MICHAEL POLANYI And The STUDY GROUP for FOUNDATIONS of CULTURAL UNITY and the STUDY GROUP on the UNITY of KNOWLEDGE
What Were the Study Groups? Some 21 gatherings of interdisciplinary elite and rising intellectuals • across North America and Western Europe between 1965 and 1972. All Funded by the Ford Foundation • Originally an attempt to encourage a movement based on Polanyi’s • revolutionary philosophy The goal of spreading the “gospel of Polanyi” diminished in • importance as the groups evolved The meetings later became forums for significant exchange in key • areas of social science, philosophy of mind, philosophy of art, philosophical biology, and other areas. While Polanyi’s direct influence on the Study Groups diminished • over time, the influence of his experience in these groups can be seen in major areas of his late thought.
Key Players Some of Whom You May Already Know • Michael Polanyi • Marjorie Grene – moves from Ireland to University of California Davis in July 1965 Important in B1 but will become the key leader as the SGFUC and SGUK evolve • Edward Pols • Sigmund Koch • George Gale
Michael Polanyi/ Marjorie Grene • We have all read Polanyi’s “generous” acknowledgement of MG’s role in writing of Personal Knowledge: “Our discussions have catalysed its progress at every stage and there is hardly a page that has not benefited from her criticism. She has a share in anything that I may have achieved here.” PK xv. • If you immerse yourself in these materials, you will find yourself wondering if similar comments would be sufficiently generous – before our story ends Grene will be the primary force and lead contributor to this remarkable project that started with Polanyi as the foundation and center of the effort.
Edward Pols (1919 – 2005) • Harvard B.A. English and PhD Philosophy • Philosopher • Poet • Named Kenan Professor of Humanities in 1975 • Intelligence Officer in WWII who went back to Pentagon in Korean War • Six books including Radical Realism 1992 which won an award from the American Society of Metaphysics
A Bowdoin Colleague on Pols’ last book of poetry He put Remembrance of Things to • Come together in the last year of his life. I saw successive drafts of it. It contained twenty-one poems in all, ten of them constituting a connected sequence of vignettes, "War's End, World's End." The sequence spans a little more than a year of his life-May, 1944, a month before D-Day, to July, 1945, when the last allied troops, Lieutenant Edward Pols among them, withdrew from eastern Germany and the Iron Curtain descended.
Polanyi on Reading Pols (1964) I had a valuable experience reading at last the Recognition of Reason by Edward Pols, and meeting the author . . . It is amazing [that]Pols has duplicated the fundamental ideas of Personal Knowledge. His back-ground (sic) was entirely different than mine, with no science to speak of and a great deal of philosophy I lack. His idiom is also quite different, yet everything he says can be translated into my formulations. November 6, 1964 :Polanyi to Gelwick (Polanyi went to Bowdoin to lecture in October 1964 and met Pols)
Sigmund Koch 1917-1996
Koch Became a Major Figure Some quotes from the WEB: Sigmund Koch was one of the premier scholars of psychology Koch will forever be remembered as a maverick who helped move psychology out from being dominated by behaviorists to a discipline that looked at human mentality and functioning from a multitude of viewpoints. Sigmund Koch (1917-1996) was one of the twentieth century's most penetrating and wide-ranging critics of the scientistic ambitions of psychology. ??Do his later writings reflect his strong allegiance to Polanyi in this period??
Related Career Highlights • Koch completes PhD at Duke in 1942 • Stays at Duke until 1964…Full Professor • Joins Ford Foundation as Director of Humanities and Arts from 1964-1967 • Goes to Texas as Full Professor • Moves to Boston University in 1971 where he remained until his death in 1996 • Numerous awards, President of several APA Divisions, Major Publications • A giant in the field and often one of its best critics
GEORGE GALE • Distinguished Career in Philosophy and History of Science • Get a fuller picture from his web page at UMKC • Hired by Marjorie Grene in 1967 to be executive secretary for the SGUK • Was simultaneously completing Ph.D. under Grene’s direction • Handled business affairs, helped with editing, often slept on the couch of the hosting professor, was intimately involved in many of the details from 1967 until 1972
Sources and Incubators of Study Groups in Polanyi’s Experience • Groups such as Eranos, Mt. Pelerin Society • The Moot • CCF • Conversations at Duke in 1964, particularly with Sigmund Koch who moves to the Ford Foundation to be a program director for arts and humanities projects
CCF (one of many interesting related topics) • Founded in Berlin in June 1950 • Writers, artists, philosophers, scientists from 21 countries • Purpose: To combat totalitarian threats to freedom of critical and creative thought wherever they might appear in the world.
CCF Continued • Polanyi’s involvement begins January 1953 • Many relationships to his publications, speeches, and activities • In the mid-sixties environment, the CCF experienced a fall from grace with the exposure of CIA funding behind its programs • Mike Josselson is forced to resign as Executive Secretary
Polanyi and CCF from Mullins’ Note Many of Polanyi’s shorter publications originate as CCF papers or • addresses and often were published in journals that were in fact subsidized at least in part by CCF funding. Eventually, Polanyi takes on a leadership role in the CCF. Polanyi was in fact a member of the General Assembly (i.e., the governing board) of the CCF at the time that the revelations of CIA funding of CCF lead Mike Josselson to offer his resignation. Scott and Moleski (267-268) report that Polanyi seemed not to understand that Josselson’s role as an agent of a covert governmental agency from whom he acquired CCF funding undercut the ideals of freedom which Polanyi and the CCF promoted. Polanyi seems to have been intensely loyal to Josselson who was his friend of many years. Polanyi was one of the few governing board members who voted against accepting Josselson’s resignation. In October 1967, he resigned from the CCF board .
Abrupt Shift in late Fall of 1964: Koch says no Ford Money will be available if Polanyi’s CCF funding for secretary continues: I am sorry that you apparently find such a constraint uncongenial, but it is an unalterable part of the framework in which I must operate… I shall quite understand (and maintain the same high level of personal sympathy with the “movement”) if you decide to form the organization under their [CCF] auspices rather than ours. (Koch to MP, December 16, 1964)
Apart from this Project Polanyi’s CCF Involvement Continues • Scott/Moleski discuss Polanyi and CCF at various points • Mullins note on the CCF Connection has even more details • Jumping ahead 3 years, when the CIA funding was exposed and Josselson’s position is threatened, Polanyi writes an impassioned letter to Raymond Aron to try to save him
Polanyi to Aron on Josselson • “Supposing Mike accepted to serve the C.I.A. after the war, and supposing that this was wrong, it is our practice to victimize those who have erred, so as to be free from any blame that may be case upon them? Surely we have in our ranks many former Communists, who served Stalin, his murders and lies. We do not dream of reproaching them, nor does anybody demand that we do so….. • But Mike’s past actions were, by contrast to those of former Communists, not wrong at all. I would have served the C.I.A. (had I known of its existence) in the years following the war with pleasure. We were faced with a ubiquitous madness, supported by an empire and organized on conspiratorial lines.” Polanyi to Raymond Aron May 9, 1967
Back to Ford Foundation Approval for Bowdoin 1 (B1) • Pols, Polanyi, and Grene prepare proposal with Polanyi leading the effort • Polanyi apparently got Koch’s message about cutting all ties between CCF and SGFCU. • Bowdoin’s President Coles’ January formal application letter is approved • almost immediately…….
FORD Funding for B1 Ford Foundation Grant 65-113 funding August 23-28, 1965 • Bowdoin College conference --Grant proposal: written in the fall of 1965 by Polanyi, Grene and • Pols with considerable collaboration with S. Koch, who became Director, Program in Humanities and Arts at the Ford Foundation on October 1, 1964. --Submitted officially by President Cole of Bowdoin College on 18 • January 1965. --Unofficial acceptance in Koch’s letter to Polanyi of 26 January • 1965 that Bowdoin College working with the SGFCU would receive the $25,000 grant. Budget : (1) Travel of 15 European and 15 North American • participants--$16,000 . (2) Conference housing, food room was $2500. (3) Administrative costs $4500. (4) Contingencies $2000.
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