Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

or concepts are brought into an older system of language, both affect each other. The systemitself enriches what the individual has brought into it 32 .A second relevant element in Polanyi’s work is based on the correlate of the formerideas, which is that knowledge is social. Subsequently Polanyi criticizes the ideal of objectivity 33 .Instead, Polanyi asserted that much of science stems from guesswork and intuition and thatalthough, in theory, science is continually modifiable, in practice it doesn’t work like that.‘The part played by new observations and experiment in the process of discovery is usuallyover-estimated’, he noted. It is not so much new facts that advance science but newinterpretations of known facts, or the discovery of new mechanisms or systems that accountfor known facts. Moreover, advances often have the character of “gestalt”, as when peoplesuddenly “see” something that had been meaningless before. His point was that scientistsactually behave far more intuitively than they think, and that, rather than being absolutelyneutral or disengaged in their research, they start with a conscience, a scientific conscience.This conscience operates in more than one way. It guides the scientist in choosing the pathof discovery, but also guides him in accepting what results are “true” and which not, or needfurther study 34 .Indeed, intuition, again a tacit element, plays an underestimated role in the growth ofscience, Polanyi repeatedly asserts. As he explains, science grows through the discovery ofinteresting problems: ‘problems are the goad and the guide of all intellectual effort, whichharass and beguile us into the search for ever-deeper understanding of things. For knowing isalways a tension alerted by largely unspecifiable clues on which we rely for attending to it’ 35 .All search starts by a process of collecting clues that intrigue the inquiring mind, clues thatwill largely be like peripheral clues of perception, not noticed or not even notable inthemselves. A scientist must have the gift of seeing the problem where others see none, ofsensing the direction towards solution where others find no bearings, and eventuallyrevealing a solution that is a surprise to all 36 . Boyd was to incorporate this insight using theterm “mismatch” in stead of problem or tension.Science thus starts with the act of perception. Perception, according to Polanyi, ‘isperformed by straining our attention towards a problematic centre while relying on hiddenclues which are eventually embodied in the appearance of an object recognized byperception 37 . This is also how the pursuit of science proceeds. This is the unaccountableelement, which enters into science at its source and vitally participates throughout even in itsfinal result. In science this element has been called intuition. Intuition is a skill, rooted in ournatural sensibility to hidden patterns and developed to effectiveness by a process of learning.Great powers of scientific intuition are called originality, for they discover things that aremost surprising and make men see the world in a new way’ 38 . ‘It is customary today torepresent the process of scientific inquiry as the setting up of a hypothesis followed by itssubsequent testing’, Polanyi continues, ‘I cannot accept these terms. All true scientificresearch starts with hitting on a deep and promising problem, and this is half the32 On p.173, Polanyi even includes the notion that ‘the experience of our senses is somehow to beaccounted for in terms of neural processes within our body’, an idea that will resurface later on in thenext chapters.33 And in the nineties his work has come to be seen by many professional philosophers as part of theshift to a post-modern context for philosophical thought.34 Watson, p.472.35 Polanyi, p.117.36 Ibid.37 Ibid.38 Ibid, p.118.87