“Transcendence and Self-Transcendence”

Michael Polanyi: chemist and philosopher, brother to Karl Polanyi, historian and sociologist. One of Michael Polanyi’s important shorter pieces is this one, called “Transcendence and Self-Transcendence”, published in 1970.

Some of the interesting bits that emerge (no pun intended) from this work:

I introduce the concept of hierarchical levels. A machine, for example, cannot be explained in terms of physics and chemistry. Machines can go wrong and break down—something that does not happen to laws of physics and chemistry. 

In fact, a machine can be smashed and the laws of physics and chemistry will go on operating unfailingly in the parts remaining after the machine ceases to exist. Engineering principles create the structure of the machine which harnesses the laws of physics and chemistry for the purposes the machine is designed to serve. Physics and chemistry cannot reveal the practical principles of design or co-ordination which are the structure of the machine.

And:

The more intangible the matter in the range of these hierarchies, the more meaningful it is. This is my criticism of all redactionist, mechanistic programs founded on the Laplacean ideal which identifies ultimate knowledge with an atomic topography, the lowest level of the universe.

Most provocative:

I have elaborated in schematic fashion a multiple hierarchy which leads on to ever more meaningful levels. Each higher level is more intangible than the one below it and also enriched in subtlety. And as these more intangible levels are understood a steadily deeper understanding of life and man is gained. These understandings constitute transcendence in the world. 

Unbridled detailing, the ideal advocated by Laplace and his modern followers, not only destroys our knowledge of things we most want to know; it clouds our understanding of elementary perception—our first contact with the world of inanimate matter and of living beings and our initial act of self-transcendence.

I must confess that these fragments of his essay, pulled out of context, do not convey its full meaning. The whole thing is worth reading.