Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
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? 11 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. 12 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. 13