“At the beginning of the era of modern science, scientists were everywhere doing battle against authority. The authority of Aristotle, the authority of the church, were age-old barriers that had to be broken through; authority was the enemy of progress, and this tradition has persisted, that authority is the enemy of truth just as it was for Galileo, for Bacon, for Darwin. ‘The triumphs of science,’ wrote Bertrand Russell, ‘are due to the substitution of observation and inference for authority. Every attempt to revive authority in intellectual matters is a retrograde step.’

“Polanyi knew that science must be free from external authority, but he reached the conclusion that both authority and tradition are vital elements of the free community of science, and this is a finding that he applied to his picture of the free society. The early scientists were right in their time, he says, but ‘when we reject today the interference of political or religious authorities with the pursuit of truth, we must do it in the name of the established scientific authority which safeguards the pursuit of science’.

“Here then are the main points he brings out about the community of science. The scientific community is a reality. Scientists everywhere, choosing and pursuing their own problems, are cooperating in a close, continuous way. Science would grind to a halt if scientists did not know what other scientists were doing, and take account of it. Polanyi calls their co-operation a coordination by mutual adjustment of independent initiatives. It is a form of spontaneous organisation, like that among a group of people working on a huge jigsaw puzzle, where each person has a number of pieces to fit in and is watching what all the others are doing so as to use opportunities to the maximum. This is the set-up that works best, and assures the most efficient possible use of resources for scientific progress. Any one central authority trying to direct the process would paralyse the co-operation. In this free setting each scientist finds a problem not too easy and not too hard for him, and one to which his previous experience draws him. Thus he can be fully stretched and working at the height of his capacity.

“But he is under authority, for the professional standards of science put limits to the problems he can choose. His contribution will not be allowed if it is considered scientifically unsound. Its scientific value will be judged in terms of its accuracy, its importance and its intrinsic interest. Its originality will also count for a great deal; paradoxically, because this means it has got to conform to scientific orthodoxy but yet will get the highest praise if it considerably departs from the orthodox line. How can this be? ‘This internal tension is essential in guiding and motivating scientific work. The professional standards of science must impose a framework of discipline and at the same time encourage rebellion against it. . . . Thus the authority of scientific opinion enforces the teachings of science in general for the very purpose of fostering their subversion in particular.’ In Piaget’s terms, the scientific ‘schema’ must be strong as well as open, in order to test and digest new insights.

“Having broken through the rigidity of an outside authority, science cannot give up its own authority and let things in piecemeal, indiscriminately, otherwise its relation to reality dissolves, for piecemeal reality is meaningless. There can be no progressing body of knowledge that is not a real whole of which the parts affect each other; in which a contradiction sets up tension – as in the healthy schema of an individual.

“Who exercises this authority? No one scientist knows enough of the vast area of scientific knowledge to do this, but each knows his own patch and enough of the neighbouring patches to have a good judgment about the standard of what is going on in them, and so the whole area can be covered by a network of overlapping expertise, which can ensure that the same sort of standard will be maintained in all the various branches of science, in spite of the great differences in their subject matter and methods.

“The power of this network of authority is very great. It controls appointments to university posts, the acceptance or rejection of papers by journals, even science teaching in schools. Money goes to one centre rather than another by its recommendation. No outside body can know, as this does, where the growing points of scientific knowledge are at the moment; which branches are nearing a breakthrough to an important new insight, who are the high-flyers in each branch.

“Scientific opinion represented by this network may be mistaken. It may suppress a valuable new idea. Polanyi gives instances of major discoveries to which this happened. ‘It took eleven years for the quantum theory, discovered by Planck in 1900, to gain final acceptance. Yet by the time another thirty years had passed, Planck’s position in science was approaching that hitherto accorded only to Newton.’ And a discovery of Polanyi’s own, the discovery about the adsorption of gases that was quoted in Chapter I, was rejected for even longer before being vindicated. Yet this authority of the scientific community is absolutely necessary, and the risk of mistakes has to be taken. ‘Only the discipline imposed by an effective scientific opinion can prevent the adulteration of science by cranks and dabblers. In parts of the world where no sound and authoritative scientific opinion is established, research stagnates for lack of stimulus, while unsound reputations grow up based on commonplace achievements or mere empty boasts. Politics and business play havoc with appointments and the granting of subsidies for research; journals are made unreadable by including much trash.’”

— from Drusilla Scott, Everyman Revived: The Common Sense of Michael Polanyi (Eerdmans, 1985) 

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