I am currently in a doctoral program, studying semiotics—cultural symbols—which requires a great deal of reading. Probably the greatest benefit of an education is the wise guide (teacher) who can give a curated tour of the best there is in any given subject, and such is the case with this program. Dr. Leonard Sweet has opened the door to an entire world of scholars and theologians who look beneath the surface of things and reveal mysteries. Now I would like to open that world to you.
Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy
This is a fascinating, engrossing book, with earnest wit, brilliance, both a scientist’s keen eye and a philosopher’s deep gaze.
My first question came during the foreword: “Are churches totalitarian societies? Is that why so many people do not dare question the prevailing theology and doctrine” (xvi–xvii)? I also am reading this book through a theologian’s lens:
“The avowed purpose of the exact sciences is to establish complete intellectual control over experience in terms of precise rules which can be formally set out [and empirically tested]” Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 18 (my brackets)
I think this is what systematic theology aims to do. Which is why I do not trust it.
Is the Subject of God All Sewn Up?
I think, in the paradigm where scientific truth is objective, the “pure” sciences of chemistry, mathematics, and physics are the pinnacle of objectivity because it is here that facts are unchangeably, unalterably true, so these would be the areas Polanyi spends his time to show that, in fact, the discoveries of truth in these realms were come to in a subjective way, not objective.
The reality that seems to explain the whole story is never the whole story.
Even quantum physics, which may seem to explain everything and finally describes the real, true, reality, may be only a faulty or partial explanation of things. But it is, at least, the farthest reach science has been able to go so far.
So, I wonder if this insistence that we can be purely objective (Polanyi’s whole book says we cannot be) is really about the longing to have mastery and control over creation. It is a deep-seated human yearning. We have no need to be scared by what we have mastered and can control.
But knowledge about science and knowledge about God are two entirely different realms.
So, it is unsettling to me that all that theologians think can be discovered about God has long since been found, and it has all been written up, codified, signs and symbols established, and now it is given to us to faithfully keep the traditions. God, I guess, is finite after all, since there will always be more to discover about physics and math (human inventions) but we’ve got God all sewn up (read that with a heavy dose of irony).
Or, I could say we are less afraid of the unknowns in the cosmos, because we are willing to admit there is always more to discover, but more afraid of God so we have convinced ourselves we already know everything there is to know. If that is the case, then this fear is not the beginning of wisdom, it is the endpoint of foolishness,
I want to be a physics semiotics theologian. I want to continue to discover more about God, I want to move from the world of Newtonian theology to the dimension of quantum theology, Jesus who is both human and God, Who is the living word of God.
Thesis for Personal Knowledge
Polanyi gives his thesis statement a number of times, but I thought this one was fairly straightforward and succinct: “… The whole process of discovery and confirmation ultimately relies on our own accrediting of our own vision of reality” (p 130). This is true of faith and belief as well. (There is a longer one on page 195, really well-written).
I am so glad we read Primal Knowledge first, because this is the philosophical treatise that supports Fletcher’s findings. Polanyi writes of
- Intuition
- of the subsidiary awareness of art and skill while focusing
- the process of discovery in which a problem is solved, and the intensity of the surprise
- that all creatures including earthworms have this capacity to imagine when A leads to B
- that latent learning is what drives interpretation
- and resiliency.
Polanyi is saying there is no such thing as being truly objective because we all have tacit knowledge of what we understand reality to be. The only way Einstein could come up with his theory of relativity was to create a whole new framework for reality and enter into that new framework, mentally, as though it really were reality in order to see how the data he had could be explained better.
Well, and he was right. But nobody would ever have made the discoveries he did without agreeing to step into his quantum world. And then Polanyi said that even Einstein was held back from seeing truth because of tacit knowledge he was unable to get past.
I really took to heart what Polanyi said about the public’s reaction when presented with this kind of new paradigm. They hate it! It enrages them!
Tacit Knowledge
But the insight he has given me about tacit knowledge, well, I cannot stop thinking about it. That knowledge that we attain as infants and children of how the world works, of what is real and reality (p 97, 112). That tacit knowledge creates the framework for our later hypotheses.
I remember reading Jesus’s statement to Thomas for the very first time when I was nine years old.
Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
John 20:29 NRSVUE
I felt a little sad about that, because I knew I, like Thomas, would not get that extra blessing Jesus spoke of, because I had seen the risen Lord often when I was younger. I did not need to wonder if Jesus were real. I knew he was … and is. Mine is a faith by sight. But also, I now have words and a concept to explain how I see reality, because seeing Jesus so often was part of the development of what I know is reality. Whatever I now think about is within this framework. This is also the framework that gives meaning to the signs all around me.
The sign or the symbol can be conceived as such only in the eyes of a person who relies on them to achieve or to signify something. This reliance is of personal commitment which is involved in all acts of intelligence by which we integrate some things subsidiary to the center of our focal attention (p 61).
And later, Polanyi says, “All personal knowing appraises what it knows by a standard set to itself” (p 63). Sometimes this leads us to false discoveries, or we are led to true and lasting discoveries but through mixed ways. And sometimes, this prevents us from seeing our way to discovery. In fact, Polanyi pointed out that even Kepler and Einstein were held back by their unwillingness to relinquish what they felt they tacitly knew (knew in their bones) about reality (p 145).
A Believer’s Tacit Knowledge
I think conversion, as Polanyi describes what happens during the process of discovery, is that reality is not what one thought it was. Discovery changes our understanding of reality, which is why it’s irreversible, and if true truth is discovered, it is timeless.
Our tacit knowledge, as believers, includes all we have learned about spiritual reality (catechisms, Sunday school, hymnody and praise songs, prayers and liturgies, and so forth). But what happens when we are reading the Bible, let us say, and discover the meaning of an ancient word that upends everything we thought we knew? Do we resist this alteration of what we thought was reality? Or do we allow our curiosity and imagination to pull us into the new paradigm it suggests?
For a musician, being one with the music, experiencing the music, is perhaps akin to what Polanyi means by experiencing the content of discovery in the moments of realization. To the believer, this is living in the supernatural zone, knowing that what I am experiencing, thinking, doing, and saying is all a part of what the Lord is doing right here, right now. An apprentice becomes engrossed with what she is learning from the master, and the sense of discovery when she gets it is a taste of that glory.
Tacit Knowledge Embedded in Language
Polanyi’s insight about language is also intriguing. Paul Tripp once wrote that God’s first gift to humankind was language, which enables us to understand and commune with God in ways no other creature can (I would add, of course, that God has given us God’s own breath as well). It is this capacity that makes us able to think and have the intellect we do, we organize our data and continue to think about it, which leads to
- a kind of knowing that we cannot really articulate, but we do know (and which Polanyi was reluctant to discuss in terms of mysticism. But he did get there eventually, pp 197–198)
- a kind of knowing we can articulate,
- and a kind of knowing that is really more prophetic, that we will need to create language for (ala Professor Leonard Sweet; p 87).
Tacit Knowledge in Sensing
It would be another 60 years before Stradivari’s and Guarneri’s secret would be discovered, by the way. Yes, it had something to do with subsidiary skill that fell in the category of a knowing that cannot be articulated, but it also had to do with very concrete tools and method. When the instrument was completely finished, these masters would lock themselves alone in their studios so that no one could see what they did.
Then they used very delicate sanders to sand the underneath of the top plate just around the soundpost. The master had to have a very sensitive hand, a very attuned ear, listening to the resonance of the instrument, and patience as the master made one minute change here, and another there, sanding ever so softly and gently,.
Tacit Knowledge Leading to Discovery
Polanyi’s discussion about discovery reminded me of what happens during conversion, a powerful and irreversible change (pp 106, 143). This is why many Bible studies and sermons do not really stick. Because discovery is what changes someone, not being told what to think and do. It is better to lead a time of discovery, to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, to rewrite the catechism at regular intervals.
When we, as teachers of the Bible, feel threatened by questions that unsettle our tacit knowledge it seems better to me to let the young scientist hypothesize and test. Perhaps there is a piece we also need to learn, after all . It is all too often true that when new theology, a new understanding of God, is proposed, the public is outraged, and there is turmoil (p 202).
How can we dismantle that response while keeping a sense of safety that asking and experimenting will not make God disappear, or send us down the proverbial slippery slope?
I smiled at the discourse on obsession (p 127). This is what one has to have in a doctoral program, am pretty sure, for it to be a success. But this is also what every believer must have in order to go deep with the Lord.
Polanyi spoke a lot about signs, about the text as signs, about finding new signs to accommodate new ideas, and about making signs manageable. What signs are you hoping to refresh, or redo in your church, or for yourself?
