Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical

Rating scales that link numbers to verbal labels are ubiquitous in social psychological research and are used to re-express individuals’ attitudes on wide-ranging matters in quantities that can be treated statistically. These re-expressions pay tribute to an objectivist framework, but at the expense of eclipsing the powers of personal knowing Polanyi attributes to other minds. This fact comes to the fore in the present paper through an investigation of Polanyi’s analysis of linguistic indeterminacy, indication and symbols, and the application of neurological models to persons who are competent to make sense of their own lives. Accrediting the result of this inquiry compels one dedicated to Polanyi’s thought to wonder how social psychology ought to be conceived. Clues to an answer appear in the educational bonds formed between mentors and pupils in the transmission of cultural lore.

Similarities between what Michael Polanyi and Daniel Kahneman wrote about the acts of judging and deciding are partly the result of taking seriously the findings of Gestalt psychology. Both men treat acts of judging and deciding as analogous to acts of perceiving. This similarity is the reason that the differences between Kahneman and Polanyi are mostly complementary, rather than contradictory. Among the things Polanyians can contribute to the interdisciplinary field of judgment and decision making are commitment, the from-to structure, and the image of leaping across a logical gap. Among the things Polanyians can learn from Kahneman is a pragmatic distinction between judging and deciding, a distinction between fast and slow thinking, and a heightened awareness of the many ways tacit heuristics and biases lead to mistaken judgments and bad decisions.

In this essay, I contend that Polanyi’s view of metaphor as outlined in Meaning (1975), has important heuristic implications for understanding the way metaphor functions in trauma therapy. I also contend that in his seminal book on trauma, The Body Keeps the Score (2014), Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., although he rarely uses the term, relies on metaphor as a vital element in his treatment of trauma victims. Analysis of Van der Kolk’s practice further confirms and extends Polanyi’s view of the bodily roots of all knowledge. Juxtaposing Polanyi’s theory and Van der Kolk’s practice demonstrates how unspeakable trauma can be overcome through the embodied metaphoric/linguistic matrix of human speech.

Michael Polanyi, along with colleagues at University of Manchester, worked to produce the journal Humanitas, A University Quarterly for two years just after the end of World War II. This essay outlines how Polanyi’s two articles in Humanitas and other work on the journal reflect Polanyi’s developing philosophical perspective.