Our reliance on the validity of a scientific conclusion depends ultimately on a judgment of coherence; and as there can exist no strict criterion for…

- Michael Polanyi

While tacit knowledge can be possessed by itself, explicit knowledge must rely on being tacitly understood and applied. Hence all knowledge is either…

- Michael Polanyi

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

- Michael Polanyi

The information in DNA could no more be reduced to the chemical than could the ideas in a book be reduced to the ink and paper: something beyond phys…

- Michael Polanyi

Discoveries are made by pursuing possibilities suggested by existing knowledge.

- Michael Polanyi

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

- Michael Polanyi

I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell.

- Michael Polanyi

Of course language manifests a belief only if we use its words with the implied acceptance of their appositeness.

- Michael Polanyi

So long as we use a certain language, all questions that we can ask will have to be formulated in it and will thereby confirm the theory of the unive…

- Michael Polanyi