ABSTRACT

Chapter 5 explores the notion that, for some intellectuals, scientific and spiritual realms were not separated but connected. Without attempting to deconstruct the widely held historiographical topos of the mechanical view of science, which would lay outside the scope of this book, this chapter only goes so far as to offer several spiritually inclined views of science from Polanyi and his correspondents. The chapter discusses the spirituality of science and economics through letters of three Polanyi brothers (Michael, Karl and Adolf), and figures like Karl Mannheim, Charles Singer, Toni Stolper, Andrew Bongiorno, J. Guilfoyle Williams, Olwen Ward Campbell, N.S. Hubbard and many others, including doctors, psychologists, booksellers, litterateurs and industrial chemists. It starts by presenting the emergence of the spiritual in Polanyi’s early economic thinking by unpacking his letters with one of his guides to economics, Toni Stolper. The chapter continues by illustrating the evolution of Polanyi’s spirituality in economic realms through interactions with other kind of spiritualities, and by doing so, providing multiple foils in order to be able to better understand Polanyi’s ideas. It ends by presenting how others (e.g. Olwen Ward Campbell, N.S. Hubbard) perceived Polanyi as joining their own spiritual movement and how Polanyi treated these unwanted bonds.