http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Polanyi
In Transcendence and Self-transcendence[5] Polanyi criticizes the mechanistic world view modern science has inherited from Galileo. Polanyi advocates emergence i.e. the claim that there are several levels of reality, and causality. His argument depends on the assumption that boundary conditions supply degrees of freedom that instead of being random are determined by higher level realities whose properties are dependent but distinct from the lower level from which they emerge.
From the mid-1930s, Polanyi began to articulate his opposition to the prevailing positivist account of science, arguing that it failed to recognise the part which (fallible) personal commitments guided by tacit knowledge play in science.
Polanyi rejected the claim that scientific research ought to be directed by the State. He noted what happened to genetics in the Soviet Union, once the doctrines of Trofim Lysenko gained the (often coercive) backing of the State. Polanyi argued that truth seeking is a commitment which generates communities of specialists whose conclusions ought to be the outcome of free debate not central direction. Together withJohn Baker, he founded the Society for Freedom in Science to defend this view.
Polanyi claimed that absolute objectivity (objectivism) is a delusion, and therefore a false ideal.[1] He also criticised the notion that anyscientific method yields truth mechanically. Instead, he argued that all knowing is personal, and as such relies upon fallible commitments.
Humans cannot be separated from the universe, they participate personally in it, with skills and passions playing a key role in guiding discovery and validation. Polanyi argues that great research scientists seek questions which are likely to lead to a successful resolution. Their solutions not only arise from their capacity to perceive patterns and connections, but also from their commitments. These commitments lead them to risk their reputation by committing to a hypothesis. He gives the example of Copernicus, who declared that the Earth revolved around the sun. Polanyi claimed that Copernicus arrived at the truth of the Earth's true relation to the sun not by following a method, but via "the greater intellectual satisfaction he derived from the celestial panorama as seen from the sun instead of the earth."[2]
What saves his claim that all knowledge is personal from relativism is his belief that personal experience is able to connect us with objective realities.
Because our tacit awareness relies upon a local context, we cannot simply assume it has universal validity; we seek truth but must accept the possibility of error. All articulation inevitably relies upon that which is not articulated. Indeed, reliance upon what is not articulated is how languages become meaningful, i.e. meaning is not reducible to a set of rules; it is grounded in experience - where experience, contrary to the claims of the British Empiricists, is something that cannot simply be reduced to collections of sense data.
Polanyi also seeks to draw attention to the role played by acquired practices i.e. tradition. The fact that we know more than we can articulate helps to explain how knowledge is passed on by non-explicit means, for example via apprenticeship i.e. observing a master, and then improving your skills under their guidance.
His writings about science as a tacit practice influenced Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Polanyi
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