Javier A. Tabush

CHAPTER 1: The Importance of Discovery!

 

 

 KNOWING AND BEING

 

- "We live in an unsponsored universe"

- Learning to live with ambiguity.

- Structuring experience ( I can relate this to my documentation and how I´m organizing all of my different experience into a website)

 

 

 A GRASP OF OUR HISTORY

 

- According to Michael Polanyi we are living in the most destructive century

- He was born on March 11, 1891, in Budapest

- In our century, we are confronted with loss of faith in the moral and humane goals. 

- There is also lost ground of spiritual existence.

- A scientific image of the world.

- Gelwick tells us that the reorientation of knowing will be found in the nature of discovery.

 

A DYNAMO-COUPLING

 

- Morality became the dynamo to force a supposedly scientific view to others.

- He mentions tacit cultural assumptions.

- Pursuing truth through free inquiry and discussion

- The human person is an explorer

- I really liked how he mentioned scientists wanting to lean and study about living subjects without being interest in such subjects. I related it to PATCH ADAMS.

- Truth, beauty, justice, love and honor (We knw the terms but we can´t define them)

- Potentiality of genius (De Anima)

- Is he saying taht in the process of achieving our hoals we doubt them and realize they can´t be accomplished?

 

A CENTRAL DOGMA

 

- Science vs. the rest of society

- Polanyi states that we only have one culture

- Moral skepticism, mechanism, moral perfectionism

- I liked the term he uses, chain of influence

- "a nihilist is the man who bows to no authority"

 

THE EXAMPLE OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

 

- agrees with science, disagrees with the views projected about it

- Polanyi carrer: medicine, physical chemistry, social science, philosophy

- Galileo circle, a group that pursued the theme of science, discussions of politics and the existene of God.

- Discovery: Is the point within science itself that leads to a truer understanding of knowledge and of ourselves as persons.

 

 

 

 

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Documentation and the Way of Discovery

 

- When Polanyi mentions an organ of science he refers to an institution

- What is pure scientific research? Learning for the love of learning, curiosity

- The scientific principles can only be transmitted personally with apprentices

- Polanyi had 39 contributions to science

- He also entered the field of economics and wrote particularly on free trade, unemployment and money.

- in science, what has to be preserved is the HOW, THE PROCESS! CONSTANT QUESTIONING.

 

 

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Chapter 2

 

THE FREEDOM OF SCIENCE

 

- Planned production: sets goals but allows for flexibility and changes.

- Planned economy: Everything is centrally controlled

- Polycenric tasks: the spontaneous ordering of mutually coordinated activities

- "There is not a single rule in Chemistry which is not qualified by important exceptions"

- "Science as the new supreme religion destined to reign over the happy future"

- Polanyi always carried a number of investigations simoltaneously.

 

THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS

 

- Important thing about science is that it enables us to make contact with reality in a way that is continuously fruitful and interesting

 

TOWARDS A POST-CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY

 

- Polanyi cahnged to study philosophical studies

- The theory of personal knowledge

- "enquiry into the nature and justification of scientific knowledge"

- I found it a little confusing why he says that true knowledge is impersonal?

- Personal knowledge in 4 parts

    1. The Art of Knowing

          - Demonstrative and Indicative

          - "success depends not only upon precision but also upon the knack and art of the use" Pg50

    2. The Tacit Component

          - analytical

          - intelligence: guided by personal and social satisfaction, beauty/sharing

    3. The Justification of Personal Knowledge

          - automation and cybernation

          - religious beliefs

    4. Knowing and Being

          - understanding living beings

          - knowledge of our own existence

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Chapter 3: A NEW PARADIGM

 

A BASIC CHANGE

 

- Polanyi's philosophy ------ new paradigm

- What is a paradigm?

     · Expresses the configuration of beliefs, values, and techniques by which normal science is pursued.

- Paradigm change: GEOCENTRIC to HELIOCENTRIC

- ALL KNOWLEDGE REVOLVES AROUND THE REPONSIBLE PERSON (this is a new paradigm)

- SEPARATION OF LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY (this is an old paradigm)

 

A NEW VIEW OF KNOWING

 

- suspending old habits of thought

- Random data into a meaningful pattern (this is where he tells the story of the guy that breaks into the house)

- tacit integration of clues into meaning.

 

TACIT KNOWING AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

 

- there is no exact scientific method leading to discoveries

- relationship between experiment and interpretation

 

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Chapter 4: A HEURISTIC PHILOSOPHY

 

THE POINT OF VIEW

 

- Heuristic derives from Greek heuriskein, means to find or discover

        

               Epistemology

 

 

 

 

Discovery               Exploration

 

SCIENCE AND REALITY

 

-"It is more reasonable to accept scientific results than to doubt them"

- variety of visual clues----intelligible pattern

- Discovery: interplay of imagination and intuition