Michael Polanyi

"The recognition of certain basic impossibilities has laid the foundations of some major principles of physics and chemistry; similarly, recognition of the impossibility of understanding living things …"

"Our view of life must account for how we know life; biological theories must allow for their own discovery and employment. Theories of evolution must provide for the creative acts which brought such t…"

"The confidence placed in physical theory owes much to its possessing the same kind of excellence from which pure geometry and pure mathematics in general derive their interest, and for the sake of whi…"

"The descriptive sciences rely on skill and connoisseurship. At all these points the act of knowing includes an appraisal; and this personal coefficient, which shapes all factual knowledge, bridges in …"

"No sincere assertion of fact is essentially unaccompanied by feelings of intellectual satisfaction or of a persuasive desire and a sense of personal responsibility."

"Comprehension is neither an arbitrary act nor a passive experience, but a responsible act claiming universal validity. Such knowing is indeed objective in the sense of establishing contact with a hidd…"

"To learn by example is to submit to authority. ...By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including…"

"In a strict usage the same symbol should never represent the act of sincerely asserting something and the content of what is asserted. For the symbolic distinction between the two, Frege has introduce…"