Michael Polanyi

Wisdom: Embrace the tacit in daily life.

Artistic insight: Beauty in molecular symmetry.

Comeback in debate: Objectivity is a myth we live by.

Excerpt from letter: My journey from chemistry to philosophy was inevitable.

Tacit knowledge is not a 'primitive' form of knowing, but a sophisticated form of knowing.

The act of knowing includes an appraisal of the known.

No scientist can ever be said to be wholly objective.

Objectivity is a false ideal.

The ideal of a strictly impersonal knowledge is a chimera.

We must be prepared to accept the personal participation of the knower in all his acts of knowing.

Discovery is an act of creation.

The scientist's personal commitment is an indispensable part of his scientific knowing.

The pursuit of science is a passionate pursuit of truth.

Truth is something that we discover, not something that we invent.

The meaning of a word is its use in a language.

The scientist's personal participation in his knowledge is not a regrettable imperfection but a necessary condition of his knowing.

We are committed to the belief that there is a reality independent of our knowing it.

The structure of tacit knowing is a from-to structure.

We attend from the particulars to the whole.

The pursuit of science is a pursuit of meaning.