Research On The Views Of Humanism On Science

Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) was a famous English physical chemist and philosopher with a Hungarian origin. He devoted all his life to trying to correct the view of science which had been distorted by objectivism. Polanyi set off from natural scientific research, and arrived at the human being himself, which was the last series of the stratified ontology. He filled the gap between natural scientific research with positivisticview of scienceand research of human being, which solved both the problem of the essence and rationality of science, the core problem of view of science, and the basic problem of human's existence.The purpose of this paper is to systematically argue Polanyi's view on science, and to discuss the meaning and validity of his humanistic view of science. Firstly, a hypothesis is put forth that Polanyi's view of science was humanistic, and it is derived from his manuscripts and thought as close to the nucleus of Polanyi's thoughts. Polanyi was trying to clarify the point that the intent of human's pursuit of science was to seek science itself and the beauty and truth of things. With the detachment ideal, Polanyi constructed a "high person" full of passion of learning, pursuit of reality and great responsibility. From this viewpoint, science and humanities were in the same continuum of frame: science was essentially a kind of human's creative art, scientific knowledge was a kind of "personal knowledge", scientific methods were methods of human's learning, and therefore there was some isomorphic between learning and existence. From the standpoint of homogeneity of culture, Polanyi constructed a new idea of view of science with human being as the coordinates, and described a pattern of philosophical cosmology and a blueprint of existential philosophical. The research of Polanyi's view of science can be devied into four parts:Put forth of the problem. After reviewing findings of domestic and international studies of Polanyi, the topic of humanistic view of science was put forth. On the basis of expurgation of characteristics of Polanyi's post-critical spirit, the philosophy thoughts in Polanyi's humanistic view of science was analyzed. Just as Polanyi said, positivism view of science constructed in critical reflection regarded science as highly formalized propositions that could be explicated, and believed that the task of philosophy was to logically analyze the structure of scientific theory.Analysis of the problem. The characteristics of Polanyi's humanistic view of science was shown from three dimensions. Firstly, the most important character of Polanyi's humanistic view of science was the light of humanity. Secondly, faith was another character of Polanyi's view of science. Lastly, value was the soul of humanistic view of science.