Transcendence And Self-Transcendence
Michael Polanyi
[This article originally appeared in 53: 1 (Spring 1970): 88-94 and is put on WWW with kind
permission from and John C. Polanyi.The from the original article has been
preserved, since it identifies the main Polanyi themes in the article as well as provides background on the essay.
Because it is not today very useful, the brief bibliography of Polanyi's writing that came at the end of
the article, has been omitted.]
Soundings
Soundings Editor's Note Soundings
Soundings
: We are publishing this piece as a schematic statement, a credo, setting out Polanyi's philosophy
of nature and of knowledge. It adds nothing new to the corpus of his writings; it is not a piece of analysis or
argument which really explains and justifies Polanyi's positions. But it does introduce a reader to the important
twin concepts of "hierarchical levels" in nature and "tacit knowing" through which we experience them. A list
of publications by Polanyi elaborating the argument is appended. The essay was delivered at a symposium on
"Transcendence and Contemporary Culture" in 1968 sponsored by the Church Society for College Work. Mr.
Polanyi wishes to thank Mr. Ruel Tyson for the idea of describing his subject as transcendence and self-
transcendence.
Editor's Note
Begin by recalling the claims advanced by the founders of the mechanistic world view. Speculatively mooted
by Galileo, this program received its fullest elaboration by Laplace. An intelligence which possessed at one
moment of time knowledge of the ultimate particles of the universe, their velocities and the forces acting
between them, could calculate any future topography of the same particles. Such a topography, he claimed,
would give universal knowledge. These are the essential claims as well as the implicit ideal of mechanistic
programs; and they are reflected in the current claims of biologists to explain the functions of living beings in
terms of physics and chemistry.
But even physics cannot be defined from an atomic topography. We could not, for example, arrive at a
principle like that of entropy without introducing some additional principle, such as randomness, to this
topography. And the actual achievements of biology are explanations in terms of on
physics and chemistry, which is not the same thing as explanations in terms of physics and chemistry.
mechanisms founded
Here I introduce the concept of hierarchical levels. A machine, for example, cannot be explained in terms of
physics and chemistry. Machines can go wrong and break down-- something that does not happen to laws of
physics and chemistry.
In fact, a machine can be smashed and the laws of physics and chemistry will go on operating unfailingly in
the parts remaining after the machine ceases to exist. Engineering principles create the structure of the machine
which harnesses the laws of physics and chemistry for the purposes the machine is designed to serve. Physics
and chemistry cannot reveal the practical principles of design or co-ordination which are the structure of the
machine.
No inanimate object is ever fully determined by the laws of physics and chemistry. Laplace in his mechanistic
program of universal knowledge had to assume an initial atomic topography which was not derived from
atomic data. There are always some initial conditions necessary in order to have any system at all. The laws of
physics and chemistry can likewise be applied to a given set of initial conditions. This is the reason I said that
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