Anthropological Materials in the Making of Michael Polanyi’s Metascience Unavailable

Anthropological discussions were important for Michael Polanyi in the middle phase of his intellectual career, in which he articulated in some detail his understanding of science, culture and society. This middle period commenced with his 1946 Riddell Memorial Lectures at Durham University in early 1946, published as Science, Faith and Society later that year, and extended through the publication of Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy in 1958, based on Polanyi’s 1951 and 1952 Gifford Lectures (Scott and Moleski 2005, p. 203ff.). The Riddell Lectures gave Polanyi’s most robust working out of his constructive theory of science to date, although some of the ideas developed in Science, Faith and Society can also be found in writing done a few years before his Riddell Lectures. Polanyi explained in his 1964 “Background and Prospect,” a retrospective introduction to a new edition of Science, Faith and Society, that the book had...