTacit Dimension”

• 1969: “Der Positivismusstreitin der deutschen Soziologie”marks the end of the dispute


All knowledge is personal

• All knowledge claims rely onpersonal judgements

• All knowing, no matter howformalised, relies uponcommitments that motivatediscovery and validation

• Scientific methods do notmechanically yield truths

• Scientists chose significantquestions likely to lead tosuccessful resolution

• We believe more than we canprove, and know more thanwe can sayM. Kyas (RU) Michael Polanyi 2017-01-20 7 / 19

Example from computing

• 1900: David Hilbert 2ndproblem: “Prove that theaxioms of arithmetic areconsistent.”

• 1928: Hilbert recasts theproblem: Is mathematicsconsistent, complete,decidable?

• 1930: Gödel announcesproofs of undecidability

• 1936: Church “An UnsolvableProblem of ElementaryNumber Theory” characterizeseffectively calculable

Figure 3: David Hilbert, 1912


https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36302

Example from computing

• 1931: Gödel “On FormallyUndecidable Propositions ofPrincipia Mathematica andRelated Systems I”

• 1936: Church “A Note on theEntscheidungsproblem”

• 1937: Turing “On ComputableNumbers With an Applicationto the Entscheidungsproblem”

• 1939: Rosser notes theequivalence of effectivemethod proposed by Gödel,Church, and Turing.

• Gödel, Church, and Turingdefined their personal notionof computation:

• Recursive functions• λ-calculus• Turing Machine

• Same result in differentformalisms

• Rosser notes the equivalence,allowing objective formulation

• Kleene, 1952: Formulates theChurch-Turing Thesis.


Personal Knowledge (cont.)

• Experience is not “sense data”• Interpretive frameworks don’t

trap us in experience

• Tacit awareness connects uswith reality

• Tacit awareness suppliescontext within whicharticulations have meaning

• Minds cannot be reduced tocollections of rules

Figure 4: SHODAN


Tacit knowing

• Polanyi’s most importantdiscovery

• “We can know more than wecan tell”

• Skills, ideas, andexperiences

• difficult to access becausenot codified

• often cannot be codified

• Tacit knowledge is “know-how”– not “know-that”, “know-why”,or “know-who” (explicitknowledge)

• Bessemer steel process• First inexpensive industrial

process for mass-productionof steel from molten pig iron

• Removes impurities byblowing air into molten pig iron

• Buyers of the patent could notget it to work from the verbaldescription

• Bessemer set up his owncompany

• He could use the method• He could now convey it to

the users


Knowledge management

• Process of• creating knowledge• sharing knowledge• using knowledge• managing knowledge

• Long history• Master-apprentice relation• on-the-job discussion• discussion forums• libraries• training• mentoring

• corporate culture

• Tools• collaborative software

(wikis, blogs, socialsoftware)

• expert systems• expert directories (stack

overflow)• Technologies

• groupware• content management• eLearning• version control


https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1414706

The first Bread Maker

• Tacit to tacit:• Learn bread making with master• Doesn’t create systematic

insight• Explicit to explicit:

• combining information• no knowledge creation

• Tacit to explicit:• formalizing and coding bread

making• mechanism and algorithm for

the bread maker• Explicit to tacit:

• transformation steps createknowledge

Figure 5: Raku Raku Pan Da


Model of knowledge transfer

• Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995)were influenced by Polanyi:

• Explicit knowledge isobtained through learning

• Tacit knowledge is obtainedthrough experience

• The distinction of explicit andtacit introduces:

• Externalization: formalisingtacit knowledge

• Internalization: obtainingtacit knowledge fromformalisations

Figure 6: The Knowledge Spiral


Conclusion

• Chemistry (skipped)• Freedom in Science

• scientists are naturallycooperating

• more effective whenunorganised

• Personal knowledge• personal judgement• scientists motivation• no mechanical method• tacit awareness• mind not collection of rules

• Tacit knowing• explicit vs tacit knowing• tacit knowing

• cannot be formalized• obtained through

experience• knowledge transfer (SECI)

• transfer throughsocialisation codification

• internalisation• My answer: tacit knowing in

computing obtained throughrepeated application inapplying formal knowledge


Bibliography

Adorno, Theodor W. et al. (1969). Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschenSoziologie. Luchterhand Literaturverlag.

Church, Alonzo (1936a). ‘A Note on the Entscheidungsproblem’. In:Journal of Symbolic Logic 1.1, pp. 40–41. DOI: 10.2307/2269326.

– (1936b). ‘An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory’. In:American Journal of mathematics 58.2, pp. 345–363. DOI:10.2307/2371045.

Gödel, Kurt (1931). ‘Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principiamathematica und verwandter Systeme I’. In: Monateshefte fürMathematik und Physik 38, pp. 173–198.

Hilbert, David (1900). ‘Mathematische Probleme’. In: Nachrichten derKöniglichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen,mathematisch-physikalische Klasse 3, pp. 253–297.


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Bibliography (cont.)Hilbert, David, Hermann Weyl and Paul Bernays (1928). Die Grundlagen

der Mathematik. Leipzig: Verlag B.G. Teubner.Horkheimer, Max (1937). ‘Der neueste Angriff auf die Metaphysik’. In:

Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 6.1, pp. 4–53.Kleene, Stephen Cole (1952). Introduction to Metamathematics. North

Holland.Nonaka, Ikujiro and Hirotaka Takeuchi (1995). The Knowledge-Creating

Company. How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics ofInnovation. Oxford University Press.

Polanyi, Michael (1945). Full Employment and Free Trade. CambridgeUniversity Press.

– (1951). The Logic of Liberty. University of Chicago Press.– (1958). Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy.

University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 0-226-67288-3.– (1966). The Tacit Dimension. London: Routledge.


Bibliography (cont.)Popper, Karl (1935). Logik der Forschung. Vienna: Verlag von Julius

Springer.– (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Cited after edition by

Routledge, 2002. Hutchinson & Co.Rosser, Barkley (1939). ‘An Informal Exposition of Proofs of Gödel’s

Theorems and Church’s Theorem’. In: Journal of Symbolic Logic 4.2,pp. 43–60. DOI: 10.2307/2269059.

Turing, Alan Mathison (1937). ‘On Computable Numbers, with anApplication to the Entscheidungsproblem’. In: Proceedings LondonMathematical Society s2-42.1, pp. 230–265. DOI:10.1112/plms/s2-42.1.230.

Wigner, E.P. and R.A. Hodgkin (1977). ‘Michael Polanyi. 12 March1891–22 February 1976’. In: Bibliographical Memoirs of Fellows of theRoyal Society 23, pp. 413–448. DOI: 10.1098/rsbm.1977.0016.


Picture Credits

• Figure 1: Original author is unknown, found in Manchester archives –http://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/5213045000/, Public Domain.

• Figure 2: Polanyi, 1945, p. 4• Figure 3: By Original author is unknown, Public Domain.• Figure 4: By The ’Through the Looking Glass’ forums, courtesy of the

Systemshock.org Modifications Archive, fair use.

• Figure 5: By MASA - GFDL (投稿者撮影), CC BY-SA 3.0.• Figure 6: By JohannesKnopp - Own work, Copyrighted free use.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/5213045000/http://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/5213045000/http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1005195https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=242.0

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Who is Michael Polanyi? Michael Polanyi · 2017. 1. 20. · 1958: Michael Polanyi: “Personal Knowledge” 1966: Michael Polanyi: “The Tacit Dimension” 1969: “Der Positivismusstreit