Michael Polanyi

“We do not accept a religion because it offers us certain rewards. The only thing that a religion can offer us is to be just what it, in itself, is: a greater meaning in ourselves, in our liv...”

“So far as we know, the tiny fragments of the universe embodied in man are the only centers of thought and responsibility in the visible world. If that be so, the appearance of the human mind...”

“It was the merit of Gestalt psychology to make us aware of the remarkable performance involved in perceiving shapes. Take, for example, a ball or an egg: we can see their shapes at a glance....”

“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 feeling...”

“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...”

“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 a...”

“The process of philosophic and scientific enlightenment has shaken the stability of beliefs held explicitly as articles of faith.”

“My title is intended to suggest that the community of scientists is organized in a way which resembles certain features of a body politic and works according to economic principles similar t...”

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

“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 publ...”

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