AND RESPECT EMPATHY AS METHOD IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCE WRITINGS OF MICHAEL POLANYI By William J. Kelleher, Ph.D. Introduction. In the face of what may seem to be overwhelming evidence to the contrary in the world, Michael Polanyis writings on human nature entail a theory of respect as a natural human passion. That is, human beings have both an innate sense of respect for one another, and an innate need to feel respected by other people. We will defend this thesis in this essay. Polanyis theory of respect, of course, has implications for what is traditionally known as normative social theory, or theories as to how societies ought to organize themselves. We will show that Polanyis opinion on this matter is consistent with his theory of natural respect. However, Polanyis theory of respect also plays another central role in his thought system, which some readers may find surprising. While social science methodology has traditionally been regarded as striving for value neutrality, we will show that Polanyis social science methodology is shaped to its core by the principle of respect. Much of Polanyis writing is in opposition to what he called the positivistic conception of science. 1 Polanyi understood this approach to knowing to assume, among other things, a mechanistic theory of nature, and the possibility of objective, value free knowledge, which can be obtained and verified by a set of methodological rules that any scientist could apply in a routine and mechanical fashion. Polanyi rejected this idea of knowledge and of science as a massive modern absurdity. 2 The notion that scientific knowledge is different than, or superior to, the knowledge of values is way off base. Indeed, the positivistic premises of science are themselves a system of values. 3 Across the fields of knowledge, including natural and social science, and the humanities, "the act of knowing includes an appraisal. 4 This appraisal is never objective, but is always a matter of personal skill and judgment. Others may disagree with it, and it could be mistaken. Polanyi understood this misguided positivistic theory of science to shape the premises of both natural and social science. He warns that positivisms universal mechanistic conception of things may threaten completely to denature our image of man. 5 Thus, in Polanyis view, there is not a sharp separation in the approach to the study of man, one factual and the other valuational. He wrote, our powers of understanding control equally both these domains. 6 We define social science as the systematic effort to understand and explain human behavior. This aim is shared by the various fields of social science. Each field focuses on a distinct aspect of human behavior. Traditionally, these fields include anthropology, geography, history, political science, psychology, and sociology. There is by no means
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complete uniformity of agreement as to the methods by which the social sciences are to carry out their task. Indeed, some have argued that there is no uniformity at all. 7 Nevertheless, Polanyi assumed, at the time of his writing, that a standard theory of methodology existed for the social sciences. This approach was exemplified for him by what he called behaviorism. 8 By this term he meant to include all those approaches to the study of human, and animal, behavior that relied upon the positivistic conception of science. Polanyi rejected behaviorism especially because it imposes a crippling mutilation on its sentient, intelligent, and resourceful subject matter. 9 He was not shy about stating the magnitude of his project for reshaping humanitys understanding of knowledge and of science. He hoped that his writings would help to establish a stable alternative to the objectivist position. 10 We will argue that Polanyi has gone a long way toward fulfilling his project, at least for the social sciences. The materials needed to formulate a general method for social science already exist in Polanyis writings. However, it is a method in a very qualified sense. For Polanyi, a method consists of a set of rules of art, or maxims. Maxims are rules, the correct application of which is part of the art which they govern. 11 Polanyi asserts that the interpretation and application of methodological rules is always a personal act, depending on the education, skill, and other personal qualities of the person. 12 Thus, he does not preclude the possibility of a method for social science, but only warns his readers not to expect a mechanical application of that methods maxims. What then would the maxims, or rules of art, be for a Polanyian social science? One maxim is that indwelling, or empathy, is the proper means of knowing man and the humanities. 13 Indwelling entails the pouring of oneself into the subject matter one seeks to understand. 14 We will examine Polanyis main book on social science method, The Study of Man, as a model method for social science, and see how his method is actually put in practice. There, Polanyi shows what it means to have a social science based on appraisal. As we have suggested, the standard for this appraisal is humanitys natural respect for the members of its species. To make this argument, we will have to start at the beginning that is, the emergence of life from inanimate matter. PART I. MANS MORPHOGENETIC FIELD. A) Anthropogenesis. Among the most outstanding features of Polanyis theory of evolution are his humanizing of the process, and his great enthusiasm for it. Polanyi portrays evolution not as a dry, mechanical process of chance mutation and natural selection, but as a grand drama, full of noble striving, success, and failure. Life did not arise from inanimate matter as an accidental confluence of causal factors, but as a rebellion against meaningless inanimate being. 15 From its inception, life has emerged to challenge the surrounding deserts of
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deathless inanimate matter. 16 Hence, although tinged with tragedy, due to the inevitability of death, life has a heroic purpose. For Polanyi, the first rise of living individuals overcame the meaninglessness of the universe by establishing in it centers of subjective interests. 17 By such centers he means organisms which can feel their needs and which have the agency and resourcefulness necessary to pursue the satisfaction of those needs. Self-interested pursuits gave them something to live for. However, this first revolution was incomplete, for a self-centered life ending in death has little meaning. 18 The emergence of humanity constitutes the second major rebellion against meaningless inanimate being. 19 Polanyi distinguishes we humans from other forms of life chiefly by our superior capacity for abstract and creative thought, the responsibility that gives us, and the enduring cultural works we have created. Human culture can be understood as an emergent property of human interaction. Indeed, the calling of man is to participate in the life of human culture. When man participates in this life his body ceases to be merely an instrument of self-indulgence and becomes a condition of his calling. 20 While animals find meaning as centers of subjective interests, the rise of human thought in its turn overcame these subjective interests by its universal intent. 21 We will look closely at Polanyis notions of calling, universal intent, and responsibility, in this and the following sections of our essay. Among other things, we will see that, in Polanyis view, because our human calling is to strive for knowledge and beliefs that we can hold with universal intent, this second revolution [i.e., mans emergence] aspires to eternal meaning. 22 Of course, human mortality and the finitude of mans condition render his aspirations hazardous. Yet the precarious foothold gained by man in the realm of ideas lends sufficient meaning to his brief existence. 23 Polanyis theory of evolution as the rebellion of meaning against the meaningless entails a vision of the organic material of life as far richer in significance than the dominant objectivistic theory of organic matter as being no more than physio-chemical stuff. His is a theory of living matter, as opposed to the lifeless matter contemplated by the positivistic sciences. 24 For Polanyi, the very material of which a multitude of individuals are made is the living base for the emergent property of embodied meaningful purpose. At its most basic level, the growth, development, and maturation of individual organisms entail a striving for morphological rightness. This striving is an aspect of the organisms meaning. Clearly, living organic matter is not amorphous. Individuals always come in distinct forms, and follow a general pattern for their species. The growth of individuals within a species, then, can be understood as operating under the direction of a morphogenetic field. 25 This field is contained within the germ plasm, or gene pool, of its species. The individuals development follows a line of force in such a field. 26 Each individual exists as a particular stage of realization along the lines of the gradient of a potentiality.
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Each individuals form is made of the organic material of which it is constituted. This form, then, is a biotic achievement. 28 That is, this shape is the current result of the materials continuous striving to become what it naturally intends to become. In the individual, this is the process of maturation. Polanyi also suggests that the same principle of striving for morphological rightness can explain a wide diversity of biological events, such as the growth of an embryo, the repair of an injury, or recuperation after an illness. In Polanyis field concept, the morphogenetic field ... is then defined as the agency, which evokes and guides growth, etc. using morphological rightness as its standard of achievement. 29 Polanyi seems to envision the impetus of fields as a base from which self-reflective consciousness (i.e., the capacity to feel needs), and deliberate efforts at need satisfaction, have emerged. Though these [field induced] strivings [such as growth, recuperation after an illness, etc.] are continuous with the conscious strivings of higher animals, they are, of course, in general, neither conscious nor deliberate. 30 Therefore, All the operations of the tacit component will be subsumed under this field conception. 31 The aims of acting individuals, then, can be understood as operating within a nest of mutually supportive gradations of emergent levels of purpose. The higher level of aims includes such self-conscious deliberate activity as that of an animal hunting. Polanyi notes that at the upper levels centers are called upon to exercise responsible choices. 32 But the lower level of purpose, as we have seen, is more in the nature of organic matter itself. Starting from their conscious aims, living individuals, then, are animated by ever further descending levels of sentient effort. 33 Or, to reverse the sequence, organic aims merge upwards into conscious purposes. In general, these aims share a lifeaffirming tendency in the organism. Polanyi is fully aware that his account of the emergence of life as a rebellion against meaningless inanimate being, 34 and of organic matter as aiming at morphological rightness attributes a form of intentionality, or purpose, to these processes. Such intentionality is strictly prohibited within positivistic biology, and generally dismissed as vitalism. But Polanyi is not apologetic about his stance. Indeed, he is as defiant of wrongheaded convention as life is defiant of meaningless death. If this be vitalism, he declares, then vitalism is mere common sense, which can be ignored only by a truculently bigoted mechanistic outlook. 35 Positivistic biology is unable to explain this awesome drama of intentional growth, regeneration, and action. So, Polanyi calls attention to this failure to account for the obvious mental dimension of living organisms, and sketches in some of the aspects of his new focus for biology. This new approach to evolutionary biology focuses on what Polanyi calls the emergence of sentience and personhood. 36 We will now show how Polanyis conception of personhood combines, like the Taoist Yin and Yang, the mental and physical dimensions of an astonishingly wide array of organisms. In his examination of evolution, Polanyi is primarily concerned with the contemplation of anthropogenesis. 37 That is, with the rise of man, as the self-conscious creator of
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human culture. Polanyi acknowledges that scientists do not know at what stage of evolution consciousness awakened. 38 But at some point it must have emerged. Already some 400 million years ago, at a stage represented by worms, our ancestors had formed a major ganglion in the forward tip of their elongated body, which could, among other things, direct locomotion. 39 Gradually, as this section acquired a controlling position, a gradient was established between the higher and lower functions within the organism. In the process, a supportive nervous system is formed to carryout ever more extensive and elaborate operations of self control. 40 An active center emerged, which uses the other parts of the body for its sustenance and as its tools. Within this active center the animals personhood is intensified in relation to a subservient body. 41 Clearly, this process of evolutionary emergence was not all physical. Indeed, the emerging nervous system became the base from which mental operations emerged. Polanyi observes that over the long course of evolution there has been a cumulative trend of changes tending towards higher levels of organization, among which the deepening of sentience and the rise of thought are the most conspicuous. 42 Sentience is the feeling, or experience, which an organism has of itself. Therefore, when Polanyi mentions the deepening of sentience, he is referring to the gradual enrichment of the self-reflective experience of itself within individual organisms. This capacity for self-reflection would eventually rise from the mere awareness of such simple needs as hunger, to the human contemplation of its own origins. In personhood, then, there emerged an increasing capacity for means-end reasoning, and problem solving, based on the organisms felt needs and knowledge of its environment. As examples of what the earlier stages in the evolution of personhood may have been like, he notes that contemporary protozoa engage in a variety of deliberate purposive activities. And, citing experts, the amoeba hunts for food. 43 Such deliberative action presupposes, at least, a body with the capacities to feel its needs, and to learn how to act so as to satisfy those needs. Such action also entails a notion of agency, or self-guidance, which includes the ability to make choices based upon a combination of perceptions, learned knowledge, and personal judgment. As personhood evolved, more sophisticated animals became capable of feeling intellectual joy and frustration. 44 Polanyi sees in the process of evolution, not mere clues, but direct evidence of the rise of human consciousness. 45 This creative realization of lifes potential for self-reflective personhood has thus far resulted in the cranial dominance which gives rise to the characteristic position of the mind in the body of man. 46 Thus, from a seed of submicroscopic living particles and from inanimate beginnings lying beyond these we see emerging a race of sentient, responsible and creative beings. 47 Personhood, for Polanyi, then, refers to the mental/physical complex system, which is the hallmark of every sentient creature. Its essential element is embodied mental capacities. It is a general conception in which humanity participates, but only as the
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current stage of evolution. Because evolution is a process entailing a large measure of creativity, what the future will bring must remain uncertain. A central theme in the story of evolution, then, is about the growth and hardening of personhood. 48 If the evolution of personhood is understood to entail ever intensifying mental capacities in an increasingly complex organism, then mans sudden rise from mute beasthood49 can be appreciated as an astonishing creative leap in evolution. Humanitys capacity for symbolic representation, as seen in our thought and language, for example, have resulted in the creation of a lasting articulate framework of thought;50 in other words, human culture. It is this new capacity for language and thought, which are only developed in human society, that results in individuals with the ability to rise above the self-centeredness of animal personhood, 51 to the unprecedented level of the responsible personhood of thoughtful man. 52 When he refers to humanitys responsible personhood he means that, in his view, the human mind has an innate, or natural, orientation towards other members of its species that is quite unlike any other form of personhood. Thus, at the highest level of personhood we meet mans moral sense. 53 This capacity marks a unique stage in the evolution of personhood. In the rest of this essay we will explore some of the main implications of this difference in human personhood. B) Mans Calling and Responsibility. In Polanyis view, humanitys mental capacities set for them a distinctive human calling. He notes that we are not responsible [for] our calling. 54 It is a part of our genetic inheritance. In other words, our calling is determined by our innate faculties. 55 Chief among these are our capacities for abstract and creative thought, and for language. His notion of calling refers to the individuals experience of morphological rightness. That is, our calling is an innate aim towards which we humans strive, at least when we are acting distinctively as humans. Humans act distinctively as humans when they engage in the pursuit of knowledge or beliefs which they can authentically hold with universal intent. This calling emerged in evolution as a part of, as we mentioned above, the second major rebellion against meaningless inanimate being. 56 We have also quoted Polanyis statement that while animals find meaning as centers of subjective interests, the rise of human thought in its turn overcame these subjective interests by its universal intent. 57 Thought is most distinctively human when it is an active mental process, aiming at universality. 58 Thus, man differs from animals largely because he alone aspires to eternal meaning. 59 Mans calling is most fully answered when he is dwelling in beliefs he holds with universal intent. This satisfies the morphological rightness for humans. Of course, no one can do this 24/7. To be in the distinctively human state is an achievement, which
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cannot be constantly sustained. The alternative to that state seems to be conditions we share with animals. Several activities, such as sex, eating, drinking, eliminating, playing, and sleeping are obvious examples of aspects of living that humans share with animals. These events are different from dwelling in beliefs held with universal intent. However, these aspects of life are not necessarily degrading because they are shared with animals; indeed, some are quite noble. Animals and people experience a common pleasure at problem solving. 60 Across species, a solution can be something inherently satisfying. 61 Because of our superior capacity for abstract problem solving, we humans can, after making an effort, experience the joy of grasping mathematics. 62 That is an elevated form of the pleasure in problem solving that we share with animals. Thus, people have what might be called their animal side. While Polanyi does not use that exact term, he does make the distinction. In a conflict between our appetitive and our intelligent person we may side with one or the other. 63 Thus, humans can choose to be in their distinctively human state, and this above all distinguishes humans from the animals. For, animals appear to be incapable of holding themselves to abstract moral principles, or of dwelling in an articulated belief with universal intent. People may experience the calling of their morphogenetic field in various ways, and to various degrees. As part of their morphological rightness, some people may feel, as Polanyi strongly did, an innate affinity for making contact with reality. 64 Other persons may experience this affinity, or they may feel what Polanyi calls a natural urge for achieving coherence. 65 Others may experience their calling less as an urge or an affinity, and more as a sense of responsibility. 66 Thus, the sense of a pre-existent task makes the shaping of knowledge a responsible act. 67 In any case, the individual, who is acting in his or her distinctive capacity as human, will strive to experience himself or herself as morphologically right, which striving is all we humans are called to do. Polanyi also distinguishes between animals and humans by their respective responsibilities in life. The members of all species with the capacity to act are responsible for sustaining their lives. One decision to disregard a movement in the grass, and to keep on grazing may cost a gazelle, for example, its life. Humans can make such misjudgments, too. But humans are also responsible for finding and articulating their beliefs as to what may be true and right. Human responsibility, as with animals, involves the liability to failure. For no responsibility is taken where no hazard is to be met, and a hazard is a liability to failure. 68 The distinctively human hazard is that ones efforts to fulfill ones calling may fail. One may strive, yet find nothing to believe in with universal intent. Or, ones beliefs, held with universal intent, may turn out to be wrong. Knowing the risks, one can have beliefs held with universal intent, and admit they could be mistaken. 69 Polanyi realizes that finding the universal truth may appear on reflection impossible of achievement. 70 Paradoxically, our striving to know with universal intent can only be undertaken within the limitations of our historical conditions. Our acculturation, or our early upbringing within our culture, 71 determines to a large extent what intellectual
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instruments we will have for the pursuit of our calling. Of course, we are also limited by our innate capabilities. 72 Despite these limitations, the individual retains his autonomy, and can pursue his calling in his own way within a milieu which conditions but never fully determines [his] actions. 73 Speaking for himself, as he often does, Polanyi shares his self-understanding that in spite of the hazards involved, I am called upon to pursue knowledge and to declare it responsibly, within my own limited possibilities. 74 Further, I started as a person intellectually fashioned by a particular idiom, acquired through my affiliation to a civilization that prevailed in places where I had grown up, at this particular period of history. This has been the matrix of all my intellectual efforts. Within it I was to find my problem and seek the terms for its solution. 75 Thus, for the rest of us, as for himself, the historical setting in which we have grown up can be accepted as the assignment of our particular problem. 76 Mans calling does not require the achievement of objective universal truth. Instead, a sincere commitment is of itself legitimate grounds for the affirmation of personal convictions with universal intent. 77 In other words, our personhood does not require a final achievement, but only that we aspire responsibly to understand what is true and right with universal intent. Our personhood is assured by our simultaneous contact with universal aspirations which place us in a transcendent perspective. 78 C) Respect as an Aspect of Universal Intent. One of the theses of this essay is that, for Polanyi, human respect is an essential element of human personhood. That is, to act in ones distinctively human capacity is to have respect for others, and to expect respect from them. This is not an exchange theory. We are not saying that, for Polanyi, respect is given, like a commodity, with an equal value expected as of right in return. On the contrary, in this section of our essay we will show that, for Polanyi, respect is naturally given in the very act of holding beliefs with universal intent. Respect for others, and the want of respect from them, is a natural orientation of the human mind when it is operating as quintessentially human. In short, as we will see, respect for all other human minds is a tacit component of universal intent. This can be seen implicated by the communicative element in Polanyis theory of universal intent. Universal intent, for Polanyi, is one way by which individual humans relate to one another. That is, it is a way by which a person addresses other rational minds. The person engaged in thought is participating in human culture. This culture is largely the product of intelligent minds, sometimes great minds, acting to the best of their ability to, among other things, establish the idioms with which other persons may participate in, and contribute to, cultural meanings. Great minds have also set the standards by which knowledge is to be attained and validated. Humanity and human culture, or our noosphere, are of a dynamic piece; that is, the two interdependent
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dimensions of human personhood. Our race as a whole achieved such personhood by creating its own noosphere: the only noosphere in the world. 79 Because of this participatory creative activity, human culture is a great communicative enterprise. When understood empathically, Polanyis conception of universal intent is not just a logical category, for it entails a wide range of human emotions. For Polanyi, the communicative motive in universal intent includes a reaching out to others for their fellowship, or companionship. Such companionship need not be of an immediate physical presence, but can be only an intellectual agreement. The conviviality of this motive is a tacit component of humanitys natural intellectual passions, as Polanyi understands them. For example, one of the primary intellectual passions in Polanyis understanding of the human mind is the persuasive passion. He calls it the mainspring of all fundamental controversy. 80 For instance, once a discovery in science has been made, the ardor of discovery is transformed into a craving to convince. 81 That is, when a belief is held with universal intent, the holder becomes an advocate for its truth. This passion is a part of a process of verification in which the act of making sure of ones own claims is coupled with the efforts of getting them accepted by others. 82 A scientific researcher, then, who makes and declares a discovery endows the results of such acts with a claim to universal validity. For when you believe that your discovery reveals a hidden reality, you will expect it to be recognized equally by others. 83 The fruits of our intellectual passions demand recognition. 84 People, it seems, appreciate recognition for having fulfilled their calling to contribute to human culture. Thus, the discoverer of a new truth may feel like converting everybody to his way of seeing things. 85 The persuasive passion faces a logical gap. The discoverer with a new insight is separated from those who do not have that insight. His new knowledge distances him or her from the fellowship of others. Thus, his persuasive passion spurs him now to cross this gap by converting everybody to his way of seeing things. 86 So, knowledge or beliefs held with universal intent are held with a concern for the companionship of others. This intention to bring others into the purview of ones truths is a key element of the participation of the speaker in any sincere statement of fact. 87 The very assertion of a fact as a fact, contains within it a persuasive feeling as a tacit coefficient of the assertion. Without that feeling, such an assertion is a mere form of words saying nothing. 88 To assert that p is true can be understood as a declaration to all other rational minds that I identify myself with the content of the factual sentence p. 89 Thus, speaking for discoverers whose findings have been rebuffed, Polanyi writes, we suffer when a vision of reality to which we have committed ourselves is contemptuously ignored by others. 90 The frustrated want of recognition and respect can be painful. The persuasive passion can vary over all possible intensities. 91 In its most intense form, one feels that ones vision must conquer or die. 92 The term conquer, as used here, may seem more Nietzschean than Polanyi means. Rather than an expression of the
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will to power, Polanyis use of conquer leans more towards the sense of a suitor conquering the one whose heart is sought. It is companionship that one seeks, not prisoners of war. Another important intellectual passion for Polanyi is the heuristic passion. This is the passion to solve problems, and to discover new insights. Like the passion to persuade, due to its universal aspirations, it, too, is oriented towards others, and not simply a selfindulgence, or for ones private self-satisfaction. In science, the discoverer seeks a solution to a problem that is satisfying and compelling both for himself and everybody else. 93 Unlike the persuasive passion, the heuristic passion sets out not to conquer, but to enrich the world it asks that its gift to humanity be accepted by all. 94 Clearly, both the persuasive and the heuristic passions entail an individual acting in a special kind of relation to other rational minds, a relation which both gives and expects respect. There is another communal element involved in asserting a scientific fact, which Polanyi finds in himself, and observers in others. I cannot speak of a scientific fact of what is just or unjust, [etc.] without implying a reference to a consensus. 95 In all such matters, I express what I believe the consensus ought to be in respect to whatever I speak of. 96 The phrase reference to a consensus suggests that, in Polanyis understanding, when the individual scientist, or any other person, asserts a belief as true or right, he or she always acts with other people in mind, as his or her primary reference group. As in romance, the passion to persuade others of ones truths may result in social conflict. In Polanyis view, All our cultural values are the deposit of a succession of past upheavals. 97 The accepted principles of science today are, therefore, largely the result of great controversies and upheavals in the past. 98 One consequence of these competitions to persuade is that our scientific outlook has been molded by generations of great men, who overwhelmed the whole of modern humanity by the power of their convictions. 99 Our societys current understanding of science consists of a vast system of beliefs, deeply rooted in our history [which are] cultivated today by a specially organized part of our society. 100 These elites of science often act as arbiters in controversies, and determine how recognition is to be distributed. Respect plays a crucial tacit role in Polanyis theory of the transmission of culture. Much of culture is transmitted by the example of adults to youth. Young people absorb their cultural forms and lore by pouring their minds into its fabric. 101 This requires a submission to authority. To learn by example is to submit to authority. 102 The art of speaking, which is a large part of culture, is tacitly transmitted from an authoritative person to a trusting pupil. 103 Such trusting submission constitutes the fiduciary relationship the young have with those teachers, masters, or other authorities.104 Arts and crafts, including scientific research, are best learned through personal contact. 105 As an apprentice to any kind of cultural achievement, you follow the master because you trust his manner of doing things. 106 Clearly, authority without respect would lack legitimacy, and without respect trust could not be extended. Therefore, cultural teachers,
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as transmitters of a fiduciary framework, are listened to as a voice which commands respect. 107 The youthful trust of authority, necessary for the transmission of culture, and the communicative motives behind the heuristic and persuasive passions, that went into the shaping of ones culture, have emerged from a long process of evolution. Polanyi understands them as naturally rooted in the primitive sentiments of fellowship that exist previous to articulation among all groups of men and even among animals. 108 In our view, these primitive sentiments of fellowship, which help to bond social groups, are elements of the innate social emotions of individuals. Respect for others, and the need for their respect, we suggest, can be understood empathically as an integral part of such sentiments. D) Indwelling with Respect. We have seen that Polanyis account of anthropogenesis leads into his understanding of mans calling and responsibility. He acknowledges that his depiction of life striving for the intensification of meaning implies a type of vitalism. He knew painfully well that this view is anathema to the dominant paradigm in biology. Yet, he had the courage to declare that his vitalism is mere common sense, and that the dominant school of biology has a bigoted mechanistic outlook. In making these assertions, he seems quite sure of himself. He then goes on to instruct the dominant biologists that biology would gain greatly in scope and depth by addressing itself more candidly to the fundamental features of life. 109 The principal feature he has in mind is personhood, the complex mental/physical unity that we humans share in various degrees with other living organisms. Polanyi not only rejects the lifeless mechanistic laws of nature that positivistic biology relies upon, but he boldly proposes new laws of nature, which would allow for the rise of consciousness in material processes. 110 Included among these new laws of nature must be the assumption that living beings have peculiar faculties for achieving biotic success. 111 These peculiar faculties sustain the natural striving of an organism for morphological rightness. Accepting this dimension of all organisms as fact is essential for explaining growth, regeneration, etc. After considering the magnitude of such statements, one may wonder how he can know so much more than the securely entrenched, well rewarded, highly esteemed dominant school of biology. How is it that his common sense illuminates new vistas on life about which the positivistic biologists are apparently in denial? The old saying, what you see depends upon where you stand, helps to explain why Polanyi has such confidence in his new suggested explanatory framework. 112 Polanyi takes a very different approach to knowing than the positivists. He refers to his approach as indwelling. All understanding is based on our dwelling in the particulars of that
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which we comprehend. Indwelling is also the instrument by which comprehensive entities are known throughout the world. 113 This is a very empathic approach. The observer makes an effort to dwell within the particulars of that which he is observing. He allows these particulars to become a part of himself in his effort to make sense of the subject as a whole. 114 A skilful, personal integration of particulars is central to this process of observation. In contrast, the positivist strives for detachment, as an alien observer who insists that the object is out there, to be described and only known objectively. All he sees is the physical surface of stuff. The extremists do not even allow themselves to imagine any sort of mental component in the objects they observe, not even the higher animals or other humans! 115 For them the very thought of entering into the mental component, or intentionality, of a subject is strictly prohibited by the rules of their interpretive framework. But Polanyian integrative indwelling permits awareness of mental components as natural parts of the whole of a living subject. One essential element of Polanyis empathic method is mutuality. That is, he does not address the living subject as an alien object with no human connections. To the contrary, he addresses other forms of life as manifestations of natural principles of which he too is a manifestation. From this point of view, an embodied mental component, containing such factors as self-awareness, intentionality, resourcefulness, and agency, however rudimentary in scale, ties the human observer to all the life forms he encounters. As he writes, Such indwelling is a participation of ours in the existence of that which we comprehend. 116 A recognition and acknowledgement of some degree of mutuality between observer and subject, then, is an element of this participation. As we will show, Polanyi also uses the word companionship to refer to this intimate relationship between scientist and subject matter. His theory of evolution as a process of emergence, then, is not known to him in some alien, detached way; instead, this kind of emergence is known to us from the inside. 117 In the Polanyian method the human observer identifies himself or herself with the embodied mental components of the subject. This indwelling enables the observer to comprehend the sentient effort, or strivings, of other living organisms. As an accomplished scientific researcher, Polanyi conveys his understanding of the intentionality of organic matter by reference to his personal experience. Anyone who has striven to solve a problem can use his or her personal experience to empathize with individual growth and the intentionality of organic evolution. 118 Thus, to understand these events from the inside, Polanyi invites us to consider the process of scientific discovery. In that process, the creative discoverer is guided by his intimations of a hidden knowledge. He senses the proximity of something unknown and strives passionately towards it. 119 Where this deliberate effort results in discovery, it is achieved by a supreme intensification of uniquely personal intimations. 120 Such personal intimations,
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effort, skill, and creativity cannot be accounted for mechanistically; for, machines are insentient. As we have seen, the growth of individual organisms entails a kind of striving to fulfill the morphological rightness of their species. Biologists can understand the experience of such a developing individual as analogous to mental unease that seeks appeasement of itself. 121 In other words, the sentient effort of a maturing individual is like our own sense of approaching the unknown solution of a problem, and the urge to pursue it. 122 Polanyi also suggests that one consider ones own experience of the approach of a recollection. 123 One may experience these approaches as if on a line of gradations, like a sought word or name just on the tip of ones tongue. Often, we can experience such gradients internally. 124 Thus, Polanyis method for knowing starts from different premises than those of the positivistic biologists. Such premises as the mutuality of personhood make indwelling possible, and this indwelling leads to all sorts of new understandings. It is from the logic of indwelling that I have derived the conception of a stratified universe and the evolutionary panorama, leading to the rise of man 125 In the logic of indwelling, Polanyi, as a living being, employs an empathic interpretive framework for understanding other living beings. This is his common sense: the mutuality of all living beings. Of course, this is a hierarchal mutuality; that is, out of lower organisms a hierarchy of increasingly more complex and sophisticated organisms has emerged. Here, then, is the reason why he can know so much more about the nature of organic matter than the members of the dominant school of biology. He is committed to a different point of view. We have illustrated Polanyis method for understanding living organisms in our discussions of his theory of evolution and personhood. This method can also be applied to the study of animals and humans. Applying the method entails bringing the particulars of a subject into ones own personhood, and absorbing and integrating the subject into oneself. As we have said, the process is highly empathic and personal in its application. Because the conduct of science relies on the personal judgment and personal characteristics of the particular scientist, it is impossible to formulate any precise rule of method, which can be carried out mechanistically and in the same manner by anyone. 126 The methods of a science can only be stated as maxims, the application of which itself forms a part of the art of knowing. 127 In Personal Knowledge, Polanyi reinterprets behavioral studies of animal learning and problem solving from his own point of view. This provides numerous instances of how he applies his method of indwelling. First, he disregards their mechanistic model of explanation. Then he interprets the animal learning reported in their studies as the process of discovery resulting from intelligent effort. 128
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One of Pavlovs experiments with dogs is an apt example. Pavlov deliberately frustrated dogs by presenting them with problems they thought would lead to food rewards if solved. But he made the problems too difficult to solve. The animals strained their ability to solve the problems to such a degree that it drove some of them into states of neurosis. Without commenting on the ethical implications of the experiments, Polanyi interprets the behavior of the dogs with empathy. By extending a mutuality of personhood to them, he sees their behavior as showing the depth to which the animals person is involved in such problem solving efforts. Through this indwelling we realize that the intelligence of the animal and our appreciation of it was convivial: it formed a link between his person and ours. 129 Such conviviality entails an empathic integrating of the subject into ones human personhood, so as to understand, as Polanyi says, its person. The application of this indwelling method is thus accompanied by an expansion of our fellow feeling which makes us aware of the animals sentience. 130 This fellow feeling is a direct result of assuming a proportional, or appropriate, mutuality of personhood. Polanyi says of his indwelling method that the feelings by which we appreciate the achievements of beings lower than ourselves, involve an extension of ourselves by which we participate in their achievements. 131 Polanyi acknowledges that indwelling from within the framework of human personhood entails anthropomorphic imputations. These imputations are required in his method of interpreting animal behavior. He states that they are deliberate, and can be justified against behaviorist objections. 132 As we have seen, he provides some of these justifications in his discussion of evolution and personhood. We humans emerged from the same stock as our animal cohorts. Another justification, in our opinion, is that the knowledge of animal behavior is far richer, and more commonsensical, from the Polanyian perspective than it ever could be from the alienated behavioral view. Polanyis common sense leads him to his own notion of what it means to be a person. Positivistic science attempts to study people with the methodological premises of physics and chemistry. But Polanyi rejects this approach as only appropriate for lifeless matter. For him, a science dealing with living persons appears now logically different from a science dealing with inanimate things. 133 A person has the capacities, among other things, for understanding a meaning, for believing a factual statement for reflecting on problems and exercising originality solving in them. 134 These, and other mental acts, all involve an act of personal judgment. 135 Polanyi rejects positivistic efforts to reduce the functions of the human mind to those with the uniformity of a machine, like a robot. No such machine can be said to think, feel, imagine, desire, mean, believe or judge something. 136 Polanyi insists upon a respectful model of man. Polanyis method of indwelling begins with extending mutuality from the knower to the known. Already one can see in this extension of mutuality a strong suggestion of respect. Respect seems implicated because indwelling entails both an extending of oneself into the subject, and an allowing of the subject to become a part of oneself. Such intimacy creates an empathic relation, which Polanyi calls companionship.
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For example, biologists can appraise the normal or abnormal characteristics of a specimen, its health or disease, with relative detachment; but when they consider the sentience of a creature, this elevates our knowledge of the living being into a critical meeting of it. 137 Then a measure of companionship exists between observer and subject. 138 While Polanyi does not make the point explicitly, to us it seems that such companionship could not likely exist without some measure of respect for the subject. The role of respect in indwelling becomes most apparent as the biological study of animals passes to the social scientific study of humans. For, interpersonal relations become ampler as we deal with higher animals, and even more as we reach the interhuman level. 139 In this transition from the animal to the human subject, there is an ascending from the I-It to the I-Thou and beyond it to the study of human greatness. 140 This constitutes a qualitative change in the scientists relation to his subject matter. Now, the scientist encounters a fellow participant in mans calling to know with universal intent through the idiom of his particular culture. 141 Mutuality prevails to such an extent here that the logical category of an observer facing an object becomes altogether inapplicable. The I-It situation has been gradually transformed into an I-Thou relation. 142 Respect, then, appears to be implicit, or a tacit coefficient, in the normal operations of our minds when encountering another human being with mutuality. In this person-to-person relationship, that is, when we study another person, our knowledge of him has definitely lost the character of an observation and has become an encounter instead. 143 A psychiatrist, for example, takes an I-It superior position in relation to his disturbed patient so as to observe the pathological mechanism in question. 144 By contrast, to acknowledge someone as a sane person is to establish a reciprocal relation to him. 145 Likewise, the characteristic encounter of an historian with an historical personage is continuous with the relation between the biologist and his living object. 146 PART II. NORMATIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE. A) Respect in Human Rationality. As we have seen, Polanyis idea of what is morphologically right for humans entails the notion of individuals seeking knowledge or beliefs about what is true and right, which they can hold responsibly; that is, with universal intent. We have also seen that one tacit coefficient of universal intent is the expression of respect for other rational minds, and the desire for their respect. In his main work, Personal Knowledge, Polanyi dwelt mostly on articulating the implications of knowing what is true. He only addressed the problem of knowing what is right as incidental to his primary concern. After the publication of Personal Knowledge, he started publishing essays, based on lectures about the problem of knowing what is right. Here, he displayed the same boldness of thought that he showed in his thinking on science, evolution, and human nature. In these writings, Polanyis conception of respect emerges into a central position.
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For example, in The Tacit Dimension, he observes, mans moral decisions form but a particular instance of the general principle of responsible human action. 147 This proposition is fundamental to Polanyis moral thought. In this context, he means that responsible human action is aimed at answering mans calling to know what is right, as well as what is true, with universal intent. And in either case, one must operate within ones personal limitations, and with the idiom of ones culture. As we noted earlier, Polanyi has observed that at the highest level of personhood we meet mans moral sense. 148 Thus, mans moral sense is one of the factors which distinguish human personhood from animal personhood. While self-preservation has been the rule among animals, the human moral sense opens up the potentiality for obedience to higher demands. 149 Polanyi never propounds specific moral demands. Since he is clearly aware that morality, like scientific knowledge, must be articulated within the limitations of ones cultural idiom, he writes that mans moral sense is guided by the firmament of his standards. 150 This firmament includes the individual pursuing his or her calling within their culture, and with their personal skills, limitations, etc. As in science, great minds can contribute insights that lesser minds would have never known without them. Thus, as people act within their distinctively human calling to know what is right with universal intent, their natural respect for other rational minds will rise, or intensify, to include the capacity to feel reverence for men greater than oneself. 151 As we have suggested above, Polanyis notion of universal intent contains within itself a natural respect for others as a tacit coefficient. In his writings on morality, Polanyi elevates that tacit component to the level of an articulated principle. People acting in their distinctive human capacity display their natural respect for one another. Of course, Polanyi was aware, as are we, of the all too numerous instances of humans failing to demonstrate their capacity to respect one another. Nevertheless, Even when this appears absent, its mere possibility is sufficient to demand our respect. 152 In other words, for Polanyi, the mere status of human personhood is sufficient grounds for a person to be worthy of the respect of others. For, however greatly we may love an animal, there is an emotion which no animal can evoke and which is commonly directed toward our fellow men. 153 That emotion is respect. We will expand upon this thesis in the remainder of this section. We define respect as a form of positive regard. Of course, positive regard can take many forms. For example, to have an interest in something is to show some positive regard for it. Simply by focusing ones attention on one subject out of the multitude, one gives preference to it. But, respect is a different kind of positive regard. Polanyi distinguishes respect from other forms of positive feelings. Polanyi sought in several different forms of expression to distinguish his notion of respect for humans from the positive regard one may feel towards an animal, or a thing, or an idea. He distinguished animal love from human respect a second time when he wrote, Animals may be lovable, but man alone can command respect, and in this sense we humans are the top of creation. 154 Later, in the same essay, he emphasized the point by commenting, I have said before that man is the only creature to whom we owe respect. 155
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Even in Personal Knowledge, where he was not directly concerned with exploring mans moral sense, Polanyi wrote that unlike with animals, we owe respect to our fellow men. Hence we know man to be the most precious fruit of creation. 156 This quote also shows that his conception of human respect had long been a part of his thought. Polanyi not only sought to distinguish human respect from animals, but also from the love of ideas. After he wrote, man is the only creature in the world to whom we owe respect, 157 he added that this respect is a different appreciation from that accorded to the harmonies of the inanimate world or to the excellence of lower forms of life. 158 Again, Polanyi distinguishes between respect for the truth and respect for the person when he writes, a man will demand respect for himself on the grounds of his own respect for the truth. 159 Thus, Polanyi clearly intends to focus on a special kind of positive regard, different than that we feel for animals or ideas, and which humans owe only to one another. As we have noted, Polanyi does not regard respect as a kind of commodity that people exchange, or withhold, from one another. Yet, his use of such phrases as man alone can command respect, or can demand respect, or that we owe respect to other people, may seem to put his notion of respect for persons on a deontological basis. But Polanyi does not regard respect merely as a duty. So, one may ask, what does he mean by owe? First, let us be clear about what his conception of owing respect is not. His use of the word owe is not, like a debt, an obligation one voluntarily incurs, as by making a promise. Nor is this owing of respect simply his own humanistic, yet arbitrary, personal commitment. He does not base this owing on any articulated religious belief, although he does observe that for some Europeans Christian aspirations spilled over into mans secular thoughts. 160 Nor is it a pragmatic principle based on the assumption that social and economic order would not be possible without mutual respect. His theory that respect is owed between persons is not grounded on a social contract theory; although his special theory of the republic of science has social contract implications between scientists. Respect is not given as a kind of reward for good behavior. Instead, as we have seen, respect is a part of mans moral sense as a higher demand than the biological strategy of self-preservation. 161 What, specifically, is the basis for Polanyis use of the word owing? His use of the word owe is unlike the uses of that word in other moral theories. In common practice, that word does have other uses. For example, one might say owing to the weather we did not go hiking. In this sense, owe means because of. Polanyi, then, can be understood as meaning because of a persons humanity, respect is due him or her; thus, we owe respect to man because he is the most precious fruit of creation. 162 In this usage, owe can also be read to imply merit, or that which is fitting, or appropriate; and, we suggest, natural. In other words, the feeling that respect is apropos of another person emerges unconditionally, when one rational mind recognizes
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the rationality in another. Indeed, We acknowledge the sanity of another mans mind by paying respect to him. By this act of appreciation we enter into a fellowship with him and acknowledge that we share with him the same firmament of obligations. This is how we come to understand it and accept it that he is a person capable of responsible choices. 163 Thus, respect naturally flows between those people who acknowledge one anothers rationality. Such an acknowledgement requires empathically extending ones own rationality to the other, and this places one person in an I-Thou relation with the other. For, to know another person as rational, one must dwell intimately in the particulars of that person, and, as we have seen, such indwelling implies respect. Human rationality, for Polanyi, is both the aim of mans calling, and the means by which people can answer their calling. Hence, Mans responsibility to standards of truth and rightness establish him as a rational person. 164 But this is not the rationality implied in Aristotles aphorism man is the rational animal. That rationality contemplated an Aristotelian conception of detached, logical thought, such as A is not non-A, the law of consistency in syllogistic reasoning, etc. Later, in the early days of science, rationality became a program of systematic doubt. For Polanyi, humans can and do use logic, but within the context of a vast tacit dimension. This dimension contains indeterminate aspects, such as personal judgment, personal skills, intellectual passions, and hunches and intuitions, which one cannot fully articulate. Within Polanyis broader conception of rationality, people pursue knowledge that they would not doubt, but which they can believe in with universal intent. And, as we have seen, striving for such beliefs necessarily entails respect for others. That respect also distinguishes human rationality from the problem solving, practical, means-ends rationality, which is prefigured in animals. Human practical reasoning is not different in kind from that in animals, but is a superior form of it. Therefore, distinctively human rationality necessarily involves human respect, and to be a rational person is to make decisions, and undertake actions, which manifest such respect. The foregoing discussion has shown that Polanyi ties the human moral sense to human rationality in many ways. Indeed, we suggest that for Polanyi, to be rational is to be moral, just as to be moral is to be rational. This is what is morphologically right for humans. It is the ultimate answer to mans calling. In other words, Polanyi is suggesting a non-supernatural, biologically evolved, basis in human nature for the future articulation of moral systems within the idiom of particular times and places. As he says, modern mans critical incisiveness must be reconciled with his unlimited moral demands, first of all, on secular grounds. 165 Thus, questions as to what is moral can be answered rationally. Both morality and rationality, like matters of fact, are subjects of appraisal. And this is the link to normative social science. For, if, as Polanyi says, Mans responsibility to standards of truth and
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rightness establish him as a rational person, then the term rational person can serve as a standard of appraisal for all human behavior. B) The Desensitization of Respect. If a Polanyian social science is to claim that respect is a natural predisposition for humans, then it must also explain why there are so many instances of human behavior that seem to show little or no respect between people. Nazis certainly showed no respect for the Jews and others whom they executed. But evidence of malice need not be interpreted as refuting the claim of natural respect between people. It only shows that the natural respect can be easily overridden by cultural factors. Campaigns of hatred, scapegoating, and persecution are commonplace throughout history. Desensitization to ones natural fellow feeling for others can be taught and learned for both good and ill. On the good side, medical students must learn to become desensitized to what Polanyi calls the physical sympathy naturally occurring at the sight of another persons terrible suffering. Surgeons and their nurses must become desensitized to the sight of surgical operations. Trained as a physician, Polanyi knew that even experienced doctors may faint or get sick at the sight of a deep incision in the eye of a patient. 166 Such physical sympathy seems to be an expression of a natural compassion, caring, and respect for others, to which one must become desensitized if one is to successfully function in certain social roles. Similar training may be required for otherwise ordinary people to be capable of engaging in evil actions. Polanyi comments that the most determined criminals are liable to be effected by physical compassion. 167 The Nazi, Heinrich Himmler, was the son of a pious, Roman Catholic schoolmaster who had once been tutor to the Bavarian Crown Prince. Before WWII, he was an ordinary fellow who studied agriculture and raised chickens. After becoming the head of Hitlers Gestapo, he decided to test the process of killing Jews. So he ordered that 100 Jews be killed in his presence. Citing historical records, Polanyi relates that Himmler came near to fainting at the sight. 168 Polanyi goes on to explain that one of the reasons for adopting the gas chamber method of executions was to reduce the bad feelings of the executioners. 169 Ironically, natural compassion seems to have been so ubiquitous among the Germans that the engineers of the death camps felt compassion for the executioners, even as the executioners were unable to fully suppress their natural compassion for their victims! The very necessity of using cultural methods to thus desensitize people, strongly suggests that the persons so trained had a natural compassion and respect for other members of the human race. Of course, learning can be a two-edge sword. That is, while desensitization to respect can be learned, as for example from a pathological teacher, so can the refinement of respect be learned. Polanyi often acknowledged the capacity of humans for learning. He wrote, for instance, that Although our fundamental propensities are innate, they are vastly modified and enlarged by our upbringing. 170 Humans can educate their desires and emotions when
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we control and refashion our appetites in conformity to social custom. 171 The study of art and music shows the possibility of the improvement of sensuous discrimination by training. 172 We read these comments by Polanyi, then, as setting the agenda for a normative social science. While he did not use those exact words, he did model the method that a normative social science must follow, if it is to be rational. Let us, then, examine that model. C) Respect in Dramatic History. For Polanyi, the study of man must start with an appreciation of man in the act of making responsible decisions. 173 He adds that the most striking examples of human decisions are recorded by history. 174 He is especially concerned with those political actions profoundly affecting the framework of existing power. 175 Great persons often spearhead these moments. Polanyi refers to the study of their careers as dramatic history. Hence, it is dramatic history that represents the most intimate approach to [understanding] the responsible decisions of man. 176 Polanyis discussion of dramatic history, then, is his vehicle for illustrating how a normative social science can proceed. One distinctive task for the historian is to understand the responsible decisions of historic personages. 177 This first requires that a decision be appraised as responsible. When an historic figure does act responsibly, the main reason for this action is that he or she has acted naturally as a rational person; hence, their actions will have had reasons, which other rational persons would agree were rational. The historic person has answered his or her particular calling to fulfill the elements of human morphological rightness. When a decision is appraised as not being rational, the historian may then leave to others the task of explaining the causes of this aberration from the norm for man. Understanding and explaining the causes of pathological behavior lies outside the historians distinctive task. 178 A neurologist or psychiatrist is better suited to explain the pathological behavior of a Tiberius or a Hitler. 179 Thus, when behavior cannot be understood at all in terms of reasons, the skills of another profession may be necessary to find the aberrant behaviors causes. The historian, then, looks for the rationality in the behavior of the actor under study. In the very act of identifying such behavior as rational, the historian is appraising that behavior. Historians must ask several probing questions in the course of their inquiry. These will include, in our words, is this behavior on record the sort of behavior that a rational person would have engaged in under these circumstances? If that behavior rises to the level of rational, the historian may further ask whether it does so by a bear minimum, or brilliantly exceeds the minimum of rationality, or falls along a gradient somewhere in between.
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The rational person standard is universal in the sense that human nature is universal. But it is not an ethical commandment. It is a descriptive category. The application of this rational person standard requires the personal judgment of the historian. That judgment will have been educated by the historians apprenticeship to the traditions of the field. And the field will have been enriched by the great minds that have contributed to it. Although opinions may vary, it is the general agreement of the connoisseurs, or experts, in the field that determines whether the historic person has acted rationally. All fields of inquiry create their own standards. For example, as Polanyi points out, animal psychologists have developed standards for the appraisal of an animals behavior as feeding. This action can be described as correct or mistaken. Good feeding, then, would be the act of eating nutritious food. But eating some substance with no nutritional value would not be considered a proper act of feeding, especially if it was poisonous! Sometimes only an expert can tell the difference. For example, an expert might recognize that an animal eating soil is actually ingesting minerals it does not obtain from plants. But an untrained observer might think that the animal had lost its mind. 180 Hence, the setting of standards is not an arbitrary process, but based upon experience and reason. In the same way, historians can developed an eye for gradients of rational behavior. Normative social science, then, must develop standards by which to appraise the rationality of the historic persons behavior. As we will show, Polanyi has modeled how this is to be done. In The Study of Man, he sets out maxims to guide the historians judgment as to whether, and to what degree, a decision can qualify as that of a rational person. This is his fourfold classification of deliberate choice. 181 We will illustrate these principles with examples that are not Polanyis, but ours. We do this to highlight some of the difficulties involved in the application of the principles to actual events. The first category is for those decisions that have been identified as rational. To win the American Revolution, for example, George Washington sometimes paid soldiers out of his own pocket. This was a self-sacrifice he endured for a larger cause. It was rational in a means-end sense, because he needed Colonial soldiers to fight the British. But he did not have to pay them himself. He could have ordered them, at bayonet point, to fight. Instead, the respect for others that is tacit in normal human reasoning led him to make that personal sacrifice. Rather than callously command, he considerately facilitated the participation of his soldiers. The next three categories constitute fallacies the historian might find in the decisions of historical actors, when the historian is evaluating historical actions. 182 The first of these is for decisions that constitute an error based on an otherwise correct interpretation of experience. 183 While Polanyi does not give this example, we will use a current event to illustrate his point. That is, political leaders in the United States knew from past experience that Iraqs Saddam Hussein was a dangerous dictator. He used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. A man who is a danger to his own people may be a danger to the United
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States; especially since the US recently drove his military out of Kuwait. When clues appeared suggesting that he was stockpiling more weapons of mass destruction to use against the US, or its allies in the region, the US engaged in a preemptive war. Later, the reasons for the war were found to be in error. Of course, this matter is controversial. Was the 2003 invasion of Iraq a rational decision? Some historians have suggested that if the responsible decision makers had had more respect for the lives of Iraqis, they would have shown more caution in reaching their conclusions about the reality of the danger facing the US. Other historians do not fault US leadership for its lack of rationality. Just as Churchill said of Neville Chamberlain, timidity at a time like that could cost American lives. In this view, the US government indeed acted quite rationally to protect American lives, given the available information at the time. Notice that respect for human life is an element for both pro and con arguments as to the rationality of the invasion. This matter is currently unresolved. However, as we have seen, science often proceeds by controversy, and history no less so. The next fallacy of historical actors involves the rational applications of an unacceptable framework. 184 For example, Aztecs once thought that their gods required human sacrifices in exchange for good crops and good fortune generally. While this is widely regarded nowadays as an unacceptable framework, historians might attempt to argue plausibly that the Aztecs rationally applied that framework by offering their gods human sacrifices. But this raises the question as to when, if ever, killing other people is rational. A good faith and reasonable belief that killing someone was necessary for self-defense may be justifiable, and considered rational. But to the extent that rationality entails respect for other people, one may question whether any killing of another is rational. The case of the Aztecs appears to leave the question unresolved as to whether they acted along the lines of a gradient of rationality, as the man who kills in self-defense; or, did they, like Hitler, act pathologically? The last fallacy is for pathological actions. 185 For example, Hitlers claim that the Jews were responsible for all the economic woes of Germany at the time is an unacceptable framework, based on the facts alone. Numerous bad decisions by German leadership, not the least of which were the choices resulting in WWI, were the causes of Germanys economic decline. But even if there were Jewish bankers who engaged in unfair lending practices, Hitlers final solution was so far from being a rational application of an unacceptable framework that it was entirely pathological a complete breakdown of rationality. Of course, historical actors are not the only ones who may commit fallacies. Historians, too, can think fallaciously. As we have said, for Polanyi, one dist...