- A Talk dedicated to the memory of Roger Sworder -
Our speaker this month is Brian Coman.
Michael Polanyi was one of those 20th C intellectuals whose name is vaguely familiar to most people interested in the philosophy of science, but whose works have been undeservedly relegated to the sidelines by many commentators.
Born in Hungary in 1891, Polanyi studied medicine in Germany, served as a physician in the First World, then switched to the ‘hard’ sciences. A secular Jew, he left Germany for Britain in 1931, thereby avoiding the Holocaust. His sister and her family were not so lucky. A
polymath of extraordinary ability, Polanyi made important discoveries in the properties of colloids, in x-ray crystallography (his discoveries here paved the way for Watson and Crick and their description of DNA), in the adsorption of gases, and many other fields.
Although he continued to produce outstanding research in chemistry in England until about 1950, Polanyi turned more and more to scholarly writing focused on science and politics, economics and, eventually, philosophy. Michael Polanyi was the brother of the famous economist Karl Polanyi, and his son John was to become the recipient of the Nobel Prize in chemistry. He died in 1976, having witnessed two world wars, Nazism and Stalinism, the rise
of the “Great Liberal Death Wish” and, finally, the revolt of the young in the turbulent 1960s.
The “post-critical” philosophy Polanyi developed was motivated by the horrors of the twentieth century with two World Wars and the rise of totalitarianism, as well as the
popularity of the misleading accounts of science found in both positivist and Marxist philosophy. Polanyi developed an innovative account of human knowing. In order to
overcome the inherited dichotomy of subjective v. objective knowledge that separates facts from values, he proposed that all knowledge is personal, i.e., grounded in tacit commitments from which we seek to discover a reality that always promises to reveal itself in new ways.
His favourite motto was “we know more than we can tell”. Sadly, he never really got to explaining the ultimate source of this tacit knowledge but clearly, he is pointing to some
higher metaphysical source.
In much of his later writing, Polanyi often references two figures, Plato (especially the Meno) and Mircea Eliade. Brian hopes to explain why Polanyi gravitates to these two figures; and will also make some mention of Polanyi’s ideas in relation to the modern notion of the brain as a
“supercomputer” (mind = brain), and specifically to a famous thought experiment proposed by the philosopher John Searle and nicknamed “The Chinese Room”.
...
Brian Coman, a former rabbit poisoner, came back to the University in his retirement and studied under Roger Sworder and Harry Oldmeadow. In the ignorance of his youth (which lasted some 60 years), he published many scientific papers and a couple of books, all now entirely forgotten. More recently he has published books with Harry Oldmeadow. The most recent is Things in General: A Literary Miscellany, authored by Coman. He is owner/ operator (along with Harry) of Carbarita Press, and some of the published volumes have been hand-bound, initially by Jess Milroy and latterly by the presenter.
https://www.carbaritapress.com/
Roger Sworder was a remarkable teacher, philosopher, poet and metaphysician who taught two generations of tertiary students. Roger started Latin at six and Greek at ten in English private schools. He had degrees from Oxford and the ANU and lectured in Bendigo for thirty-six years. His major studies were on Homer, Parmenides and Plato, and on the theory of work. He was a founding member of this group and gave many illuminating talks before he passed away in 2016.
All Welcome!
Gold coin donation appreciated. After the talk we will trip down the hill to the Queen's Arms for dinner and drinks, as usual.
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