HOW ACTS OF DISCOVERY TRANSFORM OUR TACIT KNOWING POWERS IN BOTH SCIENTIFIC AND RELIGIOUS INQUIRY

Author: Milavec, Aaron

Source: Zygon, Volume 41, Number 2, June 2006 , pp. 465-486(22)

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Abstract:

In this essay I take Michael Polanyi's analysis of scientific discovery and extend it to encompass fresh encounters with the living God. Given the embodied character of all human knowing, Polanyi challenged objectivism and positivism as untenable. In its place, Polanyi noted that the tacit skills established when a physicist learns to detect radio waves has its counterpart in a Christian's being trained to find God. Once trained, stubborn organismic habits constrain both physicist and believer within a socially approved heuristic circle that can be broken only by the act of discovery. The puzzlement that erupts at the onset of an inquiry ultimately finds relief only in an expanded encounter with the realities that one has been trained to serve. Thus, the act of discovery not only serves to disrupt the tradition as it has been received but also reveals that the realities being served make themselves known in novel ways. The lifelong pursuit of God and the lifelong pursuit of novel manifestations of radio waves thus share a common epistemological and phenomenological underpinning.

Keywords: Augustine; Copernicus; development of dogma; discovery; embodied knowing; empiricism; epistemology; history of science; ontology; philosophy of science; Michael Polanyi; revelation; science and religion; tacit knowing; tacit knowledge; theory; verification

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2005.00750.x

Affiliations: 1: ( ) is adjunct professor at Union Theological Seminary, 4501 Denlinger Road, Trotwood, OH 45426;, Email: Milavec@cinci.rr.com., URL: http://www.didache.info

Publication date: 2006-06-01