“Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most.” Those are words from the movie Secondhand Lions. At the end of last month, Thinking Friend Anton Jacobs shared that statement and related comments with me and a few mutual friends, prompting an interesting discussion.
Are there things we should believe even if they are not true? That seems
to be what is implied in the above-mentioned movie. Three years ago, my wife
and I watched, and enjoyed, that 2003
American comedy-drama film. But I hadn’t remembered the words cited
above or the longer statement:
That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil …. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.
My first reaction to the above words was negative, mainly because I
think a person always ought to believe in only what is true. How could it be
possible, let alone necessary, to believe in things that are not true? If every
statement is either true or false (which I think is correct), why should we
ever believe what is false?
There are, indeed, many “facts” that can readily be determined as
either true or false. But so much of what we encounter in the world are not
facts that can be scientifically verified. Often, we must affirm what we
believe to be true without any assurance that those things are, in fact, true.
That certainly doesn’t mean we should believe things that we think are
false, even though we must realize that whatever we believe might be
false. That is far different, though, than believing things that are false.
Michael Polanyi’s book Personal Knowledge (1958)
is on my list as one of the “top ten” most important non-fiction books that I
have ever read. I spent numerous hours in graduate school reading and seeking
to understand Polanyi’s thought. That study became foundational for my
epistemology (= the study and understanding of knowledge).
Several years later, my first writing to appear in a published tome
was the 18th chapter of a book published as a Festschrift for
Dr. Eric Rust, my major graduate school professor. The title of that chapter is
“Scientific Knowledge as Personal Knowledge.”**
Thirty years later, in October 2009, “All
Knowledge is Personal Knowledge” was the title of one of my earliest blog
articles. In a comment further explaining my point, I wrote,
Knowledge is always tentative. And there is no proof; there is only belief. Thus, there is always the possibility of being wrong. One "can only believe something that might be false," says Polanyi—and he adds that that is his argument "in a nutshell" (Personal Knowledge, p. 312).
Even though everything we believe “might be false,” rather
than embracing the idea that we are going to believe what we believe, whether it
is true or not, Polanyi emphasizes the importance of “heuristic passion,” the
ongoing desire to seek and to find what seems most likely to be true.
Perplexity AI summarizes well Polanyi’s concept of heuristic passion:
“He thinks all knowing (from physics to ethics to theology) is personal,
fiduciary, and fallible, and therefore always involves passionate commitment
and an open‑ended search for deeper contact with reality.”
There is no place for the “lazy” stance of saying we are going to
believe what we choose to believe whether it is true or not. No, since none of
our core beliefs (including scientific beliefs) can be scientifically proved,
we continually strive to examine those beliefs, driven by heuristic passion to
seek more adequate, more comprehensive articulations of reality.
If heuristic passion for determining what is true and what is false is
necessary for progressive Christians (such as I), it is certainly necessary
(and maybe even more so) for secularists on the one hand and conservative
evangelical Christians on the other.
_____
** The title of the book, edited by Robert E. Patterson, is Science, Faith and Revelation: An Approach to Christian Philosophy (Broadman Press,1979). Last month, my wife came across a long letter handwritten by Dr. Rust (over 45 years ago!) in which he thanked me for the essay I wrote about Polanyi for the Festschrift.
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Here are comments received about 10 minutes ago from Thinking Friend Eric Dollard in Chicago:
ReplyDelete"There are different kinds of knowledge; scientific, mathematical, historical, moral and philosophical, etc. Some kinds of knowledge are more tentative than others. Mathematical knowledge is not generally tentative, except for complex mathematical "proofs" which may contain errors. Empirical knowledge of the physical world or of events in history are almost always tentative. To that sort of knowledge, one can assign probabilities. The belief that the earth is a sphere revolving around the sun has a very high probability of being correct--essentially 100 percent. Alleged historical events can also be assigned probabilities. That President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963 has a very high probability, but the assertion that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree when he was a youth, and admitted it to his father, has a low probability of being true. These probabilities are based on how one evaluates evidence, and to some extent the evaluation of evidence is based on one's values.
"Much more, of course, can be said about these issues, including how faith and myth play into all of this, but not in an email."
Thanks for your comments, Eric, and pointing out the various kinds of knowledge and degrees of certainty. When it comes to "scientific" knowledge, that is not as certain as it is often assumed--and that is where the work of Polanyi has great relevance. Let me share just a bit more about Polanyi here, with thanks to Wikipedia.
DeleteMichael Polanyi (1891~1976) was a Hungarian-British polymath [=a person of wide knowledge or learning], who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy.
Polanyi gave the Gifford Lectures in 1951–52 at Aberdeen, and a revised version of his lectures were later published as "Personal Knowledge" (1958). In that book Polanyi claims that all knowledge claims (including those that derive from rules) rely on personal judgments. He denies that a scientific method can yield truth mechanically. All knowing, no matter how formalized, relies upon commitments. ... He advocates a fiduciary** post-critical approach, in which we recognize that we believe more than we can know, and know more than we can say."
** According to Perplexity AI, Polanyi uses “fiduciary” to describe the way all knowing rests on prior commitments and trusted frameworks that could in principle be mistaken, but which we nevertheless rely on."
And now I am posting comments received about 20 minutes ago from a local Thinking Friend, a woman who is a personal acquaintance (and four months younger than me) and whom I am pleased to hear from again.
ReplyDelete"Interesting article. Looking back over my life and reviewing what I used to believe, it is quite amazing to contrast my 'truths.' I am referring to beliefs on LGBTQ, other religions, world view, scripture, politics. I hope to continue to search for truth my whole life & to teach my Bible study class accordingly."
Earlier this morning, I received a rather lengthy email from Thinking Friend Jerry Summers, who is a retired college history professor who now lives in eastern Tennessee. I will post here only what he said that is directly related to today's blog post:
ReplyDelete"Polanyi’s work I cited in my dissertation (University of North Texas, 1989/90) that dealt with postmodernist trends in the teaching of college history. I’m afraid I found Polanyi useful but did not deeply understand his work at the time. Still, he sparked my imagination. The one quotation I used from his 'Personal Knowledge' was “We must recognize belief once more as the source of all knowledge.” I
"In the same note I referred to Polanyi’s Tacit Knowledge that I find still informs the topic of apophatic (unspoken) theology."
"I further commented (and this encourages me) on another takeaway from Polanyi: that the employment of a detached, objective knowledge, apart from the role of tacit knowing, may lead to error. Objective and subjective knowing are never in full agreement or conflict.
"And . . . Eric Rust! Sadly, I never was his student except for reading his textbook on science and faith in another class. As a college student, I attended a class with Dr. Rust one day (Dad took me to his class) and received impressions of greatness of insight that remain strong today."
Thanks for sharing these comments about your connection with Polanyi's thought (and with Dr. Rust). My doctoral dissertation at Southern Seminary was primarily about paradox and S. Kierkegaard, but I just now checked, and I have Polanyi's "Personal Knowledge" in my bibliography. I don't remember, though, how I referred to him (after all, I finished the dissertation in 1966!), and I didn't find my reference to him with a quick search.
DeleteYou mentioned "tacit knowledge," and that is one of Polanyi's key ideas. Here is a brief explanation of that term by Wikipedia: "Tacit knowledge refers to skills, ideas, experiences, and intuitions that individuals possess but are difficult to articulate, codify, or fully express in words." It is easy to see the connection of that term to Polanyi's primary emphasis on "personal knowledge."
And here are comments received this morning from local Thinking Friend Ed Kail:
ReplyDelete"Your post prompts me to think of such concepts as worldview ('weltanschauung'), standpoint, viewpoint, interpretation, and unconscious bias — all of which have impact on knowing “truth."
Thanks for your comments, Ed. And, yes, the concepts you mentioned are directly related to what Polanyi wrote about in his seminal book.
DeleteLeroy, I am so sorry that I did not recognize that you and I share a great respect for Polanyi! “Personal Knowledge” is on my top ten list also.
ReplyDeleteTo my great detriment, I missed out on Dr. Rust at SBTS. Had I gone straight out of college I would have certainly studied with him in the 1970s. My Stetson buddies, Bill Allen and John Hewett, knew I was interested in science and religion issues and assured me that Dr. Rust would have ‘connected.’
Here is my Polanyi commentary contribution (on RFK, Jr., perhaps) [from “Meaning” (1975. P. 196). “But on what grounds can [an individual scientist] demand [a right to freedom of inquiry] from [one’s] fellow citizens and from [one’s] government? It should be clear that [the scientist] has no other basis upon which to demand it from them, either, than a respect for truth of the sort that is honored by [one’s] own community of scientists. [The scientist] will not have the freedom to pursue scientific inquiry, therefore, unless *the public* (my emphasis) also has respect for the ideal of scientific truth and *trusts* (emphasis in original) those who are accepted as scientists to be engaged *honestly* (my emphasis) in its pursuit.”
Our current administration is quite notable for its undermining of “public trust!”
I think there are things to which we should “commit” ourselves, even if they are not (always manifested) true. [The operative words in the Goethe quote some weeks ago are “as if.”]
Leroy, I think you and Polanyi are committed to ‘communities of the practice of “heuristic passion”’ which “seek more adequate, more comprehensive articulations of reality.” The practice of such communities is an *art*: poetic acts of meaning-making [‘poiesis’].
Upon reading other comments: My quote is from chapter 12 of “Meaning” titled ‘Mutual Authority’ which relies heavily on “The Tacit Dimension.” A quote from p. 4, TD: “I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that *we can know more than we can tell*” (emphasis original).
Shalom, Dick
Well, the discussion of Michael Polanyi confused me a bit, until I checked and discovered that the Polanyi I had some familiarity with was Karl Polanyi, an economics historian. So I will jump into the discussion of facts on my own.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I think it would help some to think of facts in comparison with values. Someone could agree with me entirely on the facts about guns, while having quite different values on gun control. There are ways to challenge values, typically by challenging consistency or hierarchy of values. That is not the same process as with facts.
Second, scientific theories do two different things, they both provide explanations and predictions. Ptolemy's epicycles were rejected centuries ago as an explanation of the heavens, but there was nothing wrong with the way they predicted eclipses and apparent movement of planets among the stars as seen from Earth. Copernicus had a better explanation, but actually caused a problem with his assumption that the planets moved in perfect circles. When that did not pan out, the theory moved on to elliptical orbits, which science still accepts today. Newton's famous equation E=MV2 (typing limit, that '2' is squared) proved marvelously useful in physics for a long time, but then later astronomers noticed that Mercury's orbit around the sun did not quite match. Then Einstein calculated his now also famous equation E=MC2 where mass replaced velocity as the variable, even as the speed of light replaced mass as the constant. Then the high speed orbit of Mercury made sense. Still, when America sent astronauts to the moon, they used Newton's math instead of Einstein's to calculate the trip because the computers they used were literally people! Now where this all gets mushy in when we are working with complex theories for complex problems, such as in advanced medicine. Medical advice keeps changing because there are still a lot of unknowns involved, not to mention a lot of special economic and political interests! So we move on from Dr. Fauci to RFK, Jr. Now the point of all this is that the scientific method is very powerful, but people can misuse and misunderstand it. Scientific theories have to rub shoulders with conspiracy theories, propaganda, and that "tacit knowledge" mentioned above. Our job is make sure we build our houses, both literal and metaphorical, on solid rock, not shifting sand. For storms will surely come. (Compare Matthew 7:24-27)