Michael Polanyi
Michael Polanyi was "a world-class physical
chemist who turned to
philosophy at the height of his scientific career because he was dismayed at the abuses and restrictions that materialist philosophy, especially in its
Marxist guise, was inflicting on scientific research. The influential approach to the philosophy of science he articulated in response to this crisis was thoroughly non-reductive in character. He illustrated how philosophical, religious, psychological, sociological, and scientific concerns interact to affect each other's development, arguing that each perspective is essential and that none can be reduced to any other. Polanyi extended this multi-leveled analysis into his discussion of complexity in nature, arguing, for example, that the sort of complexity exhibited in
biology could never be reduced to the laws of
physics and
chemistry. The information content of a biological whole exceeds that of the sum of its parts."
Source: the now-defunct Michael Polanyi Center.
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