THE TACIT DIMENSION OF THOMAS AQUINAS, OR SCIENTIA WITH MICHAEL POLANYI

This article explores the common holdings of Thomas Aquinas and Michael Polanyi. More specifically, it suggests that Polanyis' post-critical philosophy retrieves multiple aspects of the pre -Copernican rationality of Aquinas. First of all, both believe that the faculty of reason is never impartial; it is always committed, driven by the intellects' appetite for satisfaction. Second, scientific knowledge requires habituation or know-how, which indicates that truth is not rational apart from bodily habitus. Third, reason operates only in a social body, and fourth, science can proceed only by faith in the authority of others. Along these lines, Polanyi relocates the modern scientist in something like a medieval body. Thus, some of Polanyis' most important ideas are incidental recoveries of the paradigm Aquinas represents.