Michael Polanyi and the Study Group for Foundations of Cultural - PDF document

1 Michael Polanyi and the Study Group for Foundations of Cultural Unity (SGFCU) and the Study Group on the Unity of Knowledge (SGUK) Introduction Lovers, consumers, and producers of published texts that we are, when we look back we may over-emphasize the role of Polanyi’s publications in the spread and influence of his ideas during the last three-quarters of a century, important though those books and articles may have been. Professors cite published sources and there are even evaluation schemes based on counting citations, endnotes, and other quantitative measures of explicit knowledge. Consequently, we may be assuming that Polanyi’s ideas spread because other people read what he published and then published other articles and texts explicitly citing Polanyi, thereby encouraging other to read him, and so on … . While this chain of influence undoubtedly occurred, the story we are going to tell and explore shows an additional way Polanyi’s ideas spread in the sixties….one that should not surprise Polanyians who are aware of the realms beyond explicit thought involving tacit assumptions, the importance of good problems, communities of practice, apprenticeship, convivial groupings and deeper levels of intellectual life than explicit published words. Our presentation is carved out of a great mass of material we have reviewed from the Michael Polanyi papers at Chicago, archival materials we have received from the Ford Foundation, and published works that you may not be familiar with unless you have shared our fascination with these Study Groups in the sixties and early seventies. This was a significant chapter in Polanyi’s influence on intellectual history and also in the development of his late thought. If you find our presentation interesting, we will be happy to share more – Phil has written several excellent digests or summaries drawing on related correspondence and other documents that are spiced with his questions, observations, and analysis. They are much too long to use tonight but are available on the Polanyi Society

2 website or by email if you want to read through them. And we hope that others will dig into these materials further – there is probably even more to learn from archives at Davis, Reno, and other sources we have not yet examined. We think that the two Study Groups (SGFCU) at Bowdoin College in August of 1965 and 1966 and the nineteen or so Study Group meetings (SGUK) that began at MIT in 1967 and continued through 1972 began as a deliberate attempt to encourage an intellectual movement (a term used throughout the correspondence) based in Polanyi’s thought. This attempt was to some extent successful early on , but Polanyi’s influenced diminished even as the Study Groups evolved into significant intellectual gatherings whose influence continues to reverberate in areas of philosophy and social science well into the 21 st century. The recent Taylor and Dreyfus book discussed last at this conference is a prime example of continuing influence of what started or was encouraged in these meetings. Some of us may well be able to trace our intellectual roots to the work of these Ford Foundation funded study groups that “were brought together by a common awareness of the need for a fundamental conceptual reform that might both free the sciences, humanities, and arts from the inadequacies of scientism and open up an approach to the nature of knowledge and the nature of man on more adequate terms.” (p. 1, Narrative Report, August 23-28, 1965, meeting at Bowdoin College) A few publications can be traced directly to these meetings (and these will be discussed) and surely many other publications of the distinguished participants were shaped by experiences in these exploratory groups. But the tacit shared understandings developed, the convivial relationships forged, and the cooperative projects resulting from these groups should also be recognized as originating through Polanyi’s influence. The problems and issues identified and discussed helped to set the agenda for decades to come in philosophy of mind, philosophical biology, philosophy of art, and other areas. Simultaneously, Polanyi’s own work in the last five to seven years of his productive life was significantly shaped by his experience in these groups. BACKGROUND AND PLANNING FOR BOWDOIN CONFERENCES A. Deep Background Polanyi’s interest in initiating these groups and his ideas about how they should be structured were undoubtedly influenced by his experience in the Congress of Cultural Freedom (CCF) and even by earlier experiences in the Moot in the 1940’s

3 – a group explicitly attempting to shape the postwar intellectual landscape and culture. Both of these groups of leading intellectuals were involved in attempting to influence Western culture that was understood to be in crisis. Polanyi and others believed his thought might offer alternatives to underlying conceptual commitments at the root of the crisis, so an effort to spread his ideas made good sense to him and his allies. Scott and Moleski intermittently discuss Polanyi’s involvement in the Congress of Cultural Freedom (CCF) from 1953 through his resignation in 1968. The CCF was founded in Berlin in June 1950 and included artists, scientists, writers, and philosophers from twenty one countries. Its purpose was “to combat totalitarian threats to freedom of critical and creative thought wherever they might appear in the world.” (Scott and Moleski, 222) Polanyi and the Moot are also treated in the biography as well as in articles in TAD and POLANYIANA and APPRAISAL. Phil Mullins has prepared a digest of related correspondence and bibliographical information on Polanyi and the CCF that is available from the authors. Here are the concluding paragraphs from that document that outlines Polanyi’s extensive involvement with the CCF over 12-15 years: In sum, it appears that while important preliminary work on the Study Groups project occurred in Polanyi’s Duke residency (and involved Polanyi, Grene, Koch who soon left Duke for the Ford Foundation and Eduard Pols) there was also work on early stages of this project with the CCF. Various letters in the Ford archival correspondence make this clear as well as other Polanyi letters. Polanyi’s conversations with Michael Josselson, a major figure in the CCF, about funding a book project with Koestler, about something like the SGFCU and the possibility of mailing the early invitations to the 65 SGFCU Bowdoin meeting are an outgrowth of Polanyi’s long relation with Josselson and his work with the CCF. Polanyi apparently was collaborating with Koestler as early as 1963 on what appears to be a seed that grows into the later Study Groups project (Scott and Moleski, 258). Polanyi was deeply involved in CCF programs from the early fifties. Insofar as many of the programs were seminars, study groups and conferences (some quite large) with papers by academics, presented and discussed, it seems safe to conclude that in general CCF work provided the model for the 1965 and 1966 Ford-funded Bowdoin conferences. (Mullins, The CCF Connection )

4 B. Duke Residency The idea for the Study Groups in the form in which they finally emerged was discussed, if not birthed, during Polanyi’s residency at Duke in the Spring semester of 1964. Conversations with Sigmund Koch, Marjorie Grene, and others are referenced in correspondence. Koch was moving from Duke to the Ford Foundation in October to become Director of Humanities and Arts. The letters between Grene, Koch, and Polanyi demonstrate increasing conviviality, even though Koch is a relatively new acquaintance. The first letters between Koch and Grene are filled with mutual high compliments. On August 1, 1964 Grene writes Koch describing her letter as “fan mail” because she has been in Oxford “devouring” the reprints of articles Koch gave Polanyi. She later asks to be put on Koch’s list for reprints and states, “To find a philosophically enlightened psychologist is a Great Experience!” Koch’s response is similarly complimentary. On August 16 he thanks her for her “gracious note” and writes “Nothing so tonic has ever come my way—and it arrived at the precise moment of maximum need” … “Your name was a household word here in Durham last year. You are obviously a constant, luminous presence in Dr. Polanyi’s mental field: he quotes you for authority at every turn. And every time I attempted some callow witticism about Existentialist opacity, he re- convinced me that I must have a course at your feet. I therefore already regarded you as friend and teacher before your note arrived.” A July 15, 1964 letter of Polanyi to Koch confirms that Polanyi has discussed the Study Group idea with Mike Josselson (Secretary of the Executive Committee of the CCF) and had hopes of getting CCF funding (“out of its Ford grant.”). Polanyi continued to explore CCF sponsorship of the Study Group movement at least until November of 1964. He hoped to model what he was tentatively calling “the Unity of Culture movement” on “Eranos and other organized movements of thought in Europe.” This name should cover in the first place the unity of culture menaced by the abdication of philosophy and the wilderness of scientistic incursions in the humanities. Cultural coherence is menaced also by the progressive atomization of universities, which makes the best of them most incapable of dealing with broader, vital issues. There is also the cultural split between the Continent and Anglo-America, closely connected with the scientistic blight