Science, Faith and Society

Michael Polanyi

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780226163444
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Biological Sciences

In its concern with science as an essentially human enterprise, Science, Faith and Society makes an original and challenging contribution to the philosophy of science. On its appearance in 1946 the book quickly became the focus of controversy.Polanyi aims to show that science must be understood as a community of inquirers held together by a common faith; science, he argues, is not the use of "scientific method" but rather consists in a discipline imposed by scientists on themselves in the interests of discovering an objective, impersonal truth. That such truth exists and can be found is part of the scientists' faith. Polanyi maintains that both authoritarianism and scepticism, attacking this faith, are attacking science itself.

III

DEDICATION OR SERVITUDE

I

FREEDOM bears an old question-mark across its face. To prevent lawless conflict a paramount power is required: how can this power be prevented from suppressing freedom? How can it indeed fail to suppress it if it is to eliminate lawless strife? Government appears as essentially supreme and absolute, leaving no room for freedom.

But we have said that in the world of science, which is an organized social body, there is freedom and that freedom is even essential to the maintenance of its organization. How can that be true?

Sovereignty over the world of science is vested in no particular ruler or governing body, but is divided into numerous fragments, each of which is wielded by one single scientist. Every time a scientist makes a decision in which he ultimately relies on his own conscience or personal beliefs, he shapes the substance of science or the order of scientific life as one of its sovereign rulers. The powers thus exercised may sharply affect the interests of his fellow scientists. Yet there is no need for a paramount supreme power to arbitrate in the last resort between all these individual decisions. There are divisions among scientists, sometimes sharp and passionate, but both contestants remain agreed that scientific opinion will ultimately decide right; and they are satisfied to appeal to it as their ultimate arbiter. Scientists recognize that, inasmuch as each scientist is following the ideals of science according to his own conscience, the resultant decisions of scientific opinion are rightful. This absolute submission leaves each free since each remains acting throughout in accordance to his own conviction. A common belief in the reality of scientific ideals and a sufficient confidence in their fellow scientists’ sincerity thus resolves among scientists the apparent internal contradiction in the conception of freedom. It establishes government by scientific opinion, as a General Authority, inherently restricted to the guardianship of the premisses of freedom.

We are reminded of Rousseau’s conception of liberty as absolute submission to the General Will. The devotion of all scientists to the ideals of scientific work may be regarded as the General Will governing the society of scientists. But this identification makes the General Will appear in a new light. It is seen to differ from any other will by the fact that it cannot vary its own purpose. Scientists who would suddenly all lose their passion for science and take up instead an interest in greyhounds would instantly cease to form a scientific society. The co-operative structure of scientific life could not serve the purpose of the joint breeding of greyhounds, for the pursuit of which the former scientists would have to organize themselves once more quite afresh. Scientific society is not and cannot be formed by a group of persons taking first the decision of binding themselves to a General Will and then choosing to direct their general will to the advancement of science. Scientific life illustrates on the contrary how the general acceptance of a definite set of principles brings forth a community governed by these principles—a community which would automatically dissolve the moment its constitutive principles were repudiated. The General Will appears then as a rather misleading fiction; the truth being (if the case of science be a guide) that voluntary submission to certain principles necessarily generates a communal life governed by these principles, and that ultimate sovereignty then rests safely with each generation of individuals who, in their devotion to these principles, conscientiously interpret and apply them to the issues of the period.

This also throws a new light on the nature of the Social Contract. In the case of the scientific community the contract consists of the gift of one’s own person—not to a sovereign ruler as Hobbes thought, nor to an abstract General Will as Rousseau postulated—but to the service of a particular ideal. The love of science, the creative urge, the devotion to scientific standards—these are the conditions which commit the novice to the discipline of science. By apprenticing himself to an intellectual process based on a certain set of ultimates, the newcomer enlists as a member of the community holding these ultimates and his commitment to these necessarily involves the acceptance of the rules of conduct indispensable to their cultivation. Each new member undertakes to follow through life an obligation to a particular tradition to which his whole person gives assent.

Since a scientist requires special gifts, lack of these voids the contract. So does also lack of true animus, as in the fraudulent or unsound novice. I have described the disciplinary methods by which the scientific community strives to keep out bunglers, frauds, and cranks and pointed out the grave problems involved in distinguishing from these the great pioneers of revolutionary portent, who desire to enter on the Social Contract of science under modified conditions from the start. However, the difficulties which may arise in this connexion cannot affect the essential clarity of the contract by which the scientist becomes a member of his community. It consists in his dedication to the service of a particular spiritual reality.

We have seen how this dedication, pledging him to act according to his own conscience, represents an obligation to be free. Freedom of this kind, it would seem, must be described in the particular as freedom to act according to particular obligations. Just as a person cannot be obliged in general, so also he cannot be free in general, but only in respect to definite grounds of conscience.

II

Let us now step outside science into the wider context of society and examine the kind of freedom which is required in order to decide competently whether to accept or reject science as a whole.

Throughout modern history science has made an immense impression on the general public, and this was as strong as ever, if not strongest, in the earlier centuries of modern science when the practical value of science had been little thought of. It was the intellectual quality of science—particularly of Newtonian mechanics—which roused and convinced wide circles. Looking back on the past four centuries we see every department of thought gradually revolutionized under the influence of the discoveries of science. The medieval approach of Aristotle and Aquinas aiming at the discovery of a divine purpose in the phenomena of nature has been abandoned and theology forced to withdraw everything that it had taught of the material universe. While the occurrence of certain miracles, particularly of the Incarnation and Resurrection, is affirmed, Protestant theology is prepared to reinterpret miracles in general in a symbolic sense rather than oppose specifically the naturalistic views of science. Belief in witchcraft—still strong in the early eighteenth century—has been abandoned and astrology has been deprived of all official support. The current outlook on man and society has been transformed.

These conquests of science have been achieved at the expense of other mental satisfactions which proved the weaker. While the world has been enriched in one form of meaning it has inevitably lost some of its meaning in other forms. Galileo himself, though foremost in the attack against Aristotle’s authority, showed real sympathy for the pain which he knew to be causing to those cherishing a belief in the great harmonies of scholasticism. No wonder then that the mental desires which science leaves unsatisfied have always been prepared to return to the charge. Thus for example Christian Science succeeds in contesting effectively even to-day the interpretation of disease and healing by science. A number of other unorthodox schools of healing flourish widely. Other theories condemned by science, such as those of astrology and occultism, are also upheld by a considerable public. The popular authority of science remains in fact open to challenge by various rival interpretations of nature, and the question remains how such rivalries can be competently decided.

A controversy between two fundamentally different views of the same region of experience can never be conducted as methodically as a discussion taking place within one organized branch of knowledge. While clashes between two conflicting scientific theories or two divergent biblical interpretations can usually be brought to a definite test in the eyes of their respective professional opinions, it may be extremely difficult to find any implications of a naturalistic view of man on the one hand and of a religious view on the other, in which these two can be specifically contrasted in identical terms. The less two propositions have fundamentally in common the more the argument between them will lose its discursive character and become an attempt at mutually converting each other from one set of grounds to another, in which the contestants will have to rely largely on the general impression of rationality and spiritual worth which they can make on one another. They will try to expose the general poverty of their opponent’s position and to stimulate interest for their own richer perspectives; trusting that once an opponent has caught a glimpse of these, he cannot fail to sense a new mental satisfaction, which will attract him further and finally draw him over to its own grounds.

The process of choosing between positions based on different sets of premisses is thus more a matter of intuition and finally conscience, than is a decision between different interpretations based on the same or closely similar sets of premisses. It is a judgement of the kind involved in scientific discovery. Volition may play an important part in such judgements. We recall that an inflexible will is essential in scientific research if intimations of discovery are ever to reach the stage of maturity; and that very often it is right to persist in certain intuitive expectations, even though a series of facts are apparently at variance with it. Yet through all these struggles our volition must never finally determine our judgement which must remain ultimately guided by the quiet voice of conscience. Similarly, the mental crises which may lead to conversion from one set of premisses to another are often dominated by strong impulses of will-power. Conversion may come to us against our will (as when faithful communists were overcome by doubts and broke down almost overnight at the aspect of the Russian trials), or—see the example of St. Augustine—it may be vainly sought for years by the whole power of our volition. Whether our will-power be evoked by our conscience to assist its arguments or drive us on the contrary in a direction opposed both to argument and conscience, no honest belief can be made or destroyed—but only self-deception induced—by will-power alone. The ultimate decision remains with conscience.

This finally brings us up against the question: what premisses will guide conscience in decisions of this kind in a free society? Can we find, as in the case of the premisses of science, a practical art which embodies them; a tradition by which this art is transmitted; institutions in which it finds shelter and expression? Yes, we shall find them underlying the art of free discussion, transmitted by a tradition of civic liberties and embodied in the institutions of democracy. This art, this tradition, these institutions will be discovered in their purest forms in countries like Britain, America, Holland, Switzerland, where they were first and most effectively established.

I can see two main principles underlying the process of free discussion. One I will call fairness, the other tolerance, the words being used in a somewhat particular sense.

Fairness in discussion is the effort to put your case objectively. When an expression of our conviction first comes to our minds it is couched in question-begging terms. Emotion breaks out uppermost and permeates our whole idea. To be objective we must sort out facts, opinions, and emotions and present them separately, in this order. This makes it possible for each to be separately checked and criticized. It lays our whole position open to our opponent. It is a painful discipline which breaks our prophetic flood and reduces our claims to a minimum. But fairness requires this; and also that we ascribe our opponent his true points, while the limitations of our own knowledge and our natural bias be frankly acknowledged.

By tolerance I mean here the capacity to listen to an unfair and hostile statement by an opponent in order to discover his sound points as well as the reason for his errors. It is irritating to open our mind wide to a spate of specious argument on the off-chance of catching a grain of truth in it; which, when acknowledged, would strengthen our opponent’s position and be even unfairly exploited by him against us. It requires great strength of tolerance to go through with this.

In the maintenance of fairness and tolerance the wider public plays a great part. Controversies between leaders of thought are usually conducted in order to canvass supporters rather than to convert each other. Fairness and tolerance can hardly be maintained in a public contest unless its audience appreciates candour and moderation and can resist false oratory. A judicious public with a quick ear for insincerity of argument is therefore an essential partner in the practice of free controversy. It will insist upon being presented with moderate claims admitting frankly their element of personal conviction. It will demand this both in order to defend the balance of its own mind and as a token of clear and conscientious thinking on the part of those canvassing its support.

The principal spheres of culture usually appeal as a whole to the public, which as a rule accepts or rejects the opinion ‘of science’ or the teachings ‘of religion’ in their entirety without trying to discriminate between the views of different scientists or of different theologians. Yet occasionally they will intervene even in the internal question of one or the other great domain of the mind, particularly where an altogether new point of view is in rebellion against the ruling orthodoxy. Cultural rebels usually stand with one foot outside a recognized sphere, trying to get a hold in it with the other. Some parts of the public will come to their aid, others decry their efforts. The rise to scientific recognition in our own time of psycho-analysis, manipulative surgery, and most recently of telepathy, owe much to popular support. On the other hand, popular intervention, for example, of nationalist French circles demanding recognition for the Glozel finds, or of German anti-Semitic students opposing Einstein’s theory of relativity, was wrong. Generally speaking, intervention by the general public when made in sincere search for the truth will be considered as rightful in a liberal society, provided it is kept within limits so as not to impair the sphere of autonomous government accorded to the experts under the protection of the community as a whole.

This brings us to the institutions which give shelter to free discussion in a free society. In Britain, for example, there are the Houses of Parliament; the courts of law; the Protestant churches; the press, theatre, and radio; the local governments, and the innumerable private committees governing all kinds of political, cultural, and humanitarian organizations. Being of a democratic character, these institutions are themselves guided by a free public opinion. Discussion is particularly protected for this purpose throughout their own body, rules of fairness and tolerance being enforced by custom and law. A wide range of divergent opinions is similarly protected throughout society at large. It is true that the status afforded to these varies greatly. Some, for example science, are given positive support both to develop further and to teach their doctrine widely. Other opinions, for example magic and astrology, are correspondingly discouraged.

Even though not all opinions are equally tolerated, protection is granted to many which cause pain and annoyance to people who disagree with them. The balance between opinions which are positively fostered and others which are only tolerated, and others again which are discouraged or even regarded as criminal, is constantly in flux. The necessities of war, for example, may cause the range of tolerance to be sharply narrowed. Public opinion is constantly making adjustments in these matters by custom and legislation.

However, neither these institutional rules and still less the general principles of fairness and tolerance, can be given the form of unequivocal prescriptions. Even the most stringently controlled field of discussion as formed by the procedure of the law courts leaves a margin for discretion. Borderline cases or fundamentally novel situations will frequently call for new interpretative judgements. In the wide fields of public argument each participant has to interpret day by day the existing custom in the light of his own conscience. These innumerable independent decisions would result in chaos but for the essential harmony prevailing between the individual consciences in the community. This consensus of consciences is usually described as showing the presence of a democratic spirit among the people. In the light of the previous analysis we can lay down more definite conditions for it.

In this light the ‘democratic spirit’ which guides the life of a free nation appears—like the scientific spirit underlying the activities of the scientific community—as an expression of certain metaphysical beliefs shared by the members of the community. They have been adumbrated already; we shall now turn to their analysis.

Fairness in discussion has been defined as an attempt at objectivity, i.e., preference for truth even at the expense of losing in force of argument. Nobody can practise this unless he believes that truth exists. One may, of course, believe in truth and yet be too biased to practise objectivity; indeed there are a hundred ways of falling short of objectivity while believing in truth. But there can be no way of aiming at the truth unless you believe in it. And furthermore there is no purpose in arguing with others unless you believe that they also believe in the truth and are seeking it. Only in the supposition that most people are disposed towards truth essentially as you are yourself is there any sense in opening yourself up to them in fairness and tolerance.

A community which effectively practises free discussion is therefore dedicated to the fourfold proposition (1) that there is such a thing as truth; (2) that all members love it; (3) that they feel obliged and (4) are in fact capable of pursuing it. Clearly these are large assumptions, the more so since they are of the kind which can be invalidated by the mere process of doubting them. If people begin to lose confidence in their fellow citizens’ love of truth, they may well cease to feel obliged to pursue it at a cost to themselves. Considering how weak we all are at times in resisting temptation to untruthfulness and how imperfect our love of truth is at the best, it is the more surprising that there should exist communities in which mutual confidence in the sincerity of all should be upheld to the extent shown by their practice of objectivity and tolerance among themselves.

The love of truth and confidence in their fellows’ truthfulness are not effectively embraced by people in the form of a theory. They hardly even form the articles of any professed faith, but are embodied mainly in the practice of an art—the art of free discussion—of which they form the premisses. This art—like that of scientific discovery which we studied before—is a communal art, practised according to a tradition which passes from generation to generation, receiving the stamp of each before being handed on to the next. There is a broad flow of this tradition which is passing through the whole of humanity but there are some more specific and elaborate forms of it which are carried on by single nations. The civic institutions of England have been the chief vehicles of this tradition since the seventeenth century. Dedication to the premisses of free thought means adherence to some national tradition in which similar institutions have taken deep root.

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