ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a valuable and concise development of Polanyi's argument against the possibility of non-evaluative and morally neutral studies of man. Professor Gwynn Nettler of the University of Alberta stated that Polanyi's statements, 'To assume that one can explain an action without regarding it whether it is good or bad is to assume that moral motives play no part in it'; and 'To extend the assumption to all social action is to deny the very existence of genuine moral motives in men', are untrue and non sequiturs. Professor Nettler raises an extremely important question. After Rickert had first affirmed in 1902 that science could understand human affairs without making moral judgments, this view was spread widely by Max Weber. Professor Nettler has, therefore, the established opinion of sociology on his side, when contradicting view that to explain all human actions without considering whether they are good or bad, is to deny that moral motives ever enter in our actions.
