Michael Polanyi

A valid theory is a clue to something hidden, which we accept as a token of reality.

The freedom of the subjective person to do as he pleases is overruled by the freedom of the responsible person to act as he must.

The logic of scientific discovery is not a formal logic but a heuristic one.

The art of knowing is the art of dwelling in the particulars from which we aim at understanding a coherent entity.

No inanimate object can be said to have a purpose, but all living beings have purposes.

The progress of science is a dramatic story of risk, commitment, and discovery.

The act of knowing includes an appraisal; and this personal coefficient, which shapes all factual knowledge, bridges in doing so the disjunction between subjectivity and objectivity.

The scientist's intuition is guided by a sense of intellectual beauty, a feeling for the fitness of things.

We attend from the proximal to the distal, from the particulars to the whole.

Theories are not derived from facts but are imaginative constructions proposed to account for facts.

The process of scientific verification is a fiduciary act, a trusting submission to the authority of a tradition.

The intellectual passions which guide scientific discovery are not mere psychological by-products but have a logical function.

The knower participates in the shaping of knowledge.

The transmission of knowledge from one generation to the other must be predominantly tacit.

The scientific method is a system of beliefs to which we are committed.

The act of discovery is a passionate pursuit, not a dispassionate observation.

The structure of a skill is the structure of an art.

The process of knowing life is a process of life.

The mind is a pattern-seeking organ, and it seeks patterns even where none exist.

The universe is not a mere puzzle to be solved but a reality to be discovered.