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I just found out about Michael Polanyi and his ideas fascinate me. One of those, is his criticism of objectivism in science, which he historically links to Galileo. Historically, he mainly goes against Laplace.

Polanyi blames the over-objectivism as the cause of modern nihilism (in his words, "moral inversion"), and pins the issues of over-skepticism on it, with direct relations to the reasons of why modern tryannies such as Stalin and Hitler where able to rise.

I'm still in the middle of reading about him (and will later on read his most famous book "Personal Knowledge"), but I wanted to ask, were his thoughts known? Is there any supporter of his criticism nowadays? I think I can see a clear connection between his criticism of objectivism and the more known criticism of positivism, so he might just wrongly accused what he saw in the wrong terms (blamed objectivity and skepticism instead of positivism).

Frank Hubeny
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Yechiam Weiss
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    Erwin Schrodinger also points to what he calls "objectivation" in _Mind and Matter_ (Chapter 3) as one of two principles supporting science. The other being the principle that nature is intelligible. It is hard to avoid objectivation, but one only has to note its limitations which might be the same as rejecting positivism to go beyond it. – Frank Hubeny Feb 11 '18 at 19:32
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    Polanyi is channeling Husserl's Crisis of European Sciences, the term "Galilean science" is coined there. Phenomenological philosophy of science, to which Polanyi belongs, generally raises similar themes, see [IEP](http://www.iep.utm.edu/phenomsc) for review and references. Hermeneutic philosophy is similar, Heelan is a prominent representative, see [her survey](http://www.focusing.org/apm_papers/heelan.html). On the analytic side Kuhn and especially [Marjorie Grene](https://www.believermag.com/issues/200503/?read=interview_grene) are indebted to Polanyi. – Conifold Feb 11 '18 at 23:32
  • @Conifold thank you, the Husserl connection is indeed very sound. Thanks for Heelan and Marjorie, I'll look at them. Are there any more contemporary philosophers? – Yechiam Weiss Feb 11 '18 at 23:37
  • Look at [Phillips](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0263276413480951), the last section, which interprets Heidegger's critique of "exact thinking", seems to me to resonate with your concerns. – Conifold Feb 11 '18 at 23:44

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MP has a growing and very educated following. His thought is much like John Henry Newman and Bernard Lonergan, though independently arrived at

A full-scale monograph on Personal Knowledge has just been released. See next issue of Tradition and Discovery for 2 reviews (as I understand at the moment)

Hopppin Jane
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