originally published 3/1/2025

Professor Esther Lightcap Meek challenges the modernist view of knowledge. This view, which is closely related to scientism, prefers the figure of the autonomous knower — one who comes to knowledge without aid — to the figure of a steward of knowledge. Stewards of knowledge, Meek explains, guard and cultivate what others — be the others texts or people — give them. The image of the steward better accounts for the reality of how people come to know something than does the modernist view’s image of the autonomous knower; people inevitably come to knowledge (a term for which she offers a definition in her book) through authoritative guides, notes Meek. The process involves the normative element to be known — who Michael Polanyi is, for example — and navigating between multiple guides — one’s parents, a teacher, or a book — that help one arrive at knowledge of the normative element. Dr. Meek is the author of Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People (Brazos Press, 2003). This interview was originally published on Volume 66 of the Journal.

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Though largely ignored, the work of research chemist-turned-philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) offers rich insight into the methods of science, the role of belief in all human knowing, and the important connections between knowledge and responsibility. Tacit Knowing, Truthful Knowing explores Michael Polanyi’s criticisms of both objectivism and subjectivism, and his attempts to develop a more truthful understanding of how we know the world. His ideas are based on the belief that all knowledge is either tacit (silent and unspoken) or rooted in tacit knowledge.

This Report features interviews with leading interpreters of Polanyi’s thought, including Marjorie Grene, Richard Gelwick, Thomas Torrance, and Martin X. Moleski. Interviews with Nobel Prize-winning chemist Dudley Herschbach, educator Steven Garber, and master violin makers Peter and Wendy Moes, along with readings from Michael Polanyi’s books and correspondence, further illuminate his ideas.

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