ABSTRACT

This collection contains published articles by Michael Polanyi on nonscientific subjects. It excludes all articles which were incorporated into The Logic of Liberty, Personal Knowledge and Knowing and Being. The intention is to make more readily available those from the remainder which include material not found in his books from The Logic of Liberty onwards, and thus to provide a supplement to those volumes. The articles in this collection represent almost the whole range of Michael Polanyi's interests outside his scientific research and teaching: economics, politics, society, philosophy, philosophy of science, religion and Positivist obstacles to it, and aesthetics. Michael Polanyi helped to form the Society for Freedom in Science, of which he became chairman, and then the Congress for Cultural Freedom. He was also a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, and gave radio talks in Hungarian on RIAS. Michael Polanyi's was spurred into philosophical reflection by the Marxist movement for the planning of science.