Michael Polanyi Quotes & Sayings

“No inanimate object is ever fully determined by the laws of physics and chemistry.”

“Theories of evolution must provide for the creative acts which brought such theories into existence.”

“We could not, for example, arrive at a principle like that of entropy without introducing some additional principle, such as randomness, to this topography.”

“These maxims and the art of interpreting them may be said to constitute the premisses of science but I prefer to call them our scientific beliefs. These premisses or beliefs are embodied in a tradition, the tradition of science.”

“Moreover, only a strong and united scientific opinion imposing the intrinsic value of scientific progress on society at large can elicit the support of scientific inquiry by the general public.”

“And the actual achievements of biology are explanations in terms of mechanisms founded on physics and chemistry, which is not the same thing as explanations in terms of physics and chemistry.”

“Human beings exercise responsibilities within a social setting and a framework of obligations which transcend the principle of intelligence.”

“I shall suggest, on the contrary, that all communication relies, to a noticeable extent on evoking knowledge that we cannot tell, and that all our knowledge of mental processes, like feelings or conscious intellectual activities, is based on a knowledge which we cannot tell.”

“I hold that the propositions embodied in natural science are not derived by any definite rule from the data of experience, and that they can neither be verified nor falsified by experience according to any definite rule.”

“But even physics cannot be defined from an atomic topography.”