Download Polanyi and Taylor on How the Modern Social Imaginary Might Best

Charles Taylor’s Modern Social Imaginaries in light of
Michael Polanyi’s Tacit Dimension
Richard L. Haney
Introduction
In a 2014 interview, New Testament scholar N. T. Wright described his challenge of
helping students learn, pay attention to and even dwell in the Jewish background of the
New Testament.1 Wright referred to C. S. Lewis’ A Preface to Paradise Lost and The
Discarded Image as representing similar attempts to explain a cultural background that
informs a proper reading of texts belonging originally to a time long ago.
The first qualification for judging any piece of workmanship from a corkscrew to a cathedral is to
know what it is--what it is intended to do and how it is meant to be used. After that has been discovered,
the temperance reformer may decide that the corkscrew was made for a bad purpose, and the communist
may think the same about the cathedral. But such questions come later. The first thing is to understand the
object before you: as long as you think the corkscrew was meant for opening tins or the cathedral for
entertaining tourists you can say nothing to the purpose about them. The first thing the reader needs to
know about Paradise Lost is what Milton meant it to be. The need is especially urgent in the present age
because the kind of poem Milton meant to write is unfamiliar to many readers. 2
Lewis argues that Milton saw elements of his society as tightly bound together and
comprising a coherent whole, whereas a modern reader may see these elements as
disparate and unconnected. Both the medieval world and modern society may be
conceived as a patterned picture or a Gestalt composed of many subsidiary strands. Yet
because these pieces or elements are subsidiary, they lie in the background and are often
unnoticed and ignored. What C. S. Lewis did for his students, Charles Taylor seeks to do
for his readers today. He sketches a picture of the “modern moral order” under his
creatively titled category, a “modern social imaginary.”
In this essay, I explore Charles Taylor’s use of that conceptual category as he charts how
Western society moved from Latin Christendom to a version of modern secularity. I am
more interested in reflecting on the category or the term, “modern social imaginary,” than
in exploring the particular contours of the modern social imaginary that Taylor puts
forward. I will briefly describe those contours, however, to reflect on what constitutes
such a conceptualization.
Taylor wrote Modern Social Imaginaries (MSI) in 2004.3 A briefer but updated version
of this publication appears as chapter four in his larger work, A Secular Age (2007),
which is an expanded version of Taylor’s Gifford lectures given in 1999. In A Secular
Age (ASA), Taylor offers a narrative to explain “why it was virtually impossible not to
1
2
3
See Mars Hill Audio Journal, 122, 2014 at www.marshillaudio.org.
C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942).
Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).
1
believe in God in, say 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000, many of us find this
not only easy, but even inescapable” (2007:25).4 Taylor identifies three understandings of
secularity. One understanding is the loss of reference to the transcendent in public spaces.
A second secularity is the falling off of religious belief and practice. Secularity in a third
sense recognizes the changing conditions of belief where belief in and reference to the
transcendent is merely one option among many.
Taylor asserts that this third sense of secularity is the one that best makes sense of the
modern conditions he observes. The fact that belief is an option (for believers as well as
non-believers) and sometimes an embattled option is what primarily characterizes this
secular age in modern North Atlantic or Western society (2007:3). Therefore Taylor
asserts, “secularity in this sense is a matter of a whole context of understanding in which
our moral, spiritual or religious experience and search takes place.” Taylor describes
‘context of understanding’ as a combination of explicit formulations and implicit or
background matters--a “pre-ontology” in the Heideggerian sense (2007:3). Taylor refers
to the context or framework as the realm of the “taken-for-granted” that usually remains
tacit, unformulated and at times unacknowledged. He invokes Wittgenstein, Heidegger
and Polanyi as philosophers who have described the arena of the taken-for-granted or
“the background.”5 Taylor’s references to the notion of background recalls the treatment
of this term in John Searle’s writings.6 In another work, Philosophical Arguments (1995),
Taylor says more about the background and links it to Polanyi’s ideas about the tacit
dimension.7
Now this is the sense in which I want to use the term ‘background.’ It is that of which I am not
simply aware, as I am unaware of what is now happening on the other side of the moon, because it
makes intelligible what I am incontestably aware of; at the same time, I am not explicitly or
focally aware of it, because that status is already occupied by what is making it intelligible.
Another way of stating the first condition, that I am not simply unaware of it, is to say that the
background is what I am capable of articulating, that is, what I can bring out of the condition of
implicit, unsaid, contextual facilitator—what I can make articulate, in other words. In this activity
of articulating, I trade on my familiarity with this background. What I bring out to articulacy is
what I ‘always knew,’ as we might say, or what I had a ‘sense’ of, even if I didn’t ‘know’ it. We
are at a loss exactly what to say here, where we are trying to do justice to our not having been
simply unaware. (1995:68ff.)
Taylor sees a shift in background or a disruption of the earlier background that he calls
the coming of a secular age in his third sense. He poses this question: “How did we move
from a condition where, in Christendom, people lived naively within a theistic construal,
to one in which we all shunt between two stances, in which everyone’s construal shows
up as such; and in which moreover, unbelief has become for many the major default
option?” (2007:14).
4
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007).
2007:794, n. 12.
6
John Searle discusses “the background” in his work, The Construction of Social Reality, 1995 and in
Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, 1983.
7
Charles Taylor, Philosophical Argument. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.)
5
2
These overlapping ideas of background, pre-ontology, context of understanding and
“taken-for-granted” inform Charles Taylor’s category of a social imaginary. Taylor
asserts, “the social imaginary is that common understanding that makes possible common
practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy” (2004:23).
Categories
In chapter two of Modern Social Imaginaries (2004:23ff), Taylor defines “social
imaginary” as “the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with
others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are
normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these
expectations” (2004:23). Taylor credits Benedict Anderson’s pioneering work on
nationalism and Jürgen Habermas’ ideas about the public sphere as key influences on his
work.8 He links the modern social imaginary to the idea of moral order presented in the
natural law theories of Grotius and Locke as the theoretical foundation for this
conceptualization. This is because these theories contain new conceptions of rights,
equality and political legitimacy that influence political thought and institutions through
transforming social practices.
A social imaginary is (i) a way ordinary people imagine their social surroundings; it is
not a social theory because it is carried in images, stories and legends rather than
theoretical formulations. At any point in time, a social imaginary is (ii) complex
involving both how things are and how things ought to be. It is shared by large groups of
people, if not the whole society. A social imaginary refers to (iii) a culture’s wide-angle
and deep background of understanding that makes possible common practices,
unarticulated understandings and relevant sense-giving features (2004:23-29, 2007:1712).
Taylor claims that the background and the practices are mutually influential. “If the
understanding makes the practice possible, it is also true that it is the practice that largely
carries the understanding” (2004:25). People in a given society learn conventions about
knowing when to speak and to whom, with whom they associate and all manner of
customs and conventions. Their implicit grasp of social space and social relations
operates like a map one might use to navigate space and boundaries. Taylor points out
that for most of human history, we have functioned by grasping a common repertory or
embodying a social imaginary well before anyone got into the business of theorizing
about themselves (2004:26).
The notion of social imaginaries is comparable to other categorical terms used to describe
social or cultural reality in terms of pre-theoretical articulations. It is useful to consider
8
Cf. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
(New York: Verso, 2nd ed., 2006). See also Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere, trans by Thomas Berger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).
3
them as “cousins” in the family of categories that articulate efforts to describe social or
cultural reality. Other such categories include Peter Berger’s “plausibility structures,” the
notion of worldviews (Weltanschauung), Thomas Kuhn’s paradigms, conceptual
metaphors and Michael Polanyi’s frameworks of meaning.
(1) Peter Berger writes of “plausibility structures” in considering how the sacred is
expressed in a religiously legitimated world (Berger 1967:48).9 Berger claims that the
world-building activity of man (humankind) is always a collective enterprise and hence, a
social reality. Furthermore, “a socially constructed world is, above all, an ordering
experience. A meaningful order, or nomos, is imposed upon the discrete experiences and
meanings of individuals” (Berger 1967:19). An individual dwells in a nomos by takingfor-granted a range of meanings and practices
Socialization achieves success to the degree that this taken-for-granted quality is internalized. It is
not enough that the individual look upon the key meanings of the social order as useful, desirable
or right. It is much better (better, that is, in terms of social stability) if he looks upon them as
inevitable, as part and parcel of the universal ‘nature of things.’ (Berger 1967:24)
Berger argues that religion depends upon the presence of social structures within which a
religious reality is taken for granted and within which successive generations of
individuals are socialized in such a way that this world will be real to them. Such social
structures constitute a plausibility structure that legitimates religious belief and practice
in a given society (1969:46-7).10 Writing in the late 1960’s, Berger envisaged that
secularization and pluralism would change society and delegitimize religious expression.
A changing plausibility structure was forcing a crisis in theology. Berger has since
modified his stance on the inevitability of secularization’s march to success. His notion of
plausibility structures, however, underscores a sociologist’s attempt to articulate what
shapes social reality in a pre-theoretical or background sense.11
(2) David Naugle, a professor of philosophy at Dallas Baptist University, has attempted
to chart the history of another conceptualization, namely, “worldview” or
Weltanschaaung.12 Naugle also seeks to reflect on the term theologically and
philosophically and readily admits his own introduction to the notion comes from
American evangelical Christian thinkers.13 He suggests that a worldview is best
understood as a semiotic phenomenon, especially as a system of narrative signs that
9
Peter L. Berger, a sociologist of religion, wrote several books exploring religion and modern society and
testing the notion of plausibility or legitimation. See Peter L. Berger, The Social Reality of Religion
(London: Faber and Faber, 1967). This volume was published in the U.S.A. under the title The Sacred
Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Doubleday, 1967).
10
Peter L. Berger, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969).
11
See also the discussion of plausibility or legitimation in Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The
Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (1966).
12
David K. Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2002).
13
Naugle lists Carl Henry, James Sire, Richard Middleton, Arthur Holmes, Francis Schaeffer and others as
evangelicals interested in worldview (xv). He also singles out James Orr (6ff.) and Abraham Kuyper (16ff.)
as key thinkers among Protestants. He refers to John Paul II as a “worldviewish” pope (33) and identifies
Alexander Schmemann as a key Orthodox thinker who champions a sacramental worldview” (46ff.).
4
shapes a variety of life-determining practices (2002:330). As such, a worldview
establishes a framework within which people think (reason), interpret (hermeneutics), and
know (epistemology).
Naugle’s study sees the English term “worldview” as derivative of the German term and
concept, Weltanschaaung. In the dynamic “century of Goethe,” says Hans-Georg
Gadamer, a variety of “key concepts and words which we still use acquired their special
stamp,” Weltanschaaung included. Immanuael Kant is credited with coining the term in
his work Critique of Judgment, published in 1790. The word derives from Welt for
“world”, and Anschaaung, for “perception.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines
“worldview as “a particular philosophy or view of life; a concept of the world held by an
individual or a group” (2002:58-66).14
Naugle acknowledges that worldviews are epistemic constructs and necessarily reflect
perspectives and ideologies. As Taylor has shown in his study of secularity, the modern
period evinces a post-Enlightenment series of shifts in describing attempts to comprehend
the universe. The center of gravity has shifted from God to humankind, from Scripture to
science, and from revelation to reason in human knowing. In the postmodern period,
another shift can be detected. The turn to language reflects many views but no metanarratives. This shift is characterized by “an incommensurable plurality of ways of
speech” (2004:173-4).
(3) In the world of the natural sciences, a “comprehensive, metaphysical, and
methodological scientific worldview is sometimes called a paradigm” (Naugle 2002:198).
Thomas Kuhn usually is credited with the idea of describing scientific revolutions as
paradigm shifts.15 According to Kuhn, paradigms play a decisive role in the practice of
science. They determine the relevance of data, the content of observations, the
significance of problems and the acceptance of solutions. They offer a comprehensive
perspective on how scientific work may be conducted.
Kuhn posited that paradigms are incommensurable and that paradigm shifts occur when
one paradigm breaks down and yields its place to a better or more comprehensive
explanation of the data and experience. The notion of incommensurability prompts a
question. Are all worldviews, paradigms and plausibility structures culture-bound and
thus incommensurable and untranslatable? Or is there sufficient common ground to
communicate between worldviews and paradigms? Success in linguistic translation
extends to novels, sacred writings and poetry and suggests that humans can overcome the
challenge of incommensurability.
14
Naugle cites Gadamer’s quotation from Truth and Method (1993, second revised edition) and offers his
philological facts from the OED (1989).
15
Astute students of Polanyi’s life and thought know that Kuhn actually credited Polanyi with helping him
to articulate his notion of paradigms. See Thomas Kuhn, Scientific Change, ed. A. Crombie (New York:
Basic Books, 1963), p.392. See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1962).
5
(4) Sociologists and anthropologist study these ways of categorizing as do philosophers
and linguists. George Lakoff (linguist) and Mark Johnson (philosopher) have studied
concepts in western thought and have settled on “metaphor” as an organizing term and
concept. They believe modern conceptual systems are “fundamentally metaphorical in
nature” (1980:3).16
The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our
everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive,
how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus
plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting that our
conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what
we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor. (1980:3)
But our conceptual system is not something we are normally aware of. In most of the little things
we do every day, we simply think and act more or less automatically along certain lines. Just what
these lines are is by no means obvious. One way to find out is by looking at language. Since
communication is based on the same conceptual system that we use in thinking and acting,
language is an important source of evidence for what the system is like. (1980:3)
Polanyi’s brief reflection on metaphor asserts the heuristic power of metaphor for
exploring meaning. Polanyi devotes a chapter to the subject in his final book, Meaning
(1975).17 “Words… function as indicators, pointing in a subsidiary way to that focal
integration upon which they bear” (1975:70). In the chapter on metaphor, Polanyi
intriguingly links integration (a term he uses regarding a knower bringing clues together
in perception), tacit knowing, and metaphor. He introduces a distinction between two
types of semantic meanings: indication and symbolisation. The former has to do with
self-centered integrations whereas symbolisations are self-giving integrations. It is the
location of intrinsic interest, subsidiary or focal, that supplies the distinction.18 Polanyi
then describes a metaphor as a comparison where both the subsidiary and focal have
intrinsic interest. One can analyze a metaphorical integration, although Polanyi warns,
“To reduce a metaphor or poem to its disconnected subsidiaries is to extinguish the vision
which linked them to their integrated meaning in a metaphor or a poem” (1975:82).
(5) Other efforts to articulate categorical schemes might point to Alasdair MacIntyre’s
work describing communities of tradition and their accompanying narratives. MacIntyre
is keen to insist that philosophers must account for their contexts and social settings and
not simply converse with one another. "Morality which is no particular society's morality
16
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1980). See also Lakoff and Johnson, More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1989).
17
Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch, Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975).
18
A self-centered integration is made from the self as a center, including all the subsidiary clues to which
one attends, to the object of our focal attention. Examples might include a person integrating sensory clues
to make a perception or someone using a name to designate an object. A self-giving integration or a
symbolization finds the subsidiary clues to be of intrinsic interest and they suggest meanings that carry one
away by the meanings. For example one finds meaning in the symbol of a nation’s flag or a tombstone. ‘It
is only by virtue of our surrender to it that this piece of cloth becomes a flag and therefore becomes a
symbol of our country’ (1975:71-3).
6
is to be found nowhere" (2007:265-6).19 Other thinkers who have reflected on categories
for conceptualizing social reality include Donald Davidson (‘Conceptual Schemes’) and
Ludwig Wittgenstein (Weltbild or framework, framework facts).20
If we regard Taylor’s modern social imaginary as a conceptual metaphor offered to
describe and account for a Western version of modernity, we can assert its heuristic
power to explore meaning in our “modern moral order.” Is a social imaginary a more
comprehensive metaphorical construct than these other conceptualizations? I believe
Taylor would affirm that a social imaginary is a broader construal than the other
categories I have identified. Taylor hints at the wide-angle nature of the “social imaginary”
conceptual category with phrases like “the breadth and depth of this implicit
understanding” (2004:26) and “the background that makes sense of any given act is thus
wide and deep” (28).
Insights from Michael Polanyi
Reading Taylor’s MSI in light of Michael Polanyi’s thought leads this writer immediately
to think of Polanyi’s tacit dimension as a way to understand Taylor’s references to
background and context of understanding. Undoubtedly, there are other Polanyian ideas
that can be brought to bear on the notion of a social imaginary. Polanyi refers to
frameworks on a number of occasions in Personal Knowledge (PK 1958). Polanyi’s ideas
about Gestalt patterns and “indwelling” also yield insights bearing on the notion of social
imaginaries. Because these latter themes figure prominently in Polanyi’s theory of tacit
knowing, I shall consider them together under the same heading.
Frameworks
In chapter six of Personal Knowledge (PK), Polanyi discusses the role of the scientist
and refers to a general framework in which the heuristic explorer pursues scientific
work.21 He writes of the premises of science, intellectual passions, and the fiduciary
formulation of science (161-71). He declares, “a valid articulate framework may be a
theory, or a mathematical discovery or a symphony. Whichever it is, it will be used by
dwelling in it, and this indwelling can be consciously experienced” (195).
In chapter seven of PK, Polanyi writes about a society’s community, companionship,
fellowship and participation under the banner of “conviviality” (212). He describes the
organization of a society as a “framework of cultural and ritual fellowship” that reflects
four coefficients or four aspects of society that always must be seen in conjunction with
19
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 2007, 3rd ed.).
20
Naugle lists Wittgenstein and Davidson as 20th century philosophers writing about worldview ideas
(2002:150-71). He also discusses the postmodern perspectives of Jacques Derrida and Michael Foucault.
Foucault offers the conceptual term, episteme (174-85).
21
Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1958).
7
each other (212). The four coefficients are: (1) the sharing of convictions; (2) the sharing
of a fellowship; (3) cooperating and (4) the exercise of authority and coercion.
These four aspects compare and even overlap in some ways with Taylor’s "three
important forms of social self-understanding crucial to modernity ... the economy, the
public sphere, and the practices and outlooks of democratic self-rule" (2004:69). Polanyi
describes “cooperation for material advantage” as the “predominant feature of society as
an economic system” (1958:212). Writing in the post-WWII era, Polanyi was concerned
about freedom in light of Nazi and Communist tyrannies. Taylor writes in the 21st century
when western societies take for granted certain freedoms (rights) and assume a link
between freedom and individual autonomy. Taylor’s secularity thesis identifies processes
that have involved a "great disembedding" of individuals from the cosmic, social, and
religious contexts that previously had been constitutive of their identities (2007:146ff.).
The western individualism that he describes in contemporary terms exceeds anything
Polanyi saw or envisioned in the mid twentieth century.
Polanyi’s most important use of the term framework is, arguably, his idea of a fiduciary
framework or a fiduciary program. Polanyi insisted that all knowing begins with faith or
belief. He asserts, “Tacit assent and intellectual passions, the sharing of an idiom and of a
cultural heritage, affiliation to a like-minded community: such are the impulses which
shape our vision of the nature of things on which we rely for our mastery of things. No
intelligence, however critical or original, can operate outside such a fiduciary framework”
(1958:266).
Framework is a term in Polanyi’s lexicon that today’s computer-literate generations
might call an “operating system.” Scientists have operating systems for discovery, testing
hypotheses and articulating theories. Cultures and societies have operating systems that
resemble social imaginaries. Polanyi believed major discoveries could change
interpretive frameworks a la paradigm shifts (1958:143). Polanyi’s insistence on the
fiduciary nature of human knowing calls people to examine their beliefs and assumptions.
Polanyi reminds us that we live out our commitments as we act on our beliefs and
assumptions.
The Tacit Dimension
Polanyi, the chemistry scholar, was intrigued about the processes of learning and
knowing that scientists used in their quest to discover new insights about physical reality.
He suggested that scientific discovery required the scientist to follow the two steps of
intuition and imagination. “The first step in the discovery process is the deliberate act of
the imagination questing for the hidden reality suggested by the intuition’s subsidiary
awareness. The second step is in the spontaneous effort of the creative intuition groping
toward integration” (1966a:89).22
Polanyi has taught us that the knowing subject utilizes these three dimensions of
knowing: (1) subsidiary reliance upon clues; (2) ability to pay attention to a subject, a
22
Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1966).
8
problem, or a focal target; and (3) integrative powers as a person. ‘Knowing is the
responsible human struggle to rely on clues to focus on a coherent pattern and submit to
its reality’ according to Polanyi scholar Esther Meek (2003:13).23
In his pursuit of the dynamics of the creative imagination, Polanyi discerned a clue in the
world of Gestalt psychology. Merleau-Ponty already had argued for the primacy of
perception. Gestalt theory holds that human knowledge is the integration of certain
smaller pieces of perception to form a larger whole. The seeing of bits and pieces became
a key influence for Polanyi in noticing that the human proclivity of ‘seeing patterns’ is
part of the structure of knowing (1958:vii, 57-9). Particulars may be considered by
paying focal attention to them or particulars may be considered subsidiarily by focusing
upon the comprehensive whole or pattern that contains them. Consequently, two kinds of
meaning can be established: what the particulars mean in themselves and what they mean
jointly comprehended as a focal whole. Furthermore, attention may be shifted from
particulars to the whole and back again, in a seesaw of analysis and integration.
We may say that when we comprehend a particular set of items as parts of a whole, the focus of
our attention is shifted from the hitherto uncomprehended particulars to the understanding of their
joint meaning. This shift of attention does not make us lose sight of the particulars, since one can
see a whole only by seeing its parts, but it changes altogether the manner in which we are aware of
the particulars. We become aware of them in terms of the whole on which we have fixed our
attention. I shall speak correspondingly of a subsidiary knowledge of such items as distinct from a
focal knowledge of the same items. (1966:29-30)
Polanyi used the term ‘indwelling’ and a related word, ‘interiorization’, to emphasize the
human capacity to look from subsidiaries at a focal subject. Polanyi’s references to the
use of language in speech or to employing a probe or stick are all examples of indwelling.
He stated that it ‘is not by looking at things, but by dwelling in them, that we understand
their joint meaning’ (Polanyi 1966:18). Polanyi went on to explain, however, that to the
extent knowing is an indwelling, it can be ‘the utilization of a framework for unfolding
our understanding in accordance with the indications and standards imposed by the
framework’ (Polanyi 1969:134).24 For example, the idea of indwelling a framework or a
category describes how a Bible translator moves from understanding the source to
communicating with the receptor in an act of gospel translation.
Imagination and Indeterminate Reality
Polanyi was a critical realist. Like most natural scientists, he believed the world
represented a physical reality to be discovered, tested and understood, at least, in part. He
also embraced a vision of reality “beyond the impression of our senses” that leads to an
ever deeper understanding of reality (1958:5-6). He claimed the scientist, like an explorer,
23
Esther Meek, Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People (Grand Rapids:
Brazos, 2003).
24
Michael Polanyi, “Knowing and Being,” in Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi, ed.
Marjorie Grene (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969).
9
makes contact with a reality of which he or she believes that it will yet manifest itself in
unexpected ways (1958:117).
“My assertion that science can have discipline and originality only if it believes that the facts and
values of science bear on a still unrevealed reality, stands in opposition to the current philosophic
conception of scientific knowledge” (1966:70).25
Writing about fellow scientists as “a society of explorers”, Polanyi believed that scientists
and their institutions rely on “the supposition that a field of potential systematic progress
exists, ready to be revealed by the independent initiative of individual scientists”
(1966:71). This makes sense in light of Polanyi’s theory of tacit knowing. If we perceive
the world or our society as a coherent whole comprised of tacit particulars, we may admit
that some particulars have escaped our notice. When we comprehend yet another
subsidiary element, the whole pattern may shift. A new focal pattern may impress itself
upon our senses. We know more than we can tell, Polanyi reminds us, but we also will
know more tomorrow after new apprehensions and new integrations.
Conclusion
How do Michael Polanyi’s philosophical reflections about science, social frameworks
and his theory of knowing inform an encounter with Taylor’s “modern social
imaginary”? Polanyi’s ideas suggest areas of convergence yet they also furnish materials
for questioning this conceptual category. Polanyi’s notion of the tacit dimension readily
informs the conceptualization of the social imaginary that reflects background ideas and
taken-for-granted sensibilities. I find Polanyi’s understanding of subsidiary elements
jointly integrated into a coherent whole to be a helpful way of picturing a social
imaginary.
Suppose a society in the modern world is seen as a Gestalt or patterned picture of a moral
order. Taylor describes his imaginary or Gestalt as a “modern moral order” with three
primary loci of social self-understanding: the economy, the public sphere and democratic
self-rule. The rise of the market economy, and the understanding of this economy as
governed by an invisible hand, are seen as leading to a new understanding of society
based on the concept of mutual benefit. The public sphere, according to Taylor, is a
common space where people meet through the media of print, electronic means and also
face-to-face encounters. The third feature reflects popular sovereignty or democratic rule.
Taylor discusses this self-understanding by contrasting the American democratic
experience with the French version of self-rule (2007:176-207).
In each of these discussions, Taylor highlights how modernity is secular, horizontal, and
immediate. Modernity is secular in that it defines a new space for God and rejects the notion that
political society has some foundation in a transcendent order. It is horizontal in that it rejects the
notion that hierarchies in society mirror some cosmic hierarchy. Finally, it is immediate because
25
Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1966).
10
the individual need not relate to society through the mediation of others. This immediacy, though
not always actualized, is normative. 26
I appreciate Taylor’s understanding of secularity and find his three features of a (western)
modern social imaginary plausible as well. Taylor fleshes out this picture by tracing a
history of the development of this modern moral order. His historical account also makes
sense to this reader.
One of the central features of Western modernity, on just about any view, is the progress of
disenchantment, the eclipse of the world of magic forces and spirits. This was one of the products
of the reform movement in Latin Christendom, which issued in the Protestant Reformation but
also transformed the Catholic Church. The reform movement was one of the sources of the attempt
to discipline and reorder society… (2004:49).
My question, however, is what Taylor’s account leaves out of the imaginary’s story and
contours. Are there tacit particulars in our social self-understanding that remain unnoticed
and hidden? How much indeterminate reality is waiting to be discovered?
Taylor readily admits, “our social imaginary at any given time is complex” (2004:24).
Because an imaginary is not codified (pre-theoretical) and consists of background
sensibilities and practices, painting the picture depends on an observer (artist) and that
observer’s (artist’s) perspective. To be sure, the imaginary as defined by Taylor
represents collective practices and understandings but who and what determines the
features that have risen to the level of consensus? Can we identify criteria for
understanding how a society imagines social sensibilities? Taylor himself poses the
question of whether we have a singular modernity or multiple incarnations. “Is there a
single phenomenon here, or do we need to speak of ‘multiple modernities,’ the plural
reflecting the fact that other non-Western cultures have modernized in their own way and
cannot properly be understood if we try to grasp them in a general theory that was
designed originally with the Western case in mind?” (2004:1).
I will offer two additional subsidiary strands that could fit into a MSI. First, I contend that
science and technology have played an important role in shaping modernity but these
dimensions are underemphasized in Taylor’s account. How is modernity influencing
African and Asian societies in light of the developments of science, technology and
digital communication? How do scientific achievements affect our social selfunderstandings? The “public sphere” feature in Taylor’s MSI undoubtedly is being
influenced by social media and instantaneous communication technologies. A second
item concerns the role of authority. The modern idealization of order, according to Taylor,
departs from hierarchical complementarity and realizes a horizontal system that is
characterized by mutual benefit (2004:12-15). I wonder if a hierarchy of experts does not
exist still in Western societies; scientists armed with empirical data tell citizens what food
to eat, when to get a flu shot, and generally hold sway over populations with their
empirical studies and their expert advice.27
26
27
See Book Review by Jeffery L. Nicholas, The Review of Metaphysics 59:2, 454-56
Who can speak authoritatively about Ebola other than physicians and the Center for Disease Control?
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Where one stands determines what one sees. Taylor’s informed perspective is both
brilliant and helpful in understanding modernity, secularity, individualism
(disembedding) and alienation. His triangular picture of counter-Enlightenment parties is
fascinating as he compares the “acknowledgers of transcendence” to the “exclusive
humanists” to the “neo-Nietzschean anti-humanists” (2007:372-3, 638). How might
Taylor’s perspective and analysis be amplified by additional points of view? Does his
account of “exclusive humanism” do justice to those that seek human flourishing without
reference to the transcendent? And might a Christian believer doubt the possibility of
experiencing human flourishing without the personal and spiritual transformation
promised in the Gospels?
Taylor’s offering of a MSI buttresses his attempt to explain modern secularity and the
changing conditions of beliefs. Taylor believes Western society has moved from a
transcendent or supernatural orientation to an “immanent frame” (2007:542). I agree with
this observation but what it means for religious people is not so clear. Do they practice
their faith as merely one option among many in this immanent frame? Do they practice
faith self-consciously aware of this immanent frame? Or, do secularists and religionists
simply see the world very differently and does this difference affect one’s social
imaginary? Taylor brackets faith inside the secular frame. But is this correct? Perhaps this
is the question that helps me appreciate the category of worldviews. Worldviews selfconsciously take into account perspective and ideology.
Finally, is Taylor’s term “social imaginary” adequate for what he is describing? And is
this perhaps a strange way of referring to imagination? He notes in chapter 12 that
“imagination” can travel in more than one direction with good or ill results:
The very use of a term linked to imagination invites this question: what we imagine
can be something new, constructive, opening new possibilities, or it can be purely
fictitious, perhaps dangerously false. In fact, my use of the term is meant to
combine both these facets. Can an imaginary be false, meaning that it distorts or
covers over certain crucial realities? Clearly, the answer to this is yes, in the light
of some of the examples above… (2004:183). But the gain involved in identifying
these social imaginaries… They also have a constitutive function, that of making
possible the practices that they make sense of and thus enable…(183).
Michael Polanyi ruminated on the role of the creative imagination in considering the
scientist’s quest to discover new insights and meaning. He spoke of a vision of a hidden
reality that guides the scientist in his quest on the strength of the imagination guided by
intuition. Polanyi describes imagination as a kind of power. “But to know what to look
for does not lend us the power to find it. That power lies in the imagination. I call all
thoughts of things that are not present, or not yet present--or perhaps never to be present-acts of the imagination.”28
The Polanyian view of imagination highlights the individual scientist seeking to discover
meaning and sharing results with collaborators and colleagues. Taylor’s “imaginary” is a
collective understanding. Sometimes he refers to the imaginary as a repertory with
28
Michael Polanyi, “The Creative Imagination,” Chemical and Engineering News, XLIV, 1966, 85-93.
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everyone playing his or her part in the social setting. Polanyi imagines or wonders what
might be discovered. The imaginary is an attempt to construe what is there but needs
articulation. Taylor came to borrow the term and the concept because of an appreciation
of Benedict Anderson’s work, Imagined Communities (1983, 2006). The social
imaginary is not construed exactly as are other conceptualizations but it does resemble
other categories and functions like them. I do not see a significant difference among these
terms. I conclude that worldview, rationality, orientation, plausibility structure, paradigm,
framework, metaphor and perspective function in similar fashion to describe cultural and
social reality. It is the happy domain of philosophers to draw fine distinctions and debate
the differences.
Culture is dynamic and so our social imaginaries and worldviews will rise and fall, wax
and wane as cultural forces change and exert new influences upon societies. The forces of
globalization enable information to flow quickly in many directions. Hence, one culture
can influence another in shorter order than in previous generations. Polanyi’s tacit
dimension serves to elucidate the social imaginary as a coherent pattern of subsidiary
elements. These societal particulars will be regarded as subsidiary or focal as conditions
evolve. Polanyi’s theory of tacit knowing also reminds us that because much knowledge
is tacit, it may remain hidden. His view that much of reality is indeterminate and awaits
discovery cautions us to regard all of our worldviews and imaginaries as provisional and
temporal. Although the “social imaginary” conceptualization would also work as a
worldview or plausibility structure, Taylor’s unique conceptual metaphor succeeds in his
larger work of explaining our secular age. Like all construals of social reality, Taylor’s
MSI will require updating and will benefit from convivial critique. The changing
conditions of belief also will require monitoring and updating. Taylor hints that a
disenchanted universe might be ripe for re-enchanting.
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