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2011 Springer Basel AG 1422-6944/11/030329-30 DOI 10.1007/s00016-010-0050-5

Physics in Perspective

Wigners Polanyian Epistemology and the Measurement Problem: The WignerPolanyi Dialog on Tacit Knowledge
Stefania Jha*
I analyze the long dialog that Eugene Wigner (1902-1995) and Michael Polanyi (18911976) carried out on Polanyis concept of tacit knowledge and its meaning for the measurement problem in quantum physics, focusing in particular on their ten-year correspondence between 1961 and 1971 on these subjects and the related mind-body problem. They differed in their interpretations, epistemologies, and ontologies, and consequently never resolved their differences on the measurement and mind-body problems. Nonetheless, their long dialog is signicant and opens up avenues for exploring these problems further.

Key words: Eugene Wigner; Michael Polanyi; John von Neumann; Paul Feyerabend; Hilary Putnam; tacit knowledge; scientic discovery; measurement problem in quantum physics; mind-body problem; epistemology; ontology; history of physics; philosophy of physics.

Introduction
Eugene Wigner puzzled a long time over Michael Polanyis concept of tacit knowledge and its meaning for the measurement problem in quantum physics. I analyze their ten-year dialog on Polanyis concept and the measurement problem based upon their published writings and their unpublished correspondence between 1961 and 1971. Michael Polanyi (18911976) was the mentor of Eugene Wigner (19021995) in Berlin, Germany, in the 1920s and a leader of the expatriate scientists and intellectuals whom he called the society of explorers. In 1925 and 1928, Polanyi and Wigner (gure 1) wrote two joint groundbreaking papers in physical chemistry.1 Polanyi also shared his interest in epistemology with Wigner and his other colleagues. He was convinced that explicit descriptions and denitions do not capture
* Stefania Jha received her Ed.D. degree in philosophy and science studies at Harvard University in 1995 and carried out research at the Harvard Philosophy of Education Research Center and Project Zero until 2004, after which she was a Research Fellow at the Boston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science until 2008. She is the author of Reconsidering Michael Polanyis Philosophy (2002).

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a scientists knowledge of phenomena, that the foundation of all knowledge is tacit knowledge, which he explored by investigating the process of scientic discovery. To Polanyi, epistemology meant a combination of informal logic, psychology, and background knowledge. To Wigner, epistemology meant exploring the question, How do we know something is real? He was intrigued by Polanyis notion of tacit knowledge and his thinking on the mind-body problem. Polanyi explained the complex concept of tacit knowledge by a multitiered analogy of Gestalt perception, tactile perception, and meaning-making, and ultimately by an analogy with visionary art, by which he showed how incompatible elements are integrated by the act of imagination into a novel joint meaning, the understanding of which is achieved by indwelling, a tacit act of making sense. Wigner was not satised with Polanyis suggestion as a solution to the measurement problem in quantum physics, so their long dialog was inconclusive. Nonetheless, their correspondence suggests possible avenues for exploring it further. Wigner was searching for a new science to solve the measurement problem, something between physics and psychology. In his famous 1959 paper, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,2 he expressed his debt to Polanyi, saying that many years earlier Polanyi had inuenced his thinking deeply on epistemological problems.3 Polanyi, as a laboratory director with a strong philosophical bent, had instilled in Wigner and other young physical scientists an attitude of openness to inquiry, and he had investigated the phenomena of invention and discovery. Wigner mused: it is not at all natural that laws of nature exist, much less that man is able to discover them.4 By 1959 Polanyi had published a number of papers and two books on his new epistemology of personal knowledge, knowledge of a knowing subject that is still

Fig. 1. Michael Polanyi (18911976) with his son John (b. 1929) and Eugene Wigner (19021995). Credit: Published by permission of John C. Polanyi.

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objective. As his correspondence with Wigner shows, his new epistemology gave Wigner hope that the measurement problem could be solved. Wigner noted at the end of his 1959 paper that if no coherent theory of consciousness could be formulated similar to the coherent theories of the physical sciences, then scientists faith in the reality of their concepts would be strained. Still, as Fritz Rohrlich, playing on Wigners title, wrote in his 1996 paper, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Physical Intuition: Success While Ignoring Objections: [The] problems that were ignored turned out to be considerably more difcult than the problems that were actually solved; typically, their solution required a much deeper level of theory than the level on which progress was made. [One] wonders whether the measurement problem of quantum mechanics is of this nature. Seventy years of effort [has] not resulted in a denite solution.5 John von Neumann (19031957, gure 2) presented a famous version of a coherent theory in his theory of automata in a paper he read at the Hixon symposium at the California Institute of Technology in 19486 to which Wigner referred in his Festschrift paper for Polanyi in 1961, The Probability of the Existence of a Self-Reproducing Unit.7 Von Neumanns proposal of self-replicating machines was based on the Turing model, but he understood that it did not apply to living systems. Wigner pointed out that his own speculative model did, with reservations, noting that the present laws of physics do not incorporate the inuence of consciousness on matter, and the present laws of nature do not include the mutual inuence of living matter and consciousness. He suggested that the inuence of consciousness on matter is analogous to the inuence of light on matter in the Compton effect. Wigners analogy assumed that the living state is completely given in the quantum mechanical sense, and in 1961 he carried out a calculation to support it,8 but said that these calculations are limited, and the assumption is unrealistic. A living organism is not completely determined in this sense, however, since it is represented by many states.

The WignerPolanyi Dialog on the Mind-Body Problem

Wigner and Polanyi never resolved their disagreement on the mind-body problem. Their discussions began following Wigners contribution to Polanyis Festschrift. Polanyi, in a letter of April 3, 1961,9 stated emphatically that Wigners position amounted to reductionism, and that no reduction of mental to physical is possible. He drew an analogy to a machine, which is dened by its function, not by its parts. This, however, was only a partial analogy, and a misleading one that Wigner had taken to suggest insentience. Machines are constructed for a purpose, while the purpose of living organisms is intrinsic to themselves. Therefore, said Polanyi, the reductionist explanation of living organisms as machines that are completely dened by their physical and chemical properties is false. To explain living organisms by the properties of communication is also false.

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` Fig. 2. John von Neumann (19031957). Credit: American Institute of Physics Emilio Segre Visual Archives.

A set of objects may be said to carry the same message if each member of the set has the same meaning. Communications work by embodying their own peculiar operational principles; no physical-chemical analysis of an object conveying a communication will reveal its meaning. In fact, no object has a meaning. It can mean something only to a person who means something by it. Polanyi went on to say that if Wigner were to test his reductionist hypothesis he would nd that his claim that it is opposed to von Neumanns theory is misleading. For, if I am right in the interpretation of your argument, it should exclude the possibility of machines or communications being formed according to laws of quantum mechanics from inanimate matter not already embodying communications or operational principles of machines. Polanyi admitted that Wigners mathematical proof of his hypothesis was over his head, and that he was only arguing for the reasonableness of his position. Wigner replied one week later, saying that his proof claims that it is innitely unlikely that there are systems which are self-reproducing. This is a statement similar to statements used in thermodynamics, where we always assume that it is innitely unlikely.10 Wigner believed that von Neumann was rmly convinced of this conclusion with regard to living beings (that is, of the unlikelihood that

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self-reproducing units of living beings could arise) even though von Neumann did not publish his thoughts on this question.* At a conference in 1961 Wigner took another tack on the problem of how to deal with the quantum-mechanical theory of observation, but this time from the angle of the concept of the real. In his article, Two Kinds of Reality,11 he offered a dualist position. The rst kind of reality is consciousness, an obvious fact that is often disregarded when focusing on the content of consciousness, that is, on everything other than ones own consciousness, which is the second kind of reality. Normally, one is unaware of the operations of ones own mind, except in the process of learning something. (Wigners favorite source of explanation of conscious and unconscious processes was Jacques Hadamards clear but general description of mathematical invention.12) Wigner considered the rst reality, which he called personal reality, as absolute or possibly a limiting case of consciousness. The second reality, that of objects, is sharply divided from the rst, is of various degrees of probability (although we accept them as real), and is of the same type and degree of reality as that of consciousness of others and spiritual values. This, he stated, is the only known point of view which is consistent with quantum mechanics. This second type of reality is the universal or impersonal reality whose concept cannot be made meaningful without accounting for the phenomenon of mind and integrating it into our understanding of physical phenomena.13 Wigners two kinds of reality are related in that absolute reality is not indeve belief) pendent of the constructs of universal reality, and both (contrary to na share the property of impermanence. Scientic thinking before quantum mechanics considered consciousness as having no inuence on scientic explanation, while after quantum mechanics an explanation should give an account of a phenomenon, its circumstances, and its related phenomena.14 In terms of the paradox of measurement, this meant that a measurement (reading) cannot be interpreted if the properties of the measuring apparatus are unknown or not taken into consideration, that is, the correlation between the object and the measuring apparatus must be taken into account. This has been done unsatisfactorily and will require studying concept-forming abilities and what we call intelligence, a fully awake consciousnessWigners example was that of von Neumanns mind. Wigner thus was puzzling through the mind-body problem, a traditionally difcult problem that he seemingly made even more difcult by slicing the world into two kinds of reality whose relationship now required explanation, instead of embracing a continuum from personal to objective reality as Polanyi did. In a letter of October 6, 1961,15 Wigner expressed high interest in Polanyis forthcoming article on the mind-body problem in the context of his theory of tacit
* Von Neumanns last speculations on natural and articial memory was in his Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman Memorial Lectures at Yale University in 1955, published posthumously as The Computer and the Brain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958).

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knowledge.16 He agreed with Polanyis conclusion, but was unconvinced by Polanyis argument for it. In his article Polanyi (gure 3) concluded that entities are made up of consecutive levels of existence, each level relying for its workings on the laws of the level below it, but that the operation of a higher level cannot be accounted for by the laws of lower levels, that is, in terms of particulars. The boundary condition between levels is dened such that the principles of each level operate under the control of the next higher level. The possibility of the extent of the explicit description of particulars varies with levels, and their connections, which form the comprehensive entity, vary with the systems (objects, living entities, skills, responsible judgment). Polanyis conception of reality thus is hierarchical: more complex entities seem to be more real; the mind, for instance, is more real than a stone. The general idea of Polanyis argument to support this claim is that the higher the level, the more difcult it is to state explicitly and fully all of the connections of the particulars that make the entity function as a whole. (The description of the entity is underdetermined.) He goes further to claim that one cannot identify particulars except by previously attending to the entity as a whole. Specically, the workings of the mind cannot be explained by particular behaviors, or by equating the mind with its workings: The workings of the mind and the observations it makes cannot be focused on simultaneously; the foci are mutually exclusive; one cannot attend simultaneously to the object of an action and to the action itself.

Fig. 3. Michael Polanyi (18911976) at the University of Manchester ca. 1937. Credit: Published by permission of John C. Polanyi.

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To explain the use of his partial analogy of machine-like hierarchical levels, Polanyi noted that machines and living systems are alike in that both systems are unspeciable in their particulars.17 If a causal explanation is sought, one must say that the initial conditions of machines (which are controlled by the laws of technology and cannot be accounted for by the laws of physics and chemistry) must be taken into account before one can rely on the operation of machines to make predictions.18 By analogy, taking the living body as a machine, its parameters are just as undetermined by physics and chemistry as those of a machine. Consciousness must be recognized as acting as a rst cause for a machinehuman intelligence created it. For the sake of continuity and by analogy, one would have to postulate a sentient rst cause of organic evolution.19 There has been much speculation about how living beings evolved from inanimate matter. A mechanistic conception of the universe would lead one to hypothesize either that living beings were preformed by suitable patterns of parameters, in which case there would be nothing new and the notion of randomness would have to be abandoned, or that living beings would have to be represented as insentient automata.* Living organisms have offered a clue by the process of repair and adjustment in embryonic development and beyond: Gestalt psychologists likened these primitive integrations to the ability of animals to reorganize their eld of experience, and the ability of human beings to innovate at a much faster pace than evolutionary changes.** However, the scope of causes at the highest level is restricted by time and place, and causes are directed toward possibilities of innovation. (Polanyi was accused of entelechy, but he was simply claiming a teleological process, a vector.20) Polanyis conception of the relationship of epistemology to ontology is somewhat peculiar, and can be misleading for those who are looking for clear delineations between the two. Polanyi wrote:

* For Polanyi, randomness is an example of emergence to higher ontological levels, in the sense that an increase in randomness increases entropy and increases the possibility for new combinations. Degrees of randomness can occur by occasional uctuations caused by internal or external forces; a decrease in randomness means that the system would sort itself out and become more predictable; see Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (ref. 17), p. 391. ** When Polanyi speculated on the evolution of man, he said: [The] rise of man includes a continuous intensication of individuality, similar to that which normally takes place in the formation of a human person from a parental zygote. No new creative agent, therefore, need be said to enter an emergent system at consecutive new stages of being. Novel forms of existence take control of the system by a process of maturation; see Personal Knowledge (ref. 17), p. 395. Polanyis notion of maturation in his ontology is analogous to meaningmaking in his epistemology. His epistemology and ontology are isomorphic. This is shown in Polanyis book, The Tacit Dimension (ref. 40), pp. 33, 55, in his article, The Structure of Consciousness (ref. 39), p. 213, and is demonstrated in Polanyis problematic architectonic: a critique, in Jha, Reconsidering (ref. 20), Chapter 9, pp. 224-243, especially pp. 225, n. 4, and 229.

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[Strictly] speaking, it is not the emerged higher form of being, but our knowledge of it, that is unspeciable in terms of its lower level particulars. We cannot speak of emergence, therefore, except in conjunction with a corresponding progression from a lower to a higher conceptual level. And we realize then that conceptual progression may not always be existential, but that it becomes so by degrees.21 That is, Polanyis ontology is generated out of and is isomorphic with his epistemology. Wigner was unconvinced by Polanyis arguments. As he said in his letter of October 6, 1961: If we had a state of very low entropy, the subsequent increase of entropy may lead through stages of surprising regularities [for example, the development of the solar system]. I do not believe that the case which you consider is comparable with this example but the fact of surprising regularities remains. [I] realize that no argument on this question can be rigorous. Polanyi and Wigners next substantive exchange occurred after Polanyi sent Wigner a copy of his 1962 article, Tacit Knowing: Its Bearing on Some Problems of Philosophy,22 which was based on one of his Terry Lectures at Yale University. In it Polanyi explored his notion that all understanding is grounded in tacit knowing, and all understanding is achieved by the act of indwelling. When exercising a skill we literally dwell in innumerable muscular acts which contribute to its purpose, a purpose which constitutes their joint meaning.23 It is a mistake to distinguish indwelling from observation as practiced in the natural sciences: This is a matter of degree, a continuum: indwelling is less deep when observing an object than when understanding a work of art or a person. Indwelling bridges the gap between the two modes by rooting a person in the awareness of his body. [We] are able to make sense of clues or particulars to which we are not attending at the moment, by relying on our awareness of them for attending to something elseso that the appearance of that to which we are attending may be said to be the meaning of these clues or particulars. Once we had grasped this way of making sense, we also realized that the position at which the meaning of the clues appeared to be situated did not coincide with the position of the clues themselves and could lie in some cases nearer to, in others further away from them.24 This can be taken as Polanyis explanation of Wigners puzzle about the measurement problem, and it is his most direct reference to it in terms of tacit knowing: it is the observers act of making sense. Neurological studies, motion studies in skill acquisition, language analyses all attempt to understand tacit knowing, in which we attend to something by relying on clues, elements, particulars, that we are not attending to at the time. This

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phenomenon may be called intuitive, which these studies attempt to formalize, to capture fully by specifying the elements and explicitly stating the rules of integration into wholes. Since, however, focusing on the elements destroys the meaning of the whole (whether a piece of art, a physiognomy, or a skill) no such formalization is possibleone has to limit oneself in specifying to discover maxims that can be applied artfully. In the main, the original tacit act will remain tacit. Tacit knowing can integrate conicting clues in various ways,25 and can resolve a contradiction by revealing their joint meaning in terms of a new quality (for instance, stereo sound). The theory of phenomenalism teaches one to consider sense data as ultimate information about the outside world, and to regard our knowledge of the objects to which sense data refer, as based on inference from these data. This gives rise to the insoluble problem of the manner in which such inference can be carried out. [It seems Polanyi thought this may be Wigners problem.] The school of linguistic analysis disposed of this problem by afrming that we never perceive sense data as such, but are aware of them only as qualities of objects, which are what we actually do perceive.26 Polanyi added that we do not see sense data until we make an intelligent effort to see the objects of which these are the qualities. This intelligent effort is tacit integration by which the object is recognized as the meaning of the sense data. It is not an explicit process (such as was Wigners calculation): Trying to make it explicit makes the problem insoluble. A scientist focuses on the meaning of the clues while groping toward new ideas and evidence, following his hunches. How does one then deal with the problem of how primary qualities give rise to secondary qualities? Primary qualities today mean the parameters of statistical functions as determined by quantum physics. How do these give rise to secondary qualities such as color or sound by an arrangement of these parameters? Primary qualities represent the objective reality of all things and secondary qualities [are] deemed to be subjective.27 The question then is, how do we experience color or sound, for example, which are not directly derivable from the conceptual framework of physics? How do we explain things by this bottom-up method? Polanyis theory of hierarchies of laws would afrm that we cannot, as he illustrated by his example of the levels of structure and function of a machine. The operational principles of a machine and its function (for a purpose) dene or explain a machine, not its primary qualities. Another example is that of a map: The elements of a map are meaningless by themselves; only when the elements are integrated into a whole do we recognize the whole as having the meaning map (a gure that functions as a map). The elements were integrated by the process of tacit knowing.

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Polanyis Analysis of Knowing

The process of knowing occurs in two stages: subsidiary attention and focal attention. The latter relies on the former, for example, when it becomes apparent that we are looking at a map of a city, that is, the map is in our focal awareness. By relying on various clues, the elements of which are in our subsidiary awareness that our tacit knowing integrates, we are able to understand what we are looking at. The map is dened by the meaning we give it, by its function, not by the lines and their positions in space that compose it. This process cannot be dismissed as a purely psychological process. Since its result can be fallible, the process is one of logical inferencea tacit logical inference. It is personal judgment, and it is used in scientic inquiry. In a letter of December 17, 1962,28 Wigner reacted to Polanyis rather thick description of tacit knowing and his various illustrations and analogies. Wigner was confused about the details, but agreed with Polanyis general idea that there is tacit knowing. He wrote: There is only one sharp distinction that may exist between [tacit and subconscious knowledge]. [We] can not consciously recall the time of a subconscious thought. This is the measurement problem in quantum physics that Wigner (gure 4) had been struggling with for some time, and for which he looked to Polanyis notion of tacit knowledge for help. Wigner continued: Your point of the absurdness of disregarding what you call tacit has often occurred to me. First, actually, when analyzing the epistemology of quantum mechanics. This purports to give probability connections between subsequent observations. However, by observations they mean conscious impressions. If one tries to think this through, one soon realizes the absurdity of the position. How do we know the properties of the apparatus which we use for our measurements (observations). Evidently, from having observed the apparatus. This preliminary observation tells us whether we have a grating or a microscope at hand. However, this evidently involves us into an endless process and we must, rather admit that we have some knowledge which developed in our unconscious, as your tacit knowledge, without conscious observations. Wigners complaint may be correct about Polanyis 1962 article, Tacit Knowing: Its Bearing on Some Problems in Philosophy,29 but in an earlier 1961 article in Mind, Knowing and Being,30 Polanyi gave a detailed explanation of tacit knowing as constituted of various levels of consciousness. He also did in the book, The Scientist Speculates, to which both he and Wigner contributed.31 Wigner also said in his letter that he found lacking in Polanyis writings any discussions of innate knowledge, inherited knowledge in animal instinct, inherited capabilities, and the like, all of which constitute a much larger part of our knowledge than our

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` Fig. 4. Eugene Wigner (19021995) in 1956. Credit: American Institute of Physics Emilio Segre Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection.

learned conscious knowledge. When we speak about ourselves, we speak of this small part, our conscious knowledge, and we speak of it as a possession. It seems that Wigner had not yet read Polanyis 1958 book, Personal Knowledge.32 A two-year gap now followed in their correspondence, during which both Wigner and Polanyi wrote on related topics. Wigner wrote on Remarks on the Mind-Body Question* (interference of the observer in measurement),33 Two Kinds of Reality (consciousness and objects),34 and the Problem of Measurement (the orthodox view and its critique),35 while Polanyi wrote My Time with X-rays and Crystals (on discovery),36 and The Unaccountable Element in Science (on intuitive surmise and informal decision making, Kants mother-wit, and Gestalt perception).37 All of their papers explore how the mind interacts with or understands physical reality. If they were discussing or following each others efforts, we have to glean this from these essays.

* Abner Shimony has explained that Wigner considered hypotheses other than the hypothesis I discuss, that the reduction of the superposition is the work of consciousness, but did not choose among them. One of Wigners proposed tentative solutions (Wigners solution) to the various problems in the quantum theory of measurement was that consciousness may play a role in the reduction of the wave packet, but while evaluating H.D. Zehs observation that the macroscopic measuring apparatus is not a closed system, he was skeptical that this observation could solve the reduction of the superposition. See Abner Shimony, Wigner on Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, in Wigner, Collected Works. Part A. Vol. III. Part II (ref. 7), pp. 401414.

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Wigners Polanyian Epistemology

Wigner and Polanyi resumed their correspondence in 1965. Polanyi traveled to the United States, where he organized a study group on the Unity of Knowledge at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, during the summers of 1965 and 1966,38 and Wigner participated in these meetings. Polanyi spoke on The Structure of Consciousness, and Wigner spoke on Epistemology of Quantum MechanicsIts Appraisal and Demands.39 On February 19, 1965, prior to the rst meeting, Wigner wrote to Polanyi, saying that he was anticipating discussing the mind-body problem personally with him, that he was just reading his book, Personal Knowledge, but that he now wanted to raise a particular point: We both feel that materialism is absurd, and in this we entirely agree. I think it is about as incorrect as to pretend that mechanics gives the answer to all physics and that electric phenomena follow from classical mechanics. I have two reasons for believing this. One is entirely ontological, the other one is based on modern quantum mechanics. This may not give the full picture, but, on the other hand, there is no reason to believe that an earlier and less complete theory does give the full picture.40 There is no record of Polanyis reply. I note that although Polanyis philosophy cannot be categorized as idealist, as mentioned above he does assign more reality to ideas than to material objects. Wigners ontology, as we also saw, gives more weight to thought as real. Thus, both argued that man is not explained by materialist philosophy. Moreover, Wigner did not regard quantum mechanics as a materialist theory, but on this, as we shall see, Polanyi did not agree. After the conference, on September 14, 1965, Wigner wrote to Polanyi: It seems to me that you make the same difference between living and inanimate objects as between a machine and its constituents. In other words, your emphasis is on the purpose of the machine and also the purposefulness of the arrangement of objects in living beings. I do not feel that it is desirable to equate machines and living beings. From an unemotional point of view I would argue that almost all new sets of phenomena such as electricity, nuclear forces, heat, light, have required either entirely new concepts for their description, or at least a new and striking re-interpretation in terms of phenomena. I do not see anything like this in the present discussion of life. I feel that the phenomena of desire and emotions are at least as new to present physics as was electricity to Mechanics and that it wont be possible to describe it in the same terms, not only on the low level on which machines can be described adequately. In other words, I consider the difference between life and machines enormously great because the machines do not show the phenomena of volition and emotion. I

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am sure I grossly misrepresent and probably misunderstand your views. However, I would like to know in which way.41 Wigner already had found Polanyis partial analogy of the hierarchical structure of comprehensive entities and his term boundary conditions, which Polanyi had borrowed from physics, to be unclear, even wrong. He did not see what relationship Polanyi wanted to select for his analogy, although he did like his notion of reframing or reconceptualizing entities to understand new phenomena, which is where they found common ground. Wigner and Polanyi planned to meet again in Princeton in 1966, but there are no written records of such a meeting. Two years later, Wigner reopened his correspondence with Polanyi, enclosing a paper that Polanyi called on men and machines, which seems to be Wigners 1968 paper, A Physicist Looks at the Soul,42 in which Wigner discusses three points of view: a Laplacian, purely mechanistic view, a translation view in which the laws of physics are translated into recordable evidence, and a view in which the laws of physics are a limiting case (if life plays no role). Wigner subscribed to the last view: It is true that matter inuences my consciousness, but I believe it is also true that the atoms in my brain do not follow the laws of present-day physics. The next major change in physics will be, I hope, an incorporation of the phenomena of life and consciousness into this discipline.43 On September 20, 1969, Wigner wrote again to Polanyi,44 discussing his struggles with the epistemology of quantum mechanics. He was rereading Polanyis book, The Study of Man,45 which is a concise version of his earlier magnum opus, and he picked up on the points you make about the language and its reliance on tacit knowledge. We speak about measurements in quantum mechanics but we do not tell how we know the properties of the measuring instrument, how we were informed that a particular apparatus is to be used and to what purpose. Polanyi proposed to visit Wigner in Princeton, but this visit did not materialize. Wigner continued their discussion a year and a half later, however, writing to Polanyi on February 4, 1971,46 focusing on Polanyis forthcoming paper, Genius in Science,47 in which Polanyi claried his concept of tacit knowing by emphasizing scientic creativity as a process of insight driven by the imagination and by anticipation based on the hunches of a scientist. Scientic creativity, Polanyi insisted, is neither a process of refutation of earlier theories, nor of theory construction by data collection. What can be observed depends on the theory. He drew the same analogy between Gestalt perception and creative scientic insight as he did in his book, Personal Knowledge, but added that different branches of science are based on different ways of seeing (as framed by theory). His notion of the driving force of imagination and the pull of anticipation are reminiscent of the

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(1854-1912), Jacques Hadamard (18651963), and George ideas of Henri Poincare lya (18871985), and analogous to those of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (19081961) Po on the body in action. His shorthand explanation for meaning-making is personal judgment, a scientists participation in and evaluation of his act in the scientic process. In his letter, Wigner agreed with Polyanis concept of tacit knowing, but disagreed with his summary: I do not fully agree with what you say that natural science is an extension of perception. I think you are making this point in relation to gestalts-theorie, while I mean it epistemologically. It is very unclear how we have learned [things in infancy]. I still do not understand how our children guessed that there is a meaning in the sounds which come out of our mouths and how they ever guessed their signicance. Wigner seems to have missed Polanyis point on the passivity of Gestalt theory, that it is only an initial analogy upon which Polanyi built a layer of active participation and a layer of meaning-making, the entire structure and function of which he explained in much greater detail in his various books and articles.48 It could be said that Polanyis epistemology incorporates psychology. Wigner mentioned that he had learned from Hadamard that there are two stages of mathematical invention, intuitive knowledge, followed by its formulation (which corresponds to Polanyis description of tacit-explicit processes). Wigners comment is perhaps fair if Polanyis paper, Genius in Science, is taken in isolation, but not if Wigner was familiar with the corpus of Polanyis earlier work, as he presumably was. This leaves the possibility that Wigner understood Polanyis theory as a psychological theory, and his own search as a search for an epistemological explanation. Recall that Polanyi reconceived epistemology as a combination of informal logic, psychology, and background knowledge that culminated in meaning-making, an alternative ideal that he considered to be a general, broader epistemology. For Wigner, the meaning of epistemology would have been meaning-making grounded in quantum phenomena. Thus, Wigner explains in his 1969 paper, The Epistemology of Quantum Mechanics,49 that by epistemology he means how we know, show, or prove that what we know is real, that is, in quantum-mechanical measurement the state vector represents reality. Since observation changes what is observed (it is discontinuous in time) and can be represented only by the laws of probability, for Wigner the problem becomes the double one of epistemology and ontology. He is unwilling to accept as a solution the explanation that the state vector is only a tool for calculating probabilities, only a tool for making predictions. He also would not agree that classical physics (macrophysics) and quantum physics are discontinuousboth follow causal laws. He thus most likely would not accept the standard Copenhagen view here.

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Criticism and Defense of Wigners Polanyian Epistemology

Paul Feyerabend (gure 5) in his paper, On the Quantum Theory of Measurement,50 suggested that the quantum theory of measurement is incomplete, and one can be developed that depends, just as its classical counterpart does, on nothing but the equations of motion and the special conditions (macroscopically distinguishable states; macro-observers) under which those equations are applied. [Then it could be shown that this has the consequences] (a) that there are no quantum-jumps and (b) that the idea that there are quantum-jumps has its origin in an incomplete theory of measurement.51 What is omitted is the fact that M [the measuring apparatus] is a macroscopic system and that B [a pointer] cannot discern the ner properties of M. Now the transition from the level of QM to the level of classical mechanics involves certain approximations. Within a theory of measurement which omits reference to the macroscopic character of both M and B those approximations cannot be justied. Hence, within such an incomplete theory the transition to the classical level will have to be treated as an independent element which cannot be further analysed and which cannot be explained in terms of the equation of motion. We suggest that a complete theory which contains a reference to the macroscopic character of both B and M will allow for such an explanation.52

Fig. 5. Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994). Source: website \http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_ Feyerabend[.

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Feyerabend also noted that to simplify his argument an observation can be made without an observer (for instance, by a camera). Hilary Putnam (gure 6) argued that something is wrong with the [conventional] theory.53 Superposition, an object being simultaneously in a state A and a state B, a particle behaving as if it goes simultaneously through slit 1 and slit 2, is the quantum-mechanical measurement paradox. But conditions in the macroworld are different: In the macroworld, a cat being both alive and dead at the same time does not occur; the conditions cannot be superposed. Therefore, Putnam claimed, the assumptions of conventional quantum mechanics constitute a contradiction.54 He noted that Wigner (and Henry Margenau) defended the adequacy of the received view (quantum jumps, collapse of the state vector) along a somewhat different line: According to them quantum mechanics presupposes a cut between the observer and the object. Any system whatsoever can be taken as the object; however, the observer himself cannot be included. The observer always treats himself as possessing denite states which are known to him. Here Margenau and Wigner deviate slightly from the Copenhagen Interpretation. According to Bohr and Heisenberg, the observer must treat himself as a classical object, i.e. everything on the observer side of the cut (including measuring apparatus) is treated as obeying the laws of classical physics. Margenau and Wigner do not mention this. What they rather say is that the observer must include a consciousness. Thus they deviate from the Copenhagen Interpretation in a subjectivistic direction. Whereas the fact that we do not get superposition on the observer side of the cut is explained on the Bohr-Heisenberg story by the fact that we use classical physics on this side, it is explained on the Margenau-Wigner story by the fact that we have a faculty of introspection (cf. London and Bauer

Fig. 6. Hilary Putnam (b. 1926). Source: website \http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam[.

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(1939)55 for the source of this interpretation) which enables us to perform reduction of the wave packet upon ourselves.56 To these charges, Wigner and Margenau responded that Putnam challenged them to restate quantum-mechanical theory without mathematical formalism, and that Putnams argument is faulty: According to von Neumann and to London and Bauer every measurement is an interaction between an object and an observer. The object obeys the laws of motion as long as it is separated from the rest of the world. [This] is the case during time intervals between measurements [and not during measurements]. The chain of transmission of information from the object to the consciousness of the observer may consist of several steps. One cannot follow the transmission of information to the very end, i.e., into the consciousness of the observer, because present-day physics is not applicable to the consciousness [of the observer] [as] has been clearly recognized by both von Neumann and by London and Bauer. [One] must introduce a cut between object and observer and assume that the observer has a direct knowledge of what is on his side of the cut. We must also reject the suggestion that quantum mechanics treats the universe as consisting of two qualitatively different kinds of things, classical objects and micro-objects. [Classical] objects are included as proper limiting concerns of a probabilistic theory which, in this limit, reduces to classical physics.57

Wigners Attempt to Clarify Polanyian Tacit Knowledge

Although Wigner satised himself that his response to Putnam would stand, he still looked for an epistemological explanation to reconcile or to integrate incompatible elements by tacit knowledge. Polanyi sent a copy of the manuscript of his 1969 lecture, Visionary Art,58 on the integration of incompatibles, to Wigner. By this time they were talking past each other, although Wigner was polite and respectful about Polanyis helpful analogies. Later, in a postscript to his letter of February 4, 1971, Wigner wrote: I enjoyed many parts of it, but do not feel its meaning. Perhaps, as I often say, wisdom cannot be taught except to those who already possess it tacitly.59 Polanyi apparently sent the manuscript of his lecture on Visionary Art to Wigner in connection with their discussion on the measurement problem, as an aid for insight into the tacit process of integration. Wigner did not see how it could be applied to the problem under discussion. In it Polanyi illustrated the way the mind integrates incompatible elements and interprets them in a coherent framework, and he thought this also applied to mathematics and the physical sciences: The creation of hitherto inconceivable conceptions by the combination of hitherto incompatible features is a commonplace in mathematics and modern

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physics and, here too, these innovations are usually fraught with indeterminate implications.60 Polanyi took his detailed illustrations explaining the mental process from surrealist painting, from the poetry of Charles Pierre Baudelaire (18211867), Arthur Rimbaud (18541891), and Thomas Stearns Eliot (18881965)he called their poems of symbolism, intuitionism, and formalism by the collective term, visionary artand from the structure of myth as analyzed by Mircea Eliade (19071986). An artists interpretation of experience must make a break from our usual perceptionit views its subject suspended in one moment, timeless. The form and content of a poem or painting are deliberately incompatible; their acceptance by the reader or viewer is achieved by sustaining the belief that art is meaningful, and discovering thereby the joint meaning of its focally incompatible elements.61 Polanyi went on to say: [The] powerful act of the imagination comprehends all details in one. [Its] disparate elements have a joint meaning which will be strikingly novel the more incompatible were its unintegrated elements.62 [We] nd their visionary form unintelligible until we realize that we must not try to understand them as representing a sequence of events that hang together in the way real events do, [and quoting Alain Robbe-Griller (1922-2008) he continues:] In the modern novel time has ceased to exist. Or rather it is a time without temporality, it is an instantaneous time which never creates a past never accumulating to form either a memory or [sic] things past to which one can refer one day; it is a present that has no value save in the present.63 By this Polanyi means that this nontemporal instant (in myth the beginning of time) is to be differentiated from normally perceived time, which is perceived as continuous and irreversible.64 Art creates facts of our imagination, which guide our thoughts. The articiality of form enables it to act as a framework detaching the events to which they apply, and endow these with a tangible and lasting quality by luminous imaginative powers.65 Although Polanyi thought that his exploration of how incompatible elements can be given meaning by a framework would be a key piece in the epistemology of quantum measurement that Wigner was seeking, Wigner said that he did not understand Polanyis meaning, that perhaps wisdom cannot be taught except to those who already possess it tacitly.66 Wigner thus seemed to be frustrated by Polanyis examples and analogies: They seemed too vague and mystical, and did not capture what Wigner was seeking. Perhaps their meaning of incompatible was so different that they could not envision integration in tacit knowing in the same way. Was Polanyi saying that the incompatible elements (behavior as particle when observed, or as wave when not observed) can be integrated somehow by the power of the imagination? Was he saying that one needs to believe that science is meaningful, that a scientists interpretation of an event is not like that of

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ordinary events? He was referring to intuitive surmise and mother-wit, as he did in 1962 in his paper, The Unaccountable Element in Science.67 Polanyis epistemology contains no explicit rules or instructions for application he used neologisms and multitiered analogies to explain complex concepts. He was breaking new ground. Earlier, Polanyi had used the analogy that scientic insight is similar to Gestalt perception, but Wigner objected to this analogy, because he was looking for an epistemological explanation, and took Polanyis analogy as a psychological one. Was his comment about tacit wisdom a way of saying to his aging teacher and friend, You are not explaining, you are retreating into poetic descriptions which do not apply?*

Polanyis Denitions of Aspects of Tacit Knowing

Although both Polanyi and Wigner rened their working denitions of epistemology, it is useful to see how they evolved over the ten-year period of their correspondence. Polanyi initially viewed the relationship between epistemology and psychology, which Wigner found so frustrating, as follows: Epistemology reects on knowledge which we ourselves believe we possess; the psychologist studies knowledge which he believes to have been acquired by another individual and studies also the shortcomings of such knowledge. No knowledge, whether our own or that of a rat, is fully speciable; but the fact that we must rely on recognizing the rats knowledge, or ignorance, from our knowledge of the rats behaviour, involves an additional enquiry and an additional unspeciability.68 Polanyi dened his epistemology in his book, Personal Knowledge, as follows: I start by rejecting the ideal of scientic detachment. [It] falsies our whole outlook far beyond the domain of science. I want to establish an alternative ideal of knowledge, quite generally. Personal Knowledge by modifying the conception of knowing; Skilful knowing as doing is performed by subordinating a set of particulars, as clues or tools, to the shaping of a skilful achievement, whether practical or theoretical. We may then be said to become subsidiarily aware of these particulars within our focal awareness of the coherent entity that we achieve. Clues and tools are things used as such and not observed in themselves [subsidiary knowledge can function as instrumental knowledge]. They are made to function as extensions of our bodily equipment and this involves a certain
* Wigner was famous for his courtesy. After this letter to Polanyi on February 4, 1971 (ref. 46), there is only one more the following month about an upcoming conference on quantum mechanics but no substantive discussion; their correspondence continued sporadically until mid-1974, but they had no further substantive exchanges on epistemology.

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change of our being. Acts of comprehension are to this extent irreversible, and also non-critical. For we cannot possess any xed framework within which the re-shaping of our hitherto xed framework could be critically tested. .. Personal knowledge is an intellectual commitment, and as such inherently hazardous.69 In redening knowledge, Polanyi combined ineffable knowledge of skills and knowledge acquired by education. This ineffable domain of skilful knowing is continuous in its inarticulateness with the knowledge possessed by animals and infants, who also possess the capacity for reorganizing their inarticulate knowledge and using it as an interpretive framework.We may say in general that by acquiring a skill, whether muscular or intellectual, we achieve an understanding which we cannot put into words and which is continuous with the inarticulate faculties of animals. [Understanding in this manner has an existential meaning, understanding of language has a denotative meaning, which is a special case of existential meaning]. To assert that I have knowledge which is inaffable is not to deny that I can speak of it, but only that I can speak of it adequately, the assertion itself being an appraisal of this inadequacy. .. [We acknowledge] our own capacity to distinguish what we know from what we may be saying about it.70 Polanyi also redened the use of the word true: We might have a better chance of achieving the purpose of epistemological reection if we asked ourselves instead [of whether a sentence is true or false by impersonal criteria] why we do believe certain statements of fact, or why we believe certain classes of statements, such as those of science. [The antecedent beliefs justifying these statements are the self-set standards of science.]71 Recall that for Polanyi logic did not mean only formal logic, but the whole range of informal logic the rational mind uses, including especially tacit inference, the power of the mind to make connections, to see the relationship of part to whole. Polanyis entire personal-knowledge epistemology was a campaign against reductionism. Laplacean ideas had been continued in the notion that DNA, its physics and chemistry, will ultimately explain living organisms, but to Polanyi DNA functions instead as a boundary condition that is irreducible to physics and chemistry. He described the organizational hierarchy of living organisms not only by analogy to the structure and function of a machine (to which Wigner objected)

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but also by drawing on the concept of organizing elds, borrowed from biology. In his 1969 paper, The Structure of Consciousness, he explained that: Living beings consist in a hierarchy of levels, each level having its own structural and organismic principles. On the mental level, explicit inferences represent the operations of xed mental structures, while in tacit knowing we meet the integrating powers of the mind. In all our conscious thoughts these two modes mutually rely on each other, and it is plausible to assume that explicit mental operations are based on xed neural networks, while tacit integrations are grounded mainly in organizing elds. I shall assume also that these two principles are interwoven in the body, as their counterparts are in thought.72 For Polanyi the principles of this control are organizing elds, organizing principles as illustrated, according to C.H. Waddington (1905-1975), by the development of the embryo as controlled by the gradient of potential shapes. Polanyi also called the organizing principle the organismic principle. In his 1968 article, Lifes Irreducible Structure,73 he reiterated that the organismic process, as a level of explanation for living organisms, is irreducible. The progression is upward from inanimate object to life, with boundary conditions specifying the relationship between levels, and with each higher level carrying a deeper level of signicance. He also used this organization as an explanation of what is now called the objective and subjective modes of seeing to highlight the mind-body problem, and to explain direct and indirect knowledge, which is of great importance in assessing knowledge resulting from scientic experiments. I have said that the analytic descent from higher levels to their subsidiaries is usually feasible to some degree, while the integration of items of a lower level so as to predict their possible meaning in a higher context may be beyond the range of our integrative powers. I may add now that the same things may be seen to have a joint meaning when viewed from one point, but to be lacking this connection when seen from another point [as seeing patterns on the ground from an airplane, but not when on the ground]. The relation of mind to body has a similar structure. The mind-body problem arises from the disparity between the experience of a person observing an external object, e.g., a cat, and a neurophysiologist observing the bodily mechanism by use of which the person sees the cat. The difference arises from the fact that a person placed inside his body has a from-knowledge of the bodily responses evoked by the light in his sensory organs, and this from-knowledge integrates the joint meaning of these responses to form the sight of the cat [from-knowledge or from-to knowledge is direct, functioning from the body to what is in focal awareness]; whereas the neurophysiologist looking at these responses from outside has but an at-knowledge of them, which, as such, is not integrated to the sight of the cat. [From-at knowledge is indirect, looking at and interpreting data from an instrument; a neurophysiologist does not perceive the

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same thing as a cat does.] This is the same duality that exists between the airman and the pedestrian in interpreting the same traces. [Similarly, in seeing the meaning when reading a sentence, the difference is between a person familiar with a language and one who is not; the latter sees only the letters.] Mind is the meaning of certain bodily mechanisms; it is lost from view when we look at them focally.. Owing to the existence of two kinds of awarenessthe focal and the subsidiarywe can distinguish sharply between the mind as a from-to experience and the subsidiaries of this experience, when seen focally, as a bodily mechanism. [Though] rooted in the body, the mind is free in its actionsexactly as our common sense knows it to be free.74 For Polanyi, epistemological inquiries meant questions of how do we know, and what do we rely on to know, rather than is this statement logically true or false in a deductive process. For him there is a continuum between psychology and epistemology, and his redenitions bridged whatever gaps there were in the standard interpretations.

Explanatory Gaps
In his 1965 paper for the Unity of Knowledge conference, Epistemology of Quantum Mechanics Its Appraisal and Demands,75 Wigner was understood to say that there is a gap between psychology and the physical sciences. Psychologists wanted to warn physicists that their ndings may be inuenced by subjective considerations, and to afrm that psychology aims to explain the processes of the mind by the laws of physics and chemistry. Wigner considered this aim to be doomed. Physicists warned that the laws of physics give only probability connections between the outcomes of subsequent observations or contents of consciousness.76 Wigner thought that quantum physics held more promise, although it would be a limiting case of something more general. The mind and body form a unit, and a dualistic conception is problematic. The gaps between the natural sciences and psychology are these: the natural sciences look for regularities in the behavior of bodies, providing explanations, exploring circumstances and conditions; the descriptive sciences, including psychology, look for the characteristics of these bodiesthe older physical sciences, for example, astronomy, discovered a large number of regularities and then transformed themselves into other disciplines. Seeking regularities, making progressively more encompassing theories, is a way of dealing with the limitations of the human mind to absorb particulars. The newer disciplines also made discoveries and innovated (created new phenomena). For example, psychology had begun to seek regularities such as theories of the subconscious, and Polanyi developed a theory of tacit knowledge that could be examined before exploring the epistemology of physics.

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Conclusions: Sorting Out the WignerPolanyi Dialog

In reviewing the ten-year substantive WignerPolanyi correspondence on tacit knowing in regard to the measurement problem in quantum physics, we see the following: Wigner was seeking an explanation for the quantum-mechanical phenomenon that the act of observation changes what is observed. His hunch was that the action of the mind, taken on the quantum level, inuences the observed quantum entity in analogy to how light inuences matter in the Compton effect, and that a potential explanation of this phenomenon lay in a future hybrid physics-psychology science. He thought that quantum theory was incomplete, that it would be completed in the future by creating such a new science. Polanyi (gure 7) thought that Wigners line of speculation was unfruitful. He regarded Wigners explanation of the quantum-mechanical measurement problem, and all other naturalized epistemological explanations, to be reductionist. For Polanyi, there was no ontological difference between the stuff of classical physics and the stuff of probabilistic quantum physics. [The] laws of quantum mechanics coincide with those of mechanics for reasonably heavy particles. However, to be precise, the classical predictions of positions and velocities would have to be replaced by predictions of the probability distribution of positions and velocities. [Footnote: [My] argument will reveal my dissent from [a] widely held opinion of great importance. In quantum mechanics any attempt at specifying the position and velocity of an electron must be dened in terms of the electrons interaction with a denite measuring instrument. The result will depend on the instrument chosen and will again be a statement of probability. [The] outcome of the observation does not depend here on the participation of the observer, but on the action of a measuring instrument, the result being the same for any observer. This contradicts on the one hand the view that the relation

Fig. 7. Michael Polanyi (18911976) ca. 1965. Credit: Published by permission of John C. Polanyi.

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between the macroscopic and microscopic descriptions of an atomistic system is an instance of complementarity; and it shows also on the other hand that (contrary to a widespread opinion) the indeterminacy principle of quantum mechanics establishes no effect of the observer on the observed object. The supposed effect vanishes if we include the measuring instrument in the observed object. The latter becomes then the observed phenomenon in the sense now accepted by Bohrs school of interpretation.]77 In essence, Polanyi was saying that Wigners problem is one of interpretation, that his formulation of the question leads to an unfruitful direction for an answer, that is, to a physical, causal link as an explanation of the quantum-mechanical measurement problem.

Wigners and Polanyis Epistemologies

Wigner expressed his epistemology in the measurement problem as knowing a quantum entity only when it is effected by the knower: That unobserved entities can be predicted but not known has a Kantian echo of ding an sich. Polanyi did not object to this Kantian avor, nor did he object to Wigners attempt to apply his notion of tacit knowing to the observation process. He objected to Wigners transguring tacit knowing into what he considered to still be a physical process, a reduction. To Polanyi, the tacit is a vectorin epistemology it takes the form of integration, in ontology it takes the form of emergence.78 To Polanyi, the mind-body connection was not a question of nding a causal explanation, but a question of achievement, an emergence or innovation, a teleologically indicated vector. His notion of tacit is one that is pulled by the goal of the vector, not pushed by causes. If a causal explanation requires denitions and entities to be specied, Polanyis ontology cannot accommodate it. What he calls comprehensive entities of the higher levels, although they rely on hierarchical physical levels in the hierarchy, are unspeciable: The more complex an entity, the more unspeciable it isour knowledge of it is unspeciable by its elements.

Wigners and Polanyis Ontologies

Both Wigner and Polanyi constructed their ontologies in parallel with their epistemologies, and since their epistemologies thus are templates for their ontologies, they play out as follows: For Wigner, there are two kinds of reality: thoughts, and everything else. For Polanyi, the higher levels in the hierarchy of emergence are more real than the lower levels (thoughts are more real than physical objects). They thus share the primacy of thought in their ontologies and admit the importance of nonexplicit or tacit thought in their epistemologies of science. On this basis Wigner could claim a Polanyian epistemology.

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Wigner, however, was frustrated with Polanyis analogical descriptions of the mind-body connection and found them vague. Wigner (gure 8) took Polanyis analogy of the machine describing levels of emergence to be inapplicable to living organisms, and he found Polanyis analogy of the synthesis of incompatible elements as providing a possibility for emergence of the mind and higher conceptual levels in innovation, as Polanyi described it in the context of art and eastern religions, to be puzzling, mystifying, and nonexplanatory. Thus, their decade-long dialog about tacit knowing and the measurement problem was inconclusive. Wigner was not convinced that Polanyi had found a satisfactory explanation for the mind-body connection, and Polanyi was not convinced, as Wigner would have it, that quantum physics has a different ontology than classical physics, and therefore that tacit knowing could be incorporated into it. Their dialog ended as Polanyi aged and his responses to Wigner grew less fresh and focused. In a sense, both Wigner and Polanyi were seeking a bridge between Geisteswissenschaften and Naturwissenschaften to answer the mind-body problem. Geisteswissenschaften, in its traditional meaning, would provide at least some of the three integrated elements they were seeking: reason (soft sciences), feeling as (art), and feeling that (religion), which could be examined experimentally. For Polanyi, science and art exemplied vision, as in insight or Kants motherwit, and religion exemplied awe. His extensive explorations focused on the phenomenon of insight, and he made less successful forays into awe. Wigner did not use art as an analogical resource, but on occasion he treated Geist as soul,79 as an alternative to nding a quantum-mechanical explanation for the mind-body problem.

` Visual Fig. 8. Eugene Wigner (19021995). Credit: American Institute of Physics Emilio Segre Archives, Physics Today Collection.

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Acknowledgments
I thank Princeton University Library and Springer Verlag for permission to publish excerpts of the letters from the Wigner Papers, and the University of Chicago Library and Professor John Polanyi for permission to publish excerpts of the letters from the Polanyi Papers. I also thank Professor Polanyi and The Polanyi Society for providing photographs, and Professor Polanyi for permitting me to use them. Thanks are due the following colleagues in the philosophy and history of science for reading an earlier version of this paper: Abner Shimony (Boston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science), Sylvan S. Schweber (Harvard University and Brandeis University), Viktor Binzberger (Budapest University of Technology and Economics), and to Roger H. Stuewer for his editorial work on it.

References
1 len, Zeitschrift fu r Physik 33 M. Polanyi and E. Wigner, Bildung und Zerfall von Moleku (1925), 429-434; reprinted in The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner. Part A. The Scientic Papers. Vol. IV. Part I. Physical Chemistry, ed. Arthur S. Wightman (Berlin and Heidelberg: ber die Interferenz von EiSpringer-Verlag, 1997), pp. 43-48. M. Polanyi and E. Wigner, U genschwingungen als Ursache von Energieschwankungen und chemischer Umsetzungen, r Physikalische Chemie, Abteiling A, 139 Haber Band (1928), 439-452; reprinted in Zeitschrift fu ibid., pp. 49-62. 2 Eugene P. Wigner, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences [1959]; reprinted in Symmetries and Reections: Scientic Essays of Eugene P. Wigner (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1967), pp. 222-237, and in The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner. Part B. Historical, Philosophical, and Socio-Political Papers. Vol. VI. Philosophical Reections and Syntheses, ed. Jagdish Mehra (Berlin and Heidelberg: SpringerVerlag, 1995), pp. 534-549. 3 4 5

Ibid., p. 237; 549. Ibid., p. 227; 539.

Fritz Rohrlich, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Physical Intuition: Success While Ignoring Objections, Foundations of Physics 26 (1996), 1617-1626, on 1625.
6 John von Neumann, The General and Logical Theory of Automata, in Lloyd A. Jeffress, ed., Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior: The Hixon Symposium (New York: John Wiley & Sons and London: Chapman & Hall, 1951), pp. 1-31, Discussion, pp. 32-41. 7 Eugene P. Wigner, The Probability of the Existence of a Self-Reproducing Unit, in Logic of Personal Knowledge: Essays Presented to Michael Polanyi on his Seventieth Birthday 11th March 1961 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), pp. 231-238, on p. 236; reprinted in Wigner, Symmetries and Reections (ref. 2), pp. 200-208, on p. 207; and in The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner. Part A. The Scientic Papers, ed. Arthur Wightman. Vol. III. Part II. Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, annotated by Abner Shimony (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 1997), pp. 423-430, on p. 428. 8 9

Ibid., pp. 231-236; 203-206; 425-428.

Polanyi to Wigner, April 3, 1961, Eugene P. Wigner Papers, Special Collections, Princeton University Library (hereafter Wigner Papers), Box 66, Folder 1.

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10 11

Wigner to Polanyi, April 11, 1961, Wigner Papers, Box 66 Folder 1.

Eugene P. Wigner, Two Kinds of Reality [Presented at Conference at Marquette University, Summer 1961], The Monist 48 (1964), 248-264; reprinted in Wigner, Symmetries and Reections (ref. 2), pp. 185-199, and in Collected Works. Part B. Vol. VI. (ref. 2), pp. 33-47.
12 Jacques Hadamard, An Essay on The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945); reprinted (New York: Dover Publications, 1954), Chapters II-III, pp. 21-42. 13 Wigner, Two Kinds of Reality [1961] (ref. 11), pp. 251, 253, 254, 255-257; 189, 191, 192, 193-195; 37, 39, 40, 41-43. In the two reprinted versions, Wigner footnotes an important mono orie de lObservation en Me canique Ouantique (Paris: graph by F. London and E. Bauer, La The Hermann & Cie, 1939), saying that the measurement is not completed until its results enter our consciousness. (p. 187; 33) I thank Abner Shimony for bringing this reference to my attention. 14 15 16

Wigner, Two Kinds of Reality [1961] (ref. 11), p. 255; 193; 41. Wigner to Polanyi, October 6, 1961, Wigner Papers, Box 66, Folder 1.

Michael Polanyi, Clues to an Understanding of Mind and Body, in Irving John Good, ed., The Scientist Speculates: An Anthology of Partly-Baked Ideas (New York: Basic Books, 1962), pp. 7178.
17 Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958; Second impression (with corrections), 1962), Chapter 13, pp. 381-405, on p. 401. 18 19 20

Polanyi, Clues (ref. 16), p. 75. Ibid., p. 77.

Stefania Ruzsits Jha, Reconsidering Michael Polanyis Philosophy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002), Chapter 9, pp. 224-243, on p. 225.
21 22

Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (ref. 17), pp. 393-394.

Michael Polanyi, Tacit Knowing: Its Bearing on Some Problems of Philosophy, Reviews of Modern Physics 34 (1962), 601-616; abbreviated version reprinted in Knowing and Being Essays by Michael Polanyi, ed. Marjorie Grene (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul and Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 159-180.
23 Ibid., p. 606; 160. In one of his notes on perception Polanyi says on indwelling, invade, move in, occupy, come to reside. Indwellingmoving into residence, in other words, indwelling is active. Polanyi Papers, Special Collections, Univeresity of Chicago Library (hereafter Polanyi Papers), August 29, 1960, Box 22, folder 3, p. 3. 24 25 26 27 28

Polanyi, Tacit Knowing (ref. 22), p. 606; 161. Ibid., p. 610; 167. Ibid., pp. 611; 169-170. Ibid., p. 613; 173.

Wigner to Polanyi, December 17, 1962 (typed extract), Polanyi Papers, Box 6, Folder 2; no complete copy of the original exists in the Wigner Papers.
29 30

Polanyi, Tacit Knowing (ref. 22).

Michael Polanyi, Knowing and Being, Mind 70 (1961), 458-470; reprinted in Knowing and Being (ref. 22), pp. 123-137.
31 Polanyi, Clues (ref. 16) pp. 71-78; Eugene P. Wigner, Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, in Good (ref. 16), pp. 284-301; reprinted in Symmetries and Reections (ref. 2), pp. 171-184, and in Collected Works. Part B. Vol. VI (ref. 2), pp. 247-260.

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Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (ref. 17). Polanyi did not directly address the concept of innate ideas in his book, but see versions of it and related topics on pp. 69-77, 187, 191, 220-221, 397.
33 34 35

32

Wigner, Remarks on the Mind-Body Question (ref. 31). Wigner, Two Kinds of Reality [1961] (ref. 11).

Eugene P. Wigner, The Problem of Measurement, American Journal of Physics 31 (1963), 6-15; reprinted in Symmetries and Reections (ref. 2), pp. 153-170, and in Collected Works. Part B. Vol. VI (ref. 2), pp. 163-180.
36 Michael Polanyi, My Time with X-rays and Crystals, in P.P. Ewald, ed., Fifty Years of X-Ray Diffraction (Utrecht: N.V.A. Oosthoeks Uitgeversmaatschappij for the International Union of Crystallography, 1962), pp. 629-636; reprinted in Knowing and Being (ref. 22), pp. 97-104. 37 Michael Polanyi, The Unaccountable Element in Science, Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy 37 (1962), 1-14, reprinted in Knowing and Being (ref. 22), pp. 105120. 38 Marjorie Grene, ed., The Anatomy of Knowledge: Papers Presented to the Study Group on Foundations of Cultural Unity. Bowdoin College 1965 and 1966 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969). 39

Michael Polanyi, The Structure of Consciousness, Brain: A Journal of Neurology 88 (1965), 799-810; reprinted in ibid., pp. 315-328, and in Knowing and Being (ref. 22), pp. 211-224. Eugene Wigner, Epistemology of Quantum MechanicsIts Appraisal and Demands, in Grene, Anatomy of Knowledge (ref. 38), pp. 31-45; reprinted in Marjorie Grene, ed., Toward a Unity of Knowledge [Psychological Issues 6, No. 2, Monograph 22] (New York: International Universities Press, 1969), pp. 22-36, and in Collected Works. Part A. Vol. III. Part II (ref. 7), pp. 490-504. The name of the Study Group on Foundations of Cultural Unity was changed to the Unity of Knowledge Group after the conference, by which it is called in the Polanyi Papers.

40 Wigner to Polanyi, February 19, 1965, Wigner Papers, Box 66, Folder 1. Wigner apparently did not nd Polanyis comments on the measurement problem in his book, Personal Knowledge (ref. 17), pp. 392-393. On the tacit vector as integrator in epistemology and as emergence in ontology, see also Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul and Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966). 41 Wigner to Polanyi, September 14, 1965, Wigner Papers, Box 66, Folder 1. For Polanyis explanation, see his paper, Structure of Consciousness (ref. 39). 42 E.P. Wigner, A Physicist Looks at the Soul [1968]; reprinted in The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner. Part B. Historical, Philosophical, and Socio-Political Papers. Vol. VII. Historical and Biographical Reections and Syntheses, ed. Jagdish Mehra (Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer-Verlag, 2001), pp. 41-43. 43 44 45

Ibid., p. 43. Wigner to Polanyi, September 20, 1969, Polanyi Papers, Box 7, Folder 16.

Michael Polanyi, The Study of Man: The Lindsay Memorial Lectures given at the University College of North Staffordshire 1958 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul and Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959).
46 47

Wigner to Polanyi, February 4, 1971, Polanyi Papers, Box 9, Folder 7.

Michael Polanyi, Genius in Science, Encounter 38 (January 1972), 43-50; reprinted in Robert S. Cohen and Marx W. Wartofsky, ed., Methodological and Historical Essays in the Natural and Social Sciences [Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. XIV] (Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel, 1974), pp. 57-71, and in Michael Polanyi, Society, Economics & Philosophy: Selected Papers, ed. R.T. Allen (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1997), pp. 267-281.

Vol. 13 (2011) Wigners Polanyian Epistemology and the Measurement Problem 357

48 49 50

For an analysis, see Jha, Reconsidering (ref. 20), pp. 51-69, 123-148. E.P. Wigner, Epistemology of Quantum Mechanics (ref. 39).

Paul Feyerabend, On the Quantum Theory of Measurement [1957], reprinted in Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1. Realism, Rationalism and Scientic Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 207-218.
51 52

Ibid., p. 216.

Ibid., p. 213. Wigner disagreed: [At present there is no clear evidence] that quantum mechanics is valid only in the limiting case of microscopic systems, whereas the view here represented assumes it to be valid for all inanimate objects; see his paper, Remarks on the Mind-Body Question (ref. 31), p. 300, n. 11; 180, n. 11; 256, n. 11.
53

Hilary Putnam, Philosophy of Physics [1965], in Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1. Mathematics, Matter and Method (Cambridge, London, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1975; Second Edition, 1979), pp. 79-92, on p. 81. Ibid., p. 80. orie de lObservation (ref. 13). London and Bauer, La The Putnam, Philosophy of Physics [1965] (ref. 53), p. 81.

54 55 56 57

H. Margenau and E.P. Wigner, Discussion: Comments on Professor Putnams Comments, Philosophy of Science 29 (1962), 292-293; reprinted in Collected Works Part B. Vol. VI (ref. 2), pp. 31-32. For Putnams reply, see his Discussion: Comments on Comments on Comments: A Reply to Margenau and Wigner, Phil. of Sci. 31 (1964), 1-6; reprinted in Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1 (ref. 53), pp. 159-165.
58 Michael Polanyi, Meaning. A Project. Lectures and Seminars at the University of Chicago. Lecture 3, Visionary Art, delivered May 27, 1969, Polanyi Papers, Box 39, Folder 10, rst variant, 23 pp. For the second variant, which includes corrections in handwriting, see the website \http://www.polanyi.bme.hu/folyoirat/2006/2006_08_lecture3.pdf[, pp. 101-115. 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

Wigner to Polanyi, February 4, 1971 (ref. 46). Polanyi, Visionary Art, (ref. 58), p. 23. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., p. 15. Wigner to Polanyi, February 4, 1971 (ref. 46). Polanyi, Unaccountable Element in Science (ref. 37). Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (ref. 17), p. 365. Ibid., pp. vii-viii. Ibid., pp. 90-91. Ibid., p. 256 Polanyi, Structure of Consciousness (ref. 39), pp. 805-806; 323-324; 218-219.

Michael Polanyi, Lifes Irreducible Structure, Science 160 (June 21, 1968), 1308-1312; expanded version (from which I quote) reprinted in Knowing and Being (ref. 22), pp. 225-239.
74 75

Ibid., p. 1312; pp. 237-238. Wigner, Epistemology of Quantum MechanicsIts Appraisal and Demands (ref. 39).

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Phys. Perspect.

76 77 78 79

Ibid., p. 24; 24; 492. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (ref. 17), pp. 392-393. See especially Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (ref. 40).

Wigner, A Physicist Looks at the Soul [1968] (ref. 42). Wigner shifted between using consciousness and soul according to his audience and the occasion. 104 9th Avenue San Francisco, CA 94118, USA e-mail: stefania@jha.net