Jha Stefania, 'Wigner's ''Polanyian'' Epistemology and the Measurent Problem. the Wigner-Polanyi...

Wigner’s ‘‘Polanyian’’ Epistemologyand the Measurement Problem:The Wigner–Polanyi Dialog on Tacit Knowledge

Stefania Jha*

I analyze the long dialog that Eugene Wigner (1902-1995) and Michael Polanyi (1891–1976)carried out on Polanyi’s concept of tacit knowledge and its meaning for the measurementproblem in quantum physics, focusing in particular on their ten-year correspondencebetween 1961 and 1971 on these subjects and the related mind-body problem. They differedin their interpretations, epistemologies, and ontologies, and consequently never resolvedtheir differences on the measurement and mind-body problems. Nonetheless, their longdialog is significant and opens up avenues for exploring these problems further.

Key words: Eugene Wigner; Michael Polanyi; John von Neumann; Paul

Feyerabend; Hilary Putnam; tacit knowledge; scientific discovery; measurement

problem in quantum physics; mind-body problem; epistemology; ontology; history

of physics; philosophy of physics.

Introduction

Eugene Wigner puzzled a long time over Michael Polanyi’s concept of tacit

knowledge and its meaning for the measurement problem in quantum physics. I

analyze their ten-year dialog on Polanyi’s concept and the measurement problem

based upon their published writings and their unpublished correspondence

between 1961 and 1971.

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) was the mentor of Eugene Wigner (1902–1995) in

Berlin, Germany, in the 1920s and a leader of the expatriate scientists and intel-

lectuals whom he called ‘‘the society of explorers.’’ In 1925 and 1928, Polanyi and

Wigner (figure 1) wrote two joint groundbreaking papers in physical chemistry.1

Polanyi also shared his interest in epistemology with Wigner and his other col-

leagues. He was convinced that explicit descriptions and definitions do not capture

* Stefania Jha received her Ed.D. degree in philosophy and science studies at HarvardUniversity in 1995 and carried out research at the Harvard Philosophy of EducationResearch Center and Project Zero until 2004, after which she was a Research Fellow at theBoston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science until 2008. She is the authorof Reconsidering Michael Polanyi’s Philosophy (2002).

Phys. Perspect. 13 (2011) 329–358� 2011 Springer Basel AG

1422-6944/11/030329-30

DOI 10.1007/s00016-010-0050-5 Physics in Perspective

329

a scientist’s knowledge of phenomena, that the foundation of all knowledge is tacit

knowledge, which he explored by investigating the process of scientific discovery.

To Polanyi, epistemology meant a combination of informal logic, psychology, and

background knowledge. To Wigner, epistemology meant exploring the question,

‘‘How do we know something is real?’’ He was intrigued by Polanyi’s notion of

tacit knowledge and his thinking on the mind-body problem. Polanyi explained the

complex concept of tacit knowledge by a multitiered analogy of Gestalt percep-

tion, tactile perception, and meaning-making, and ultimately by an analogy with

‘‘visionary art,’’ by which he showed how incompatible elements are integrated by

the act of imagination into a novel joint meaning, the understanding of which is

achieved by ‘‘indwelling,’’ a tacit act of making sense. Wigner was not satisfied with

Polanyi’s suggestion as a solution to the measurement problem in quantum

physics, so their long dialog was inconclusive. Nonetheless, their correspondence

suggests possible avenues for exploring it further.

Wigner was searching for a new science to solve the measurement problem,

something between physics and psychology. In his famous 1959 paper, ‘‘The

Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,’’2 he

expressed his debt to Polanyi, saying that many years earlier Polanyi had influ-

enced his thinking deeply on epistemological problems.3 Polanyi, as a laboratory

director with a strong philosophical bent, had instilled in Wigner and other young

physical scientists an attitude of openness to inquiry, and he had investigated the

phenomena of invention and discovery. Wigner mused: ‘‘it is not at all natural that

‘laws of nature’ exist, much less that man is able to discover them.’’4

By 1959 Polanyi had published a number of papers and two books on his new

epistemology of ‘‘personal knowledge,’’ knowledge of a knowing subject that is still

Fig. 1. Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) with his son John (b. 1929) and Eugene Wigner

(1902–1995). Credit: Published by permission of John C. Polanyi.

330 S. Jha Phys. Perspect.

objective. As his correspondence with Wigner shows, his new epistemology gave

Wigner hope that the measurement problem could be solved. Wigner noted at the

end of his 1959 paper that if no coherent theory of consciousness could be for-

mulated similar to the coherent theories of the physical sciences, then scientists’

faith in the reality of their concepts would be strained. Still, as Fritz Rohrlich,

playing on Wigner’s title, wrote in his 1996 paper, ‘‘The Unreasonable Effective-

ness of Physical Intuition: Success While Ignoring Objections’’:

[The] problems that were ignored turned out to be considerably more difficult

than the problems that were actually solved; typically, their solution required a

much deeper level of theory than the level on which progress was made….

[One] wonders whether the measurement problem of quantum mechanics … is

of this nature. Seventy years of effort… [has] not resulted in a definite solution.5

John von Neumann (1903–1957, figure 2) presented a famous version of a

coherent theory in his theory of automata in a paper he read at the Hixon sym-

posium at the California Institute of Technology in 19486 to which Wigner referred

in his Festschrift paper for Polanyi in 1961, ‘‘The Probability of the Existence of a

Self-Reproducing Unit.’’7 Von Neumann’s proposal of self-replicating machines

was based on the Turing model, but he understood that it did not apply to living

systems. Wigner pointed out that his own speculative model did, with reservations,

noting that the present laws of physics do not incorporate the influence of con-

sciousness on matter, and the present laws of nature do not include the mutual

influence of living matter and consciousness. He suggested that the influence of

consciousness on matter is analogous to the influence of light on matter in the

Compton effect. Wigner’s analogy ‘‘assumed that the ‘living state’ is completely

given in the quantum mechanical sense,’’ and in 1961 he carried out a calculation

to support it,8 but said that these calculations are limited, and the assumption is

unrealistic. A living organism is not completely determined in this sense, however,

since it is represented by many states.

The Wigner–Polanyi Dialog on the Mind-Body Problem

Wigner and Polanyi never resolved their disagreement on the mind-body problem.

Their discussions began following Wigner’s contribution to Polanyi’s Festschrift.

Polanyi, in a letter of April 3, 1961,9 stated emphatically that Wigner’s position

amounted to reductionism, and that no reduction of mental to physical is possible.

He drew an analogy to a machine, which is defined by its function, not by its parts.

This, however, was only a partial analogy, and a misleading one that Wigner had

taken to suggest insentience. Machines are constructed for a purpose, while the

purpose of living organisms is intrinsic to themselves. Therefore, said Polanyi, the

reductionist explanation of living organisms as machines that are completely

defined by their physical and chemical properties is false. To explain living

organisms by the properties of ‘‘communication’’ is also false.

Vol. 13 (2011) Wigner’s ‘‘Polanyian’’ Epistemology and the Measurement Problem 331

A set of objects may be said to carry the same message if each member of the

set has the same meaning. Communications work by embodying their own

peculiar operational principles; no physical-chemical analysis of an object

conveying a communication will reveal its meaning. In fact, no object has a

meaning. It can mean something only to a person who means something by it.

Polanyi went on to say that if Wigner were to test his reductionist hypothesis he

would find that his claim that it is opposed to von Neumann’s theory is misleading.

For, if I am right in the interpretation of your argument, it should exclude the

possibility of machines or communications being formed according to laws of

quantum mechanics from inanimate matter not already embodying communi-

cations or operational principles of machines.

Polanyi admitted that Wigner’s mathematical proof of his hypothesis was ‘‘over his

head,’’ and that he was only arguing for the reasonableness of his position. Wigner

replied one week later, saying that his proof ‘‘claims that it is infinitely unlikely

that there are systems which are self-reproducing. This is a statement similar to

statements used in thermodynamics, where we always assume that it is infinitely

unlikely….’’10 Wigner believed that von Neumann was firmly convinced of this

conclusion with regard to living beings (that is, of the unlikelihood that

Fig. 2. John von Neumann (1903–1957). Credit: American Institute of Physics Emilio Segre

Visual Archives.


self-reproducing units of living beings could arise) even though von Neumann did

not publish his thoughts on this question.*

At a conference in 1961 Wigner took another tack on the problem of how to

deal with the quantum-mechanical theory of observation, but this time from the

angle of the concept of the real. In his article, ‘‘Two Kinds of Reality,’’11 he offered

a dualist position. The first kind of reality is consciousness, an obvious fact that is

often disregarded when focusing on the content of consciousness, that is, on

everything other than one’s own consciousness, which is the second kind of reality.

Normally, one is unaware of the operations of one’s own mind, except in the

process of learning something. (Wigner’s favorite source of explanation of con-

scious and unconscious processes was Jacques Hadamard’s clear but general

description of mathematical invention.12) Wigner considered the first reality,

which he called ‘‘personal reality,’’ as absolute or possibly a limiting case of con-

sciousness. The second reality, that of objects, is sharply divided from the first, is of

various degrees of probability (although we accept them as real), and is of the

same type and degree of reality as that of consciousness of others and spiritual

values. This, he stated, ‘‘is the only known point of view which is consistent with

quantum mechanics.’’ This second type of reality is the universal or impersonal

reality whose concept cannot be made meaningful without accounting for the

phenomenon of mind and integrating it into our understanding of physical

phenomena.13

Wigner’s two kinds of reality are related in that absolute reality is not inde-

pendent of the constructs of universal reality, and both (contrary to naıve belief)

share the property of impermanence. Scientific thinking before quantum

mechanics considered consciousness as having no influence on scientific explana-

tion, while after quantum mechanics an explanation should give an account of a

phenomenon, its circumstances, and its related phenomena.14 In terms of the

‘‘paradox of measurement,’’ this meant that a measurement (‘‘reading’’) cannot be

interpreted if the properties of the measuring apparatus are unknown or not taken

into consideration, that is, the correlation between the ‘‘object’’ and the measuring

apparatus must be taken into account. This has been done unsatisfactorily and will

require studying concept-forming abilities and what we call intelligence, a fully

‘‘awake’’ consciousness—Wigner’s example was that of von Neumann’s mind.

Wigner thus was puzzling through the mind-body problem, a traditionally dif-

ficult problem that he seemingly made even more difficult by slicing the world into

two kinds of reality whose relationship now required explanation, instead of

embracing a continuum from personal to objective reality as Polanyi did. In a

letter of October 6, 1961,15 Wigner expressed high interest in Polanyi’s forth-

coming article on the mind-body problem in the context of his theory of tacit

* Von Neumann’s last speculations on natural and artificial memory was in his Mrs. HepsaEly Silliman Memorial Lectures at Yale University in 1955, published posthumously as TheComputer and the Brain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958).


knowledge.16 He agreed with Polanyi’s conclusion, but was unconvinced by Po-

lanyi’s argument for it.

In his article Polanyi (figure 3) concluded that entities are made up of con-

secutive levels of existence, each level relying for its workings on the laws of the

level below it, but that the operation of a higher level cannot be accounted for by

the laws of lower levels, that is, in terms of particulars. The boundary condition

between levels is defined such that the principles of each level operate under the

control of the next higher level. The possibility of the extent of the explicit

description of particulars varies with levels, and their connections, which form the

comprehensive entity, vary with the systems (objects, living entities, skills,

responsible judgment). Polanyi’s conception of reality thus is hierarchical: more

complex entities seem to be ‘‘more real’’; the mind, for instance, is more real than a

stone.

The general idea of Polanyi’s argument to support this claim is that the higher

the level, the more difficult it is to state explicitly and fully all of the connections of

the particulars that make the entity function as a whole. (The description of the

entity is underdetermined.) He goes further to claim that one cannot identify

particulars except by previously attending to the entity as a whole. Specifically, the

workings of the mind cannot be explained by particular behaviors, or by equating

the mind with its workings: The workings of the mind and the observations it

makes cannot be focused on simultaneously; the foci are mutually exclusive; one

cannot attend simultaneously to the object of an action and to the action itself.

Fig. 3. Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) at the University of Manchester ca. 1937. Credit: Published

by permission of John C. Polanyi.


To explain the use of his partial analogy of machine-like hierarchical levels,

Polanyi noted that machines and living systems are alike in that both systems are

unspecifiable in their particulars.17 If a causal explanation is sought, one must say

that the initial conditions of machines (which are controlled by the laws of tech-

nology and cannot be accounted for by the laws of physics and chemistry) must be

taken into account before one can rely on the operation of machines to make

predictions.18 By analogy, taking the living body as a ‘‘machine,’’ its parameters are

just as undetermined by physics and chemistry as those of a machine. Con-

sciousness must be recognized as acting as a ‘‘first cause’’ for a machine—human

intelligence created it. For the sake of continuity and by analogy, one would have

to postulate a sentient first cause of organic evolution.19

There has been much speculation about how living beings evolved from inan-

imate matter. A mechanistic conception of the universe would lead one to

hypothesize either that living beings were ‘‘preformed’’ by suitable patterns of

parameters, in which case there would be nothing new and the notion of ran-

domness would have to be abandoned, or that living beings would have to be

represented as insentient automata.* Living organisms have offered a clue by the

process of repair and adjustment in embryonic development and beyond: Gestalt

psychologists likened these primitive integrations to the ability of animals to

reorganize their field of experience, and the ability of human beings to innovate at

a much faster pace than evolutionary changes.** However, the scope of causes at

the highest level is restricted by time and place, and causes are directed toward

possibilities of innovation. (Polanyi was accused of ‘‘entelechy,’’ but he was simply

claiming a teleological process, a ‘‘vector.’’20)

Polanyi’s conception of the relationship of epistemology to ontology is some-

what peculiar, and can be misleading for those who are looking for clear

delineations between the two. Polanyi wrote:

* For Polanyi, randomness is an example of emergence to higher ontological levels, in thesense that an increase in randomness increases entropy and increases the possibility for newcombinations. Degrees of randomness can occur by occasional fluctuations caused byinternal or external forces; a decrease in randomness means that the system would ‘‘sortitself out’’ and become more predictable; see Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (ref. 17), p. 391.** When Polanyi speculated on the evolution of man, he said: ‘‘[The] rise of man includes acontinuous intensification of individuality, similar to that which normally takes place in theformation of a human person from a parental zygote. No new creative agent, therefore, needbe said to enter an emergent system at consecutive new stages of being. Novel forms ofexistence take control of the system by a process of maturation’’; see Personal Knowledge(ref. 17), p. 395. Polanyi’s notion of ‘‘maturation’’ in his ontology is analogous to ‘‘meaning-making’’ in his epistemology. His epistemology and ontology are isomorphic. This is shownin Polanyi’s book, The Tacit Dimension (ref. 40), pp. 33, 55, in his article, ‘‘The Structure ofConsciousness’’ (ref. 39), p. 213, and is demonstrated in ‘‘Polanyi’s problematic architec-tonic: a critique,’’ in Jha, Reconsidering (ref. 20), Chapter 9, pp. 224-243, especially pp. 225,n. 4, and 229.


[Strictly] speaking, it is not the emerged higher form of being, but our knowl-

edge of it, that is unspecifiable in terms of its lower level particulars. We cannot

speak of emergence, therefore, except in conjunction with a corresponding

progression from a lower to a higher conceptual level. And we realize then that

conceptual progression may not always be existential, but that it becomes so by

degrees.21

That is, Polanyi’s ontology is generated out of and is isomorphic with his

epistemology.

Wigner was unconvinced by Polanyi’s arguments. As he said in his letter of

October 6, 1961:

If we had a state of very low entropy, the subsequent increase of entropy may

lead through stages of surprising regularities [for example, the development of

the solar system]. I do not believe that the case which you consider is compa-

rable with this example but the fact of surprising regularities remains.…[I] realize that no argument on this question can be ‘‘rigorous.’’

Polanyi and Wigner’s next substantive exchange occurred after Polanyi sent

Wigner a copy of his 1962 article, ‘‘Tacit Knowing: Its Bearing on Some Problems

of Philosophy,’’22 which was based on one of his Terry Lectures at Yale University.

In it Polanyi explored his notion that all understanding is grounded in tacit

knowing, and all understanding is achieved by the act of indwelling. ‘‘When

exercising a skill we literally dwell in innumerable muscular acts which contribute

to its purpose, a purpose which constitutes their joint meaning.’’23 It is a mistake to

distinguish indwelling from observation as practiced in the natural sciences: This is

a matter of degree, a continuum: indwelling is less deep when observing an object

than when understanding a work of art or a person. Indwelling bridges the gap

between the two modes by rooting a person in the awareness of his body.

[We] are able to make sense of clues or particulars to which we are not

attending at the moment, by relying on our awareness of them for attending to

something else—so that the appearance of that to which we are attending may

be said to be the meaning of these clues or particulars. Once we had grasped

this way of making sense, we also realized that the position at which the

meaning of the clues appeared to be situated did not coincide with the position

of the clues themselves and could lie in some cases nearer to, in others further

away from them.24

This can be taken as Polanyi’s explanation of Wigner’s puzzle about the mea-

surement problem, and it is his most direct reference to it in terms of tacit

knowing: it is the observer’s act of ‘‘making sense.’’

Neurological studies, motion studies in skill acquisition, language analyses – all

attempt to understand tacit knowing, in which we attend to something by relying

on clues, elements, particulars, that we are not attending to at the time. This


phenomenon may be called ‘‘intuitive,’’ which these studies attempt to formalize,

to capture fully by specifying the elements and explicitly stating the rules of

integration into ‘‘wholes.’’ Since, however, focusing on the elements destroys the

meaning of the whole (whether a piece of art, a physiognomy, or a skill) no such

formalization is possible—one has to limit oneself in ‘‘specifying’’ to discover

maxims that can be applied artfully. In the main, the original tacit act will remain

tacit. Tacit knowing can integrate conflicting clues in various ways,25 and can

resolve a contradiction by revealing their joint meaning in terms of a new quality

(for instance, stereo sound).

The theory of phenomenalism teaches one to consider sense data as ultimate

information about the outside world, and

to regard our knowledge of the objects to which sense data refer, as based on

inference from these data. This gives rise to the insoluble problem of the

manner in which such inference can be carried out. [It seems Polanyi thought

this may be Wigner’s problem.] The school of linguistic analysis disposed of this

problem by affirming that we never perceive sense data as such, but are aware

of them only as qualities of objects, which are what we actually do perceive.26

Polanyi added that we do not see sense data until we make an intelligent effort to

see the ‘‘objects’’ of which these are the qualities. This intelligent effort is tacit

integration by which the object is recognized as the ‘‘meaning’’ of the sense data. It

is not an explicit process (such as was Wigner’s calculation): Trying to make it

explicit makes the problem insoluble. A scientist focuses on the meaning of the

clues while groping toward new ideas and evidence, following his hunches.

How does one then deal with the problem of how primary qualities give rise to

secondary qualities? Primary qualities today mean the parameters of statistical

functions as determined by quantum physics. How do these give rise to secondary

qualities such as color or sound by an arrangement of these parameters? Primary

qualities represent ‘‘the objective reality of all things and secondary qualities [are]

deemed to be subjective.’’27 The question then is, how do we experience color or

sound, for example, which are not directly derivable from the conceptual frame-

work of physics? How do we ‘‘explain’’ things by this ‘‘bottom-up’’ method?

Polanyi’s theory of hierarchies of laws would affirm that we cannot, as he illus-

trated by his example of the levels of structure and function of a machine. The

operational principles of a machine and its function (for a purpose) define or

explain a machine, not its primary qualities. Another example is that of a map: The

elements of a map are meaningless by themselves; only when the elements are

integrated into a whole do we recognize the whole as having the meaning ‘‘map’’ (a

figure that functions as a map). The elements were integrated by the process of

tacit knowing.


Polanyi’s Analysis of Knowing

The process of knowing occurs in two stages: subsidiary attention and focal

attention. The latter relies on the former, for example, when it becomes apparent

that we are looking at a map of a city, that is, the map is in our focal awareness. By

relying on various clues, the elements of which are in our subsidiary awareness that

our tacit knowing integrates, we are able to understand what we are looking at.

The map is defined by the meaning we give it, by its function, not by the lines and

their positions in space that compose it. This process cannot be dismissed as a

purely ‘‘psychological’’ process. Since its result can be fallible, the process is one of

logical inference—a tacit logical inference. It is personal judgment, and it is used in

scientific inquiry.

In a letter of December 17, 1962,28 Wigner reacted to Polanyi’s rather thick

description of tacit knowing and his various illustrations and analogies. Wigner

was confused about the details, but agreed with Polanyi’s general idea that there is

tacit knowing. He wrote: ‘‘There is only one sharp distinction that may exist

between [tacit and subconscious knowledge].… [We] can not consciously recall the

time of a subconscious thought.’’ This is the measurement problem in quantum

physics that Wigner (figure 4) had been struggling with for some time, and for

which he looked to Polanyi’s notion of tacit knowledge for help. Wigner

continued:

Your point of the absurdness of disregarding what you call tacit has often

occurred to me. First, actually, when analyzing the epistemology of quantum

mechanics. This purports to give probability connections between subsequent

observations. However, by observations they mean conscious impressions.

If one tries to think this through, one soon realizes the absurdity of the

position. How do we know the properties of the apparatus which we use for

our ‘‘measurements’’ (observations). Evidently, from having observed the

apparatus. This preliminary observation tells us whether we have a grating or

a microscope at hand. However, this evidently involves us into an endless

process and we must, rather admit that we have some knowledge which

developed in our unconscious, as your tacit knowledge, without conscious

observations.

Wigner’s complaint may be correct about Polanyi’s 1962 article, ‘‘Tacit Knowing:

Its Bearing on Some Problems in Philosophy,’’29 but in an earlier 1961 article in

Mind, ‘‘Knowing and Being,’’30 Polanyi gave a detailed explanation of tacit

knowing as constituted of various levels of consciousness. He also did in the book,

The Scientist Speculates, to which both he and Wigner contributed.31 Wigner also

said in his letter that he found lacking in Polanyi’s writings any discussions of

innate knowledge, inherited knowledge in animal instinct, inherited capabilities,

and the like, all of which constitute a much larger part of our knowledge than our


learned conscious knowledge. When we speak about ourselves, we speak of this

small part, our conscious knowledge, and we speak of it as a possession. It seems

that Wigner had not yet read Polanyi’s 1958 book, Personal Knowledge.32

A two-year gap now followed in their correspondence, during which both

Wigner and Polanyi wrote on related topics. Wigner wrote on ‘‘Remarks on the

Mind-Body Question’’* (interference of the observer in measurement),33 ‘‘Two

Kinds of Reality’’ (consciousness and objects),34 and the ‘‘Problem of Measure-

ment’’ (the orthodox view and its critique),35 while Polanyi wrote ‘‘My Time with

X-rays and Crystals’’ (on discovery),36 and ‘‘The Unaccountable Element in Sci-

ence’’ (on intuitive surmise and informal decision making, Kant’s ‘‘mother-wit,’’

and Gestalt perception).37 All of their papers explore how the mind interacts with

or understands physical reality. If they were discussing or following each other’s

efforts, we have to glean this from these essays.

Fig. 4. Eugene Wigner (1902–1995) in 1956. Credit: American Institute of Physics Emilio Segre

Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection.

* Abner Shimony has explained that Wigner considered hypotheses other than thehypothesis I discuss, that the reduction of the superposition is the work of consciousness, butdid not choose among them. One of Wigner’s proposed tentative solutions (‘‘Wigner’ssolution’’) to the various problems in the quantum theory of measurement was that con-sciousness may play a role in the reduction of the wave packet, but while evaluating H.D.Zeh’s observation that the macroscopic measuring apparatus is not a closed system, he wasskeptical that this observation could solve the reduction of the superposition. See AbnerShimony, ‘‘Wigner on Foundations of Quantum Mechanics,’’ in Wigner, Collected Works.Part A. Vol. III. Part II (ref. 7), pp. 401–414.


Wigner’s ‘‘Polanyian’’ Epistemology

Wigner and Polanyi resumed their correspondence in 1965. Polanyi traveled to the

United States, where he organized a study group on the Unity of Knowledge at

Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, during the summers of 1965 and 1966,38

and Wigner participated in these meetings. Polanyi spoke on ‘‘The Structure of

Consciousness,’’ and Wigner spoke on ‘‘Epistemology of Quantum Mechanics—Its

Appraisal and Demands.’’39 On February 19, 1965, prior to the first meeting,

Wigner wrote to Polanyi, saying that he was anticipating discussing the mind-body

problem personally with him, that he was just reading his book, Personal

Knowledge, but that he now wanted to raise a particular point:

We both feel that materialism is absurd, and in this we entirely agree.… I think

it is about as incorrect as to pretend that mechanics gives the answer to all

physics and that electric phenomena follow from classical mechanics. I have two

reasons for believing this. One is entirely ontological, the other one is based on

modern quantum mechanics. This may not give the full picture, but, on the

other hand, there is no reason to believe that an earlier and less complete

theory does give the full picture.40

There is no record of Polanyi’s reply.

I note that although Polanyi’s philosophy cannot be categorized as idealist, as

mentioned above he does assign ‘‘more reality’’ to ideas than to material objects.

Wigner’s ontology, as we also saw, gives more weight to thought as real. Thus,

both argued that man is not explained by materialist philosophy. Moreover,

Wigner did not regard quantum mechanics as a ‘‘materialist’’ theory, but on this, as

we shall see, Polanyi did not agree. After the conference, on September 14, 1965,

Wigner wrote to Polanyi:

It seems to me that you make the same difference between living and inanimate

objects as between a machine and its constituents. In other words, your

emphasis is on the purpose of the machine and also the purposefulness of the

arrangement of objects in living beings.… I do not feel that it is desirable to

equate machines and living beings. From an unemotional point of view I would

argue that almost all new sets of phenomena such as electricity, nuclear forces,

heat, light, have required either entirely new concepts for their description, or

at least a new and striking re-interpretation in terms of phenomena. I do not see

anything like this in the present discussion of life.… I feel that the phenomena

of desire and emotions are at least as new to present physics as was electricity to

Mechanics and that it won’t be possible to describe it in the same terms, not

only on the low level on which machines can be described adequately. In other

words, I consider the difference between life and machines enormously great

because the machines do not show the phenomena of volition and emotion. I


am sure I grossly misrepresent and probably misunderstand your views. How-

ever, I would like to know in which way.41

Wigner already had found Polanyi’s partial analogy of the hierarchical structure of

comprehensive entities and his term ‘‘boundary conditions,’’ which Polanyi had

borrowed from physics, to be unclear, even wrong. He did not see what

relationship Polanyi wanted to select for his analogy, although he did like his

notion of reframing or reconceptualizing entities to understand new phenomena,

which is where they found common ground.

Wigner and Polanyi planned to meet again in Princeton in 1966, but there are

no written records of such a meeting. Two years later, Wigner reopened his cor-

respondence with Polanyi, enclosing a paper that Polanyi called ‘‘on men and

machines,’’ which seems to be Wigner’s 1968 paper, ‘‘A Physicist Looks at the

Soul,’’42 in which Wigner discusses three points of view: a Laplacian, purely

mechanistic view, a ‘‘translation’’ view in which the laws of physics are translated

into recordable evidence, and a view in which the laws of physics are a ‘‘limiting

case’’ (if life plays no role). Wigner subscribed to the last view:

It is true that matter influences my consciousness, but I believe it is also true

that the atoms in my brain do not follow the laws of present-day physics. The

next major change in physics will be, I hope, an incorporation of the phe-

nomena of life and consciousness into this discipline.43

On September 20, 1969, Wigner wrote again to Polanyi,44 discussing his struggles

with the epistemology of quantum mechanics. He was rereading Polanyi’s book,

The Study of Man,45 which is a concise version of his earlier magnum opus, and he

picked up on

the points you make about the language and its reliance on tacit knowledge. We

speak about measurements in quantum mechanics but we do not tell how we

know the properties of the measuring instrument, how we were informed that a

particular apparatus is to be used and to what purpose.

Polanyi proposed to visit Wigner in Princeton, but this visit did not materialize.

Wigner continued their discussion a year and a half later, however, writing

to Polanyi on February 4, 1971,46 focusing on Polanyi’s forthcoming paper,

‘‘Genius in Science,’’47 in which Polanyi clarified his concept of tacit knowing by

emphasizing scientific creativity as a process of insight driven by the imagination

and by anticipation based on the hunches of a scientist. Scientific creativity,

Polanyi insisted, is neither a process of refutation of earlier theories, nor of theory

construction by data collection. What can be observed depends on the theory. He

drew the same analogy between Gestalt perception and creative scientific insight

as he did in his book, Personal Knowledge, but added that different branches of

science are based on different ways of seeing (as framed by theory). His notion of

the driving force of imagination and the pull of anticipation are reminiscent of the


ideas of Henri Poincare (1854-1912), Jacques Hadamard (1865–1963), and George

Polya (1887–1985), and analogous to those of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961)

on the body in action. His shorthand explanation for meaning-making is ‘‘personal

judgment,’’ a scientist’s participation in and evaluation of his act in the scientific

process.

In his letter, Wigner agreed with Polyani’s concept of tacit knowing, but dis-

agreed with his summary:

I do not fully agree with what you say … that natural science is an extension of

perception. I think you are making this point in relation to gestalts-theorie,

while I mean it epistemologically.… It is very unclear how we have learned

[things in infancy]. I still do not understand how our children guessed that there

is a meaning in the sounds which come out of our mouths and how they ever

guessed their significance.

Wigner seems to have missed Polanyi’s point on the passivity of Gestalt theory,

that it is only an initial analogy upon which Polanyi built a layer of active

participation and a layer of meaning-making, the entire structure and function of

which he explained in much greater detail in his various books and articles.48 It

could be said that Polanyi’s epistemology incorporates psychology.

Wigner mentioned that he had learned from Hadamard that there are two

stages of mathematical invention, intuitive knowledge, followed by its formulation

(which corresponds to Polanyi’s description of tacit-explicit processes). Wigner’s

comment is perhaps fair if Polanyi’s paper, ‘‘Genius in Science,’’ is taken in iso-

lation, but not if Wigner was familiar with the corpus of Polanyi’s earlier work, as

he presumably was. This leaves the possibility that Wigner understood Polanyi’s

theory as a psychological theory, and his own search as a search for an episte-

mological explanation. Recall that Polanyi reconceived epistemology as a

combination of informal logic, psychology, and background knowledge that cul-

minated in meaning-making, an alternative ideal that he considered to be a

general, broader epistemology. For Wigner, the meaning of epistemology would

have been meaning-making grounded in quantum phenomena.

Thus, Wigner explains in his 1969 paper, ‘‘The Epistemology of Quantum

Mechanics,’’49 that by epistemology he means how we know, show, or prove that

what we ‘‘know’’ is ‘‘real,’’ that is, in quantum-mechanical measurement the state

vector represents reality. Since observation changes what is observed (it is dis-

continuous in time) and can be represented only by the laws of probability, for

Wigner the problem becomes the double one of epistemology and ontology. He is

unwilling to accept as a solution the explanation that the state vector is only a tool

for calculating probabilities, only a tool for making predictions. He also would not

agree that classical physics (macrophysics) and quantum physics are discontinu-

ous—both follow causal laws. He thus most likely would not accept the standard

Copenhagen view here.


Criticism and Defense of Wigner’s ‘‘Polanyian’’ Epistemology

Paul Feyerabend (figure 5) in his paper, ‘‘On the Quantum Theory of Measure-

ment,’’50 suggested that the quantum theory of measurement is incomplete, and

one can be developed that

depends, just as its classical counterpart does, on nothing but the equations of

motion and the special conditions (macroscopically distinguishable states;

macro-observers) under which those equations are applied….

[Then it could be shown that this has the consequences] (a) that there are no

quantum-jumps and (b) that the idea that there are quantum-jumps has its

origin in an incomplete theory of measurement….51

What is omitted is the fact that M [the measuring apparatus] is a macroscopic

system and that B [a pointer] cannot discern the finer properties of M.… Now

the transition from the level of QM to the level of classical mechanics involves

certain approximations. Within a theory of measurement which omits reference

to the macroscopic character of both M and B those approximations cannot be

justified. Hence, within such an incomplete theory the transition to the classical

level will have to be treated as an independent element which cannot be further

analysed and which cannot be explained in terms of the equation of motion. We

suggest that a complete theory which contains a reference to the macroscopic

character of both B and M will allow for such an explanation.52

Fig. 5. Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994). Source: website \http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_

Feyerabend[.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend

Feyerabend also noted that to simplify his argument an observation can be made

without an observer (for instance, by a camera).

Hilary Putnam (figure 6) argued that ‘‘something is wrong with the [conven-

tional] theory.’’53 Superposition, an object being simultaneously in a state A and a

state B, a particle behaving as if it goes simultaneously through slit 1 and slit 2, is

the quantum-mechanical measurement paradox. But conditions in the macroworld

are different: In the macroworld, a cat being both alive and dead at the same time

does not occur; the conditions cannot be superposed. Therefore, Putnam claimed,

the assumptions of conventional quantum mechanics constitute a contradiction.54

He noted that Wigner (and Henry Margenau) defended the adequacy of the

received view (quantum jumps, collapse of the state vector) along a somewhat

different line:

According to them quantum mechanics presupposes a cut between the observer

and the object. Any system whatsoever can be taken as the object; however, the

observer himself cannot be included.… The observer always treats himself as

possessing definite states which are known to him. Here Margenau and Wigner

deviate slightly from the Copenhagen Interpretation. According to Bohr and

Heisenberg, the observer must treat himself as a classical object, i.e. everything

on the observer side of the ‘‘cut’’ (including measuring apparatus) is treated as

obeying the laws of classical physics. Margenau and Wigner do not mention

this. What they rather say is that the observer must include a ‘‘consciousness.’’

Thus they deviate from the Copenhagen Interpretation in a subjectivistic

direction. Whereas the fact that we do not get superposition on the observer

side of the ‘‘cut’’ is explained on the Bohr-Heisenberg story by the fact that we

use classical physics on this side, it is explained on the Margenau-Wigner story

by the fact that we have a faculty of ‘‘introspection’’ (cf. London and Bauer

Fig. 6. Hilary Putnam (b. 1926). Source: website\http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam[.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam

(1939)55 for the source of this interpretation) which enables us to perform

‘‘reduction of the wave packet’’ upon ourselves.56

To these charges, Wigner and Margenau responded that Putnam challenged them

to restate quantum-mechanical theory without mathematical formalism, and that

Putnam’s argument is faulty:

According to von Neumann and to London and Bauer … every measurement is

an interaction between an object and an observer.… The object obeys the laws

of motion … as long as it is … separated from the rest of the world.… [This] is

the case during time intervals between measurements [and not during

measurements].…The chain of transmission of information from the object to the consciousness

of the observer may consist of several steps…. One cannot follow the transmission

of information to the very end, i.e., into the consciousness of the observer, because

present-day physics is not applicable to the consciousness [of the observer] … [as]

has been clearly recognized by both von Neumann and by London and Bauer.…[One] must introduce a cut between object and observer and assume that the

observer has a ‘‘direct knowledge’’ of what is on his side of the cut.…We must also reject the suggestion that quantum mechanics treats the universe

as consisting of two qualitatively different kinds of things, ‘‘classical’’ objects

and micro-objects…. [Classical] objects are included as proper limiting concerns

of a probabilistic theory which, in this limit, reduces to classical physics.57

Wigner’s Attempt to Clarify ‘‘Polanyian’’ Tacit Knowledge

Although Wigner satisfied himself that his response to Putnam would stand, he

still looked for an epistemological explanation to reconcile or to integrate

incompatible elements by tacit knowledge. Polanyi sent a copy of the manuscript

of his 1969 lecture, ‘‘Visionary Art,’’58 on the integration of incompatibles, to

Wigner. By this time they were ‘‘talking past each other,’’ although Wigner was

polite and respectful about Polanyi’s ‘‘helpful’’ analogies. Later, in a postscript to

his letter of February 4, 1971, Wigner wrote: ‘‘I enjoyed many parts of it, but do

not feel its meaning. Perhaps, as I often say, wisdom cannot be taught except to

those who already possess it ‘tacitly’.’’59

Polanyi apparently sent the manuscript of his lecture on ‘‘Visionary Art’’ to

Wigner in connection with their discussion on the measurement problem, as an aid

for insight into the tacit process of integration. Wigner did not see how it could be

applied to the problem under discussion. In it Polanyi illustrated the way the mind

integrates incompatible elements and interprets them in a coherent framework,

and he thought this also applied to mathematics and the physical sciences:

The creation of hitherto inconceivable conceptions by the combination of

hitherto incompatible features is a commonplace in mathematics and modern


physics and, here too, these innovations are usually fraught with indeterminate

implications.60

Polanyi took his detailed illustrations explaining the mental process from surrealist

painting, from the poetry of Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821–1867), Arthur

Rimbaud (1854–1891), and Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965)–he called their

poems of symbolism, intuitionism, and formalism by the collective term, ‘‘visionary

art’’—and from the structure of myth as analyzed by Mircea Eliade (1907–1986).

An artist’s interpretation of experience must make a break from our usual per-

ception—it views its subject suspended in one moment, timeless. The form and

content of a poem or painting are deliberately incompatible; their acceptance by

the reader or viewer is achieved ‘‘by sustaining the belief that art is meaningful,

and discovering thereby the joint meaning of its focally incompatible elements.’’61

Polanyi went on to say:

[The] powerful act of the imagination … comprehends all details in one….

[Its] disparate elements have a joint meaning … which will be strikingly novel

… the more incompatible were its unintegrated elements.’’62

[We] find their visionary form unintelligible until we realize that we must not

try to understand them as representing a sequence of events that hang together

in the way real events do, … [and quoting Alain Robbe-Griller (1922-2008) he

continues:] ‘‘In the modern novel time has ceased to exist. Or rather it is a time

without temporality, it is an instantaneous time which never creates a past …never accumulating to form either a memory or [sic] things past to which one

can refer one day; it is a present that has no value save in the present.’’63

By this Polanyi means that this nontemporal instant (in myth the ‘‘beginning of

time’’) is to be differentiated from normally perceived time, which is perceived as

continuous and irreversible.64 Art creates facts of our imagination, which guide

our thoughts. The artificiality of form enables it ‘‘to act as a framework detaching

the events to which they apply, and endow these with a tangible and lasting quality

by luminous imaginative powers.’’65

Although Polanyi thought that his exploration of how incompatible elements

can be given meaning by a framework would be a key piece in the epistemology of

quantum measurement that Wigner was seeking, Wigner said that he did not

understand Polanyi’s meaning, that perhaps ‘‘wisdom cannot be taught except to

those who already possess it ‘tacitly’.’’66 Wigner thus seemed to be frustrated by

Polanyi’s examples and analogies: They seemed too vague and mystical, and did

not capture what Wigner was seeking. Perhaps their meaning of ‘‘incompatible’’

was so different that they could not envision ‘‘integration in tacit knowing’’ in the

same way. Was Polanyi saying that the incompatible elements (behavior as par-

ticle when observed, or as wave when not observed) can be integrated somehow by

the power of the imagination? Was he saying that one needs to believe that science

is meaningful, that a scientist’s interpretation of an event is not like that of


ordinary events? He was referring to intuitive surmise and ‘‘mother-wit,’’ as he did

in 1962 in his paper, ‘‘The Unaccountable Element in Science.’’67 Polanyi’s epis-

temology contains no explicit rules or instructions for application – he used

neologisms and multitiered analogies to explain complex concepts. He was

breaking new ground. Earlier, Polanyi had used the analogy that scientific insight

is similar to Gestalt perception, but Wigner objected to this analogy, because he

was looking for an epistemological explanation, and took Polanyi’s analogy as a

psychological one. Was his comment about ‘‘tacit wisdom’’ a way of saying to his

aging teacher and friend, ‘‘You are not explaining, you are retreating into poetic

descriptions which do not apply’’?*

Polanyi’s Definitions of Aspects of Tacit Knowing

Although both Polanyi and Wigner refined their working definitions of episte-

mology, it is useful to see how they evolved over the ten-year period of their

correspondence.

Polanyi initially viewed the relationship between epistemology and psychology,

which Wigner found so frustrating, as follows:

Epistemology reflects on knowledge which we ourselves believe we possess; the

psychologist studies knowledge which he believes to have been acquired by

another individual and studies also the shortcomings of such knowledge. No

knowledge, whether our own or that of a rat, is fully specifiable; but the fact that

we must rely on recognizing the rat’s knowledge, or ignorance, from our

knowledge of the rat’s behaviour, involves an additional enquiry and an addi-

tional unspecifiability.68

Polanyi defined his epistemology in his book, Personal Knowledge, as follows:

I start by rejecting the ideal of scientific detachment.…[It] falsifies our whole outlook far beyond the domain of science. I want to

establish an alternative ideal of knowledge, quite generally….

Personal Knowledge … by modifying the conception of knowing; …Skilful knowing as doing is performed by subordinating a set of particulars, as

clues or tools, to the shaping of a skilful achievement, whether practical or

theoretical. We may then be said to become ‘‘subsidiarily aware’’ of these

particulars within our ‘‘focal awareness’’ of the coherent entity that we achieve.

Clues and tools are things used as such and not observed in themselves [sub-

sidiary knowledge can function as instrumental knowledge]. They are made to

function as extensions of our bodily equipment and this involves a certain

* Wigner was famous for his courtesy. After this letter to Polanyi on February 4, 1971 (ref.46), there is only one more the following month about an upcoming conference on quantummechanics but no substantive discussion; their correspondence continued sporadically untilmid-1974, but they had no further substantive exchanges on epistemology.


change of our being. Acts of comprehension are to this extent irreversible, and

also non-critical. For we cannot possess any fixed framework within which the

re-shaping of our hitherto fixed framework could be critically tested.……………………..

Personal knowledge is an intellectual commitment, and as such inherently

hazardous.69

In redefining knowledge, Polanyi combined ‘‘ineffable’’ knowledge of skills and

knowledge acquired by education.

This ineffable domain of skilful knowing is continuous in its inarticulateness

with the knowledge possessed by animals and infants, who … also possess the

capacity for reorganizing their inarticulate knowledge and using it as an

interpretive framework.…We may say in general that by acquiring a skill,

whether muscular or intellectual, we achieve an understanding which we cannot

put into words and which is continuous with the inarticulate faculties of ani-

mals.… [Understanding in this manner has an existential meaning,

understanding of language has a denotative meaning, which is a special case of

existential meaning].

…………………To assert that I have knowledge which is inaffable is not to deny that I can

speak of it, but only that I can speak of it adequately, the assertion itself being

an appraisal of this inadequacy.………………………..

[We acknowledge] our own capacity to distinguish what we know from what

we may be saying about it….70

Polanyi also redefined the use of the word ‘‘true’’:

We might have a better chance of achieving the purpose of epistemological

reflection if we asked ourselves instead [of whether a sentence is true or false by

impersonal criteria] why we do believe certain statements of fact, or why we

believe certain classes of statements, such as those of science. [The antecedent

beliefs justifying these statements are the self-set standards of science.]71

Recall that for Polanyi logic did not mean only formal logic, but the whole range

of informal logic the rational mind uses, including especially tacit inference, the

power of the mind to make connections, to see the relationship of part to whole.

Polanyi’s entire personal-knowledge epistemology was a campaign against

reductionism. Laplacean ideas had been continued in the notion that DNA, its

physics and chemistry, will ultimately explain living organisms, but to Polanyi

DNA functions instead as a boundary condition that is irreducible to physics and

chemistry. He described the organizational hierarchy of living organisms not only

by analogy to the structure and function of a machine (to which Wigner objected)


but also by drawing on the concept of organizing fields, borrowed from biology. In

his 1969 paper, ‘‘The Structure of Consciousness,’’ he explained that:

Living beings consist in a hierarchy of levels, each level having its own struc-

tural and organismic principles. On the mental level, explicit inferences

represent the operations of fixed mental structures, while in tacit knowing we

meet the integrating powers of the mind. In all our conscious thoughts these two

modes mutually rely on each other, and it is plausible to assume that explicit

mental operations are based on fixed neural networks, while tacit integrations

are grounded mainly in organizing fields. I shall assume also that these two

principles are interwoven in the body, as their counterparts are in thought.72

For Polanyi the principles of this control are organizing fields, organizing princi-

ples as illustrated, according to C.H. Waddington (1905-1975), by the development

of the embryo as controlled by the gradient of potential shapes. Polanyi also called

the organizing principle the organismic principle. In his 1968 article, ‘‘Life’s Irre-

ducible Structure,’’73 he reiterated that the organismic process, as a level of

explanation for living organisms, is irreducible. The progression is upward from

inanimate object to life, with boundary conditions specifying the relationship

between levels, and with each higher level carrying a deeper level of significance.

He also used this organization as an explanation of what is now called the

‘‘objective’’ and ‘‘subjective’’ modes of seeing to highlight the mind-body problem,

and to explain direct and indirect knowledge, which is of great importance in

assessing knowledge resulting from scientific experiments.

I have said that the analytic descent from higher levels to their subsidiaries is

usually feasible to some degree, while the integration of items of a lower level

so as to predict their possible meaning in a higher context may be beyond the

range of our integrative powers. I may add now that the same things may be

seen to have a joint meaning when viewed from one point, but to be lacking this

connection when seen from another point [as seeing patterns on the ground

from an airplane, but not when on the ground].

The relation of mind to body has a similar structure. The mind-body problem

arises from the disparity between the experience of a person observing an

external object, e.g., a cat, and a neurophysiologist observing the bodily

mechanism by use of which the person sees the cat. The difference arises from

the fact that a person placed inside his body has a from-knowledge of the bodily

responses evoked by the light in his sensory organs, and this from-knowledge

integrates the joint meaning of these responses to form the sight of the cat

[from-knowledge or from-to knowledge is direct, functioning from the body to

what is in focal awareness]; whereas the neurophysiologist looking at these

responses from outside has but an at-knowledge of them, which, as such, is not

integrated to the sight of the cat. [From-at knowledge is indirect, looking at and

interpreting data from an instrument; a neurophysiologist does not perceive the


same thing as a cat does.] This is the same duality that exists between the

airman and the pedestrian in interpreting the same traces…. [Similarly, in

seeing the meaning when reading a sentence, the difference is between a person

familiar with a language and one who is not; the latter sees only the letters.]

Mind is the meaning of certain bodily mechanisms; it is lost from view when we

look at them focally.….

Owing to the existence of two kinds of awareness—the focal and the sub-

sidiary—we can distinguish sharply between the mind as a from-to experience

and the subsidiaries of this experience, when seen focally, as a bodily mecha-

nism.… [Though] rooted in the body, the mind is free in its actions—exactly as

our common sense knows it to be free.74

For Polanyi, epistemological inquiries meant questions of ‘‘how do we know, and

what do we rely on to know,’’ rather than ‘‘is this statement logically true or false in

a deductive process.’’ For him there is a continuum between psychology and

epistemology, and his redefinitions bridged whatever gaps there were in the

standard interpretations.

Explanatory Gaps

In his 1965 paper for the Unity of Knowledge conference, ‘‘Epistemology of

Quantum Mechanics – Its Appraisal and Demands,’’75 Wigner was understood to

say that there is a gap between psychology and the physical sciences. Psychologists

wanted to warn physicists that their findings may be influenced by subjective

considerations, and to affirm that psychology aims to explain the processes of the

mind by the laws of physics and chemistry. Wigner considered this aim to be

doomed. Physicists warned that ‘‘the laws of physics give only probability con-

nections between the outcomes of subsequent observations or contents of

consciousness.’’76 Wigner thought that quantum physics held more promise,

although it would be a ‘‘limiting case of something more general.’’ The mind and

body form a unit, and a dualistic conception is problematic.

The gaps between the natural sciences and psychology are these: the natural

sciences look for regularities in the behavior of bodies, providing explanations,

exploring circumstances and conditions; the descriptive sciences, including psy-

chology, look for the characteristics of these bodies—the older physical sciences,

for example, astronomy, discovered a large number of regularities and then

transformed themselves into other disciplines. Seeking regularities, making pro-

gressively more encompassing theories, is a way of dealing with the limitations of

the human mind to absorb particulars. The newer disciplines also made discoveries

and innovated (created new phenomena). For example, psychology had begun to

seek regularities such as theories of the subconscious, and Polanyi developed a

theory of tacit knowledge that could be examined before exploring the episte-

mology of physics.


Conclusions: Sorting Out the Wigner–Polanyi Dialog

In reviewing the ten-year substantive Wigner–Polanyi correspondence on tacit

knowing in regard to the measurement problem in quantum physics, we see the

following:

Wigner was seeking an explanation for the quantum-mechanical phenomenon

that the act of observation changes what is observed. His hunch was that the action

of the mind, taken on the quantum level, influences the observed quantum entity

in analogy to how light influences matter in the Compton effect, and that a

potential explanation of this phenomenon lay in a future hybrid physics-psychol-

ogy science. He thought that quantum theory was incomplete, that it would be

completed in the future by creating such a new science.

Polanyi (figure 7) thought that Wigner’s line of speculation was unfruitful. He

regarded Wigner’s explanation of the quantum-mechanical measurement problem,

and all other naturalized epistemological explanations, to be reductionist. For

Polanyi, there was no ontological difference between the ‘‘stuff’’ of classical

physics and the ‘‘stuff’’ of probabilistic quantum physics.

[The] laws of quantum mechanics coincide with those of mechanics for reasonably

heavy particles. However, to be precise, the classical predictions of positions and

velocities would have to be replaced by predictions of the probability distribution

of positions and velocities. [Footnote: [My] argument will reveal my dissent from

… [a] widely held opinion of great importance. In quantum mechanics any

attempt at specifying the position and velocity of an electron must be defined in

terms of the electron’s interaction with a definite measuring instrument. The result

will depend on the instrument chosen and will again be a statement of probabil-

ity.… [The] outcome of the observation does not depend here on the participation

of the observer, but on the action of a measuring instrument, the result being the

same for any observer. This contradicts on the one hand the view that the relation

Fig. 7. Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) ca. 1965. Credit: Published by permission of John C.

Polanyi.


between the macroscopic and microscopic descriptions of an atomistic system is

an instance of complementarity; and it shows also on the other hand that (contrary

to a widespread opinion) the indeterminacy principle of quantum mechanics

establishes no effect of the observer on the observed object. The supposed effect

vanishes if we include the ‘‘measuring instrument’’ in the ‘‘observed object.’’ The

latter becomes then ‘‘the observed phenomenon’’ in the sense now accepted by

Bohr’s school of interpretation.]77

In essence, Polanyi was saying that Wigner’s problem is one of interpretation, that

his formulation of the question leads to an unfruitful direction for an answer, that

is, to a physical, causal link as an explanation of the quantum-mechanical mea-

surement problem.

Wigner’s and Polanyi’s Epistemologies

Wigner expressed his epistemology in the measurement problem as knowing a

quantum entity only when it is effected by the knower: That unobserved entities

can be predicted but not ‘‘known’’ has a Kantian echo of ding an sich.

Polanyi did not object to this Kantian flavor, nor did he object to Wigner’s

attempt to apply his notion of tacit knowing to the observation process. He

objected to Wigner’s transfiguring tacit knowing into what he considered to still be

a physical process, a reduction. To Polanyi, the tacit is a vector—in epistemology it

takes the form of integration, in ontology it takes the form of emergence.78

To Polanyi, the mind-body connection was not a question of finding a causal

explanation, but a question of ‘‘achievement,’’ an emergence or innovation, a

teleologically indicated vector. His notion of tacit is one that is ‘‘pulled by the

goal’’ of the vector, not ‘‘pushed’’ by causes. If a causal explanation requires

definitions and entities to be specified, Polanyi’s ontology cannot accommodate it.

What he calls comprehensive entities of the higher levels, although they rely on

hierarchical physical levels in the hierarchy, are unspecifiable: The more complex

an entity, the more unspecifiable it is—our knowledge of it is unspecifiable by its

elements.

Wigner’s and Polanyi’s Ontologies

Both Wigner and Polanyi constructed their ontologies in parallel with their

epistemologies, and since their epistemologies thus are templates for their

ontologies, they play out as follows: For Wigner, there are two kinds of reality:

thoughts, and everything else. For Polanyi, the higher levels in the hierarchy of

emergence are more real than the lower levels (thoughts are more real than

physical objects). They thus share the primacy of thought in their ontologies and

admit the importance of nonexplicit or tacit thought in their epistemologies of

science. On this basis Wigner could claim a ‘‘Polanyian’’ epistemology.


Wigner, however, was frustrated with Polanyi’s analogical descriptions of the

mind-body connection and found them vague. Wigner (figure 8) took Polanyi’s

analogy of the machine describing levels of emergence to be inapplicable to living

organisms, and he found Polanyi’s analogy of the synthesis of incompatible

elements as providing a possibility for emergence of the mind and higher

conceptual levels in innovation, as Polanyi described it in the context of art and

eastern religions, to be puzzling, mystifying, and nonexplanatory. Thus, their

decade-long dialog about tacit knowing and the measurement problem was

inconclusive. Wigner was not convinced that Polanyi had found a satisfactory

explanation for the mind-body connection, and Polanyi was not convinced, as

Wigner would have it, that quantum physics has a different ontology than classical

physics, and therefore that tacit knowing could be incorporated into it. Their

dialog ended as Polanyi aged and his responses to Wigner grew less fresh and

focused.

In a sense, both Wigner and Polanyi were seeking a bridge between

Geisteswissenschaften and Naturwissenschaften to answer the mind-body problem.

Geisteswissenschaften, in its traditional meaning, would provide at least some of

the three integrated elements they were seeking: reason (soft sciences), ‘‘feeling

as’’ (art), and ‘‘feeling that’’ (religion), which could be examined experimentally.

For Polanyi, science and art exemplified ‘‘vision,’’ as in insight or Kant’s ‘‘mother-

wit,’’ and religion exemplified ‘‘awe.’’ His extensive explorations focused on the

phenomenon of insight, and he made less successful forays into ‘‘awe.’’ Wigner did

not use art as an analogical resource, but on occasion he treated Geist as ‘‘soul,’’79

as an alternative to finding a quantum-mechanical explanation for the mind-body

problem.

Fig. 8. Eugene Wigner (1902–1995). Credit: American Institute of Physics Emilio Segre Visual

Archives, Physics Today Collection.


Acknowledgments

I thank Princeton University Library and Springer Verlag for permission to

publish excerpts of the letters from the Wigner Papers, and the University of

Chicago Library and Professor John Polanyi for permission to publish excerpts of

the letters from the Polanyi Papers. I also thank Professor Polanyi and The

Polanyi Society for providing photographs, and Professor Polanyi for permitting

me to use them. Thanks are due the following colleagues in the philosophy and

history of science for reading an earlier version of this paper: Abner Shimony

(Boston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science), Sylvan S.

Schweber (Harvard University and Brandeis University), Viktor Binzberger

(Budapest University of Technology and Economics), and to Roger H. Stuewer

for his editorial work on it.

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Springer-Verlag, 1997), pp. 43-48. M. Polanyi and E. Wigner, ‘‘Uber die Interferenz von Ei-

genschwingungen als Ursache von Energieschwankungen und chemischer Umsetzungen,’’

Zeitschrift fur Physikalische Chemie, Abteiling A, 139 Haber Band (1928), 439-452; reprinted in

ibid., pp. 49-62.2 Eugene P. Wigner, ‘‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences’’

[1959]; reprinted in Symmetries and Reflections: Scientific Essays of Eugene P. Wigner (Bloom-

ington and London: Indiana University Press, 1967), pp. 222-237, and in The Collected Works of

Eugene Paul Wigner. Part B. Historical, Philosophical, and Socio-Political Papers. Vol. VI.

Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses, ed. Jagdish Mehra (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-

Verlag, 1995), pp. 534-549.3 Ibid., p. 237; 549.4 Ibid., p. 227; 539.5 Fritz Rohrlich, ‘‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Physical Intuition: Success While Ignoring

Objections,’’ Foundations of Physics 26 (1996), 1617-1626, on 1625.6 John von Neumann, ‘‘The General and Logical Theory of Automata,’’ in Lloyd A. Jeffress, ed.,

Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior: The Hixon Symposium (New York: John Wiley & Sons and

London: Chapman & Hall, 1951), pp. 1-31, ‘‘Discussion,’’ pp. 32-41.7 Eugene P. Wigner, ‘‘The Probability of the Existence of a Self-Reproducing Unit,’’ in Logic of

Personal Knowledge: Essays Presented to Michael Polanyi on his Seventieth Birthday 11th March

1961 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), pp. 231-238, on p. 236; reprinted in Wigner,

Symmetries and Reflections (ref. 2), pp. 200-208, on p. 207; and in The Collected Works of Eugene

Paul Wigner. Part A. The Scientific Papers, ed. Arthur Wightman. Vol. III. Part II. Foundations of

Quantum Mechanics, annotated by Abner Shimony (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag,

1997), pp. 423-430, on p. 428.8 Ibid., pp. 231-236; 203-206; 425-428.9 Polanyi to Wigner, April 3, 1961, Eugene P. Wigner Papers, Special Collections, Princeton

University Library (hereafter Wigner Papers), Box 66, Folder 1.


10 Wigner to Polanyi, April 11, 1961, Wigner Papers, Box 66 Folder 1.11 Eugene P. Wigner, ‘‘Two Kinds of Reality’’ [Presented at Conference at Marquette University,

Summer 1961], The Monist 48 (1964), 248-264; reprinted in Wigner, Symmetries and Reflections

(ref. 2), pp. 185-199, and in Collected Works. Part B. Vol. VI. (ref. 2), pp. 33-47.12 Jacques Hadamard, An Essay on The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945); reprinted (New York: Dover Publications, 1954),

Chapters II-III, pp. 21-42.13 Wigner, ‘‘Two Kinds of Reality’’ [1961] (ref. 11), pp. 251, 253, 254, 255-257; 189, 191, 192,

193-195; 37, 39, 40, 41-43. In the two reprinted versions, Wigner footnotes an important mono-

graph by F. London and E. Bauer, La Theorie de l’Observation en Mecanique Ouantique (Paris:

Hermann & Cie, 1939), saying that ‘‘the measurement is not completed until its results enter our

consciousness.’’ (p. 187; 33) I thank Abner Shimony for bringing this reference to my attention.14 Wigner, ‘‘Two Kinds of Reality’’ [1961] (ref. 11), p. 255; 193; 41.15 Wigner to Polanyi, October 6, 1961, Wigner Papers, Box 66, Folder 1.16 Michael Polanyi, ‘‘Clues to an Understanding of Mind and Body,’’ in Irving John Good, ed., The

Scientist Speculates: An Anthology of Partly-Baked Ideas (New York: Basic Books, 1962), pp. 71-

78.17 Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press, 1958; Second impression (with corrections), 1962), Chapter 13,

pp. 381-405, on p. 401.18 Polanyi, ‘‘Clues’’ (ref. 16), p. 75.19 Ibid., p. 77.20 Stefania Ruzsits Jha, Reconsidering Michael Polanyi’s Philosophy (Pittsburgh: University of

Pittsburgh Press, 2002), Chapter 9, pp. 224-243, on p. 225.21 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (ref. 17), pp. 393-394.22 Michael Polanyi, ‘‘Tacit Knowing: Its Bearing on Some Problems of Philosophy,’’ Reviews of

Modern Physics 34 (1962), 601-616; abbreviated version reprinted in Knowing and Being Essays

by Michael Polanyi, ed. Marjorie Grene (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul and Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 159-180.23 Ibid., p. 606; 160. In one of his notes on perception Polanyi says on indwelling, ‘‘invade, move in,

occupy, come to reside. Indwelling—moving into residence,’’ in other words, indwelling is active.

Polanyi Papers, Special Collections, Univeresity of Chicago Library (hereafter Polanyi Papers),

August 29, 1960, Box 22, folder 3, p. 3.24 Polanyi, ‘‘Tacit Knowing’’ (ref. 22), p. 606; 161.25 Ibid., p. 610; 167.26 Ibid., pp. 611; 169-170.27 Ibid., p. 613; 173.28 Wigner to Polanyi, December 17, 1962 (typed extract), Polanyi Papers, Box 6, Folder 2; no

complete copy of the original exists in the Wigner Papers.29 Polanyi, ‘‘Tacit Knowing’’ (ref. 22).30 Michael Polanyi, ‘‘Knowing and Being,’’ Mind 70 (1961), 458-470; reprinted in Knowing and

Being (ref. 22), pp. 123-137.31 Polanyi, ‘‘Clues’’ (ref. 16) pp. 71-78; Eugene P. Wigner, ‘‘Remarks on the Mind-Body Question,’’

in Good (ref. 16), pp. 284-301; reprinted in Symmetries and Reflections (ref. 2), pp. 171-184, and in

Collected Works. Part B. Vol. VI (ref. 2), pp. 247-260.


32 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (ref. 17). Polanyi did not directly address the concept of ‘‘innate

ideas’’ in his book, but see versions of it and related topics on pp. 69-77, 187, 191, 220-221, 397.33 Wigner, ‘‘Remarks on the Mind-Body Question’’ (ref. 31).34 Wigner, ‘‘Two Kinds of Reality’’ [1961] (ref. 11).35 Eugene P. Wigner, ‘‘The Problem of Measurement,’’ American Journal of Physics 31 (1963),

6-15; reprinted in Symmetries and Reflections (ref. 2), pp. 153-170, and in Collected Works. Part B.

Vol. VI (ref. 2), pp. 163-180.36 Michael Polanyi, ‘‘My Time with X-rays and Crystals,’’ in P.P. Ewald, ed., Fifty Years of X-Ray

Diffraction (Utrecht: N.V.A. Oosthoek’s Uitgeversmaatschappij for the International Union of

Crystallography, 1962), pp. 629-636; reprinted in Knowing and Being (ref. 22), pp. 97-104.37 Michael Polanyi, ‘‘The Unaccountable Element in Science,’’ Philosophy: The Journal of the

Royal Institute of Philosophy 37 (1962), 1-14, reprinted in Knowing and Being (ref. 22), pp. 105-

120.38 Marjorie Grene, ed., The Anatomy of Knowledge: Papers Presented to the Study Group on

Foundations of Cultural Unity. Bowdoin College 1965 and 1966 (London: Routledge & Kegan

Paul, 1969).39 Michael Polanyi, ‘‘The Structure of Consciousness,’’ Brain: A Journal of Neurology 88 (1965),

799-810; reprinted in ibid., pp. 315-328, and in Knowing and Being (ref. 22), pp. 211-224. Eugene

Wigner, ‘‘Epistemology of Quantum Mechanics–Its Appraisal and Demands,’’ in Grene, Anatomy

of Knowledge (ref. 38), pp. 31-45; reprinted in Marjorie Grene, ed., Toward a Unity of Knowledge

[Psychological Issues 6, No. 2, Monograph 22] (New York: International Universities Press, 1969),

pp. 22-36, and in Collected Works. Part A. Vol. III. Part II (ref. 7), pp. 490-504. The name of the

Study Group on Foundations of Cultural Unity was changed to the Unity of Knowledge Group

after the conference, by which it is called in the Polanyi Papers.40 Wigner to Polanyi, February 19, 1965, Wigner Papers, Box 66, Folder 1. Wigner apparently did

not find Polanyi’s comments on the measurement problem in his book, Personal Knowledge (ref.

17), pp. 392-393. On the tacit vector as integrator in epistemology and as emergence in ontology,

see also Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul and Garden

City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966).41 Wigner to Polanyi, September 14, 1965, Wigner Papers, Box 66, Folder 1. For Polanyi’s

explanation, see his paper, ‘‘Structure of Consciousness’’ (ref. 39).42 E.P. Wigner, ‘‘A Physicist Looks at the Soul’’ [1968]; reprinted in The Collected Works of

Eugene Paul Wigner. Part B. Historical, Philosophical, and Socio-Political Papers. Vol. VII.

Historical and Biographical Reflections and Syntheses, ed. Jagdish Mehra (Berlin, Heidelberg,

New York: Springer-Verlag, 2001), pp. 41-43.43 Ibid., p. 43.44 Wigner to Polanyi, September 20, 1969, Polanyi Papers, Box 7, Folder 16.45 Michael Polanyi, The Study of Man: The Lindsay Memorial Lectures given at the University

College of North Staffordshire 1958 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul and Chicago: The Uni-

versity of Chicago Press, 1959).46 Wigner to Polanyi, February 4, 1971, Polanyi Papers, Box 9, Folder 7.47 Michael Polanyi, ‘‘Genius in Science,’’ Encounter 38 (January 1972), 43-50; reprinted in Robert

S. Cohen and Marx W. Wartofsky, ed., Methodological and Historical Essays in the Natural and

Social Sciences [Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. XIV] (Dordrecht and Boston:

D. Reidel, 1974), pp. 57-71, and in Michael Polanyi, Society, Economics & Philosophy: Selected

Papers, ed. R.T. Allen (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1997), pp. 267-281.


48 For an analysis, see Jha, Reconsidering (ref. 20), pp. 51-69, 123-148.49 E.P. Wigner, ‘‘Epistemology of Quantum Mechanics’’ (ref. 39).50 Paul Feyerabend, ‘‘On the Quantum Theory of Measurement [1957],’’ reprinted in Philo-

sophical Papers. Vol. 1. Realism, Rationalism and Scientific Method (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1981), pp. 207-218.51 Ibid., p. 216.52 Ibid., p. 213. Wigner disagreed: ‘‘[At present there is no clear evidence] that quantum mechanics

is valid only in the limiting case of microscopic systems, whereas the view here represented

assumes it to be valid for all inanimate objects’’; see his paper, ‘‘Remarks on the Mind-Body

Question’’ (ref. 31), p. 300, n. 11; 180, n. 11; 256, n. 11.53 Hilary Putnam, ‘‘Philosophy of Physics’’ [1965], in Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1. Mathematics,

Matter and Method (Cambridge, London, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press,

1975; Second Edition, 1979), pp. 79-92, on p. 81.54 Ibid., p. 80.55 London and Bauer, La Theorie de l’Observation (ref. 13).56 Putnam, ‘‘Philosophy of Physics’’ [1965] (ref. 53), p. 81.57 H. Margenau and E.P. Wigner, ‘‘Discussion: Comments on Professor Putnam’s Comments,’’

Philosophy of Science 29 (1962), 292-293; reprinted in Collected Works Part B. Vol. VI (ref. 2),

pp. 31-32. For Putnam’s reply, see his ‘‘Discussion: Comments on Comments on Comments: A

Reply to Margenau and Wigner,’’ Phil. of Sci. 31 (1964), 1-6; reprinted in Philosophical Papers.

Vol. 1 (ref. 53), pp. 159-165.58 Michael Polanyi, Meaning. A Project. Lectures and Seminars at the University of Chicago.

Lecture 3, ‘‘Visionary Art,’’ delivered May 27, 1969, Polanyi Papers, Box 39, Folder 10, first

variant, 23 pp. For the second variant, which includes corrections in handwriting, see the website

\http://www.polanyi.bme.hu/folyoirat/2006/2006_08_lecture3.pdf[, pp. 101-115.59 Wigner to Polanyi, February 4, 1971 (ref. 46).60 Polanyi, ‘‘Visionary Art,’’ (ref. 58), p. 23.61 Ibid., p. 3.62 Ibid., p. 7.63 Ibid., p. 9.64 Ibid., p. 20.65 Ibid., p. 15.66 Wigner to Polanyi, February 4, 1971 (ref. 46).67 Polanyi, ‘‘Unaccountable Element in Science’’ (ref. 37).68 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (ref. 17), p. 365.69 Ibid., pp. vii-viii.70 Ibid., pp. 90-91.71 Ibid., p. 25672 Polanyi, ‘‘Structure of Consciousness’’ (ref. 39), pp. 805-806; 323-324; 218-219.73 Michael Polanyi, ‘‘Life’s Irreducible Structure,’’ Science 160 (June 21, 1968), 1308-1312;

expanded version (from which I quote) reprinted in Knowing and Being (ref. 22), pp. 225-239.74 Ibid., p. 1312; pp. 237-238.75 Wigner, ‘‘Epistemology of Quantum Mechanics–Its Appraisal and Demands’’ (ref. 39).


http://www.polanyi.bme.hu/folyoirat/2006/2006_08_lecture3.pdf

76 Ibid., p. 24; 24; 492.77 Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (ref. 17), pp. 392-393.78 See especially Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (ref. 40).79 Wigner, ‘‘A Physicist Looks at the Soul’’ [1968] (ref. 42). Wigner shifted between using ‘‘con-

sciousness’’ and ‘‘soul’’ according to his audience and the occasion.

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