Polanyi -- The Tacit Dimension

The Tacit Dimension

Michael Polanyi, Anchor Books, Garden City (1967)

I picked up this book some years ago at some used book store. I had run across references to Polanyi, I think, when I was working on my Master's in Teaching. He was a scientist who wrote about how people solve problems, 'problem solving' in the literature.

This is one direction my PhD work will be going, so I decided to look into this before I dig into the current literature on the matter.

Polanyi was an interesting guy. To illustrate, here's a little quote from the first page of the introduction:

I first met questions of philosophy when I came up against Soviet ideology under Stalin which denied justification to the pursuit of science. I remember a conversation I had with Bukharin in Moscow in 1935. Though he was heading toward his fall and execution three years later, he was still a leading theoretician of the Communist party.

'Heading toward his fall and execution.' Talk about an attention getter at a party.

For those in the know, Stalin is synonymous with state terror and Bukharin was a darling intellectual of the early party in revolutionary Russia. Polanyi was circulating in some tough circles.

From the tiny biographical note in the book:

Dr. Michael Polanyi was born in Budapest in 1981, and received doctoral degrees both in Medicine and in Physical Sciences from the University of Budapest. In 1929 hd was made a Life Member of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry, and in 1933 was elected to the Chair of Physical Chemistry at the Victoria University of Manchester, England. He exchanged this Chair for a Chair in Social studies in 1948, and has lectured since then, as Visiting Professor, or Senior Fellow, at the universities of Chicago, Aberdeen, Virginia, Stanfard, and Merton College, Oxford. in 1965-66 he was a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University.

I especially am interested in him since he was a practicing physical chemist—a hard scientist—who became absorbed in the question of how knowledge is built by humans. That is, he was a well-developed practitioner of a mathematical science looking inside, at how this business works.

Lermontov - The Rock Ledge (1841)

Through the night, a golden cloud lay sleeping

On the breast of a gigantic rock ledge.

In the morning, early, off she hurried;

Through the azure, carefree, she went playing.

But a trace of moisture was still clinging

To the wrinkled rock ledge. Old and lonely,

He stood there as though in sad reflection—

In the empty spaces softly weeping.

—translated by Guy Daniels, 1965, in 'A Lermontov Reader.'

Lermontov - The Angel (1831)

An angel was flying through midnight's deep blue,

And softly he sang as he flew;

The moon, and the clouds, and the stars in a throng

All listened: in heavenly song

He sang of the blessings of souls without sin

In the gardens of Paradise; hymns

To God the almighty he sang, and his praise

Was pure and completely unfeigned.

He carried toward earth, with its tears and its grief,

A soul just beginning its life;

And long, long thereafter the soul could still hear

The song he sang—wordless, but clear.

The soul languished long it is worldly attire,

Still knowing a wondrous desire;

And that heavenly music was never userped

By the wearisome songs of the earth.

—translated by Guy Daniels, 1965, in 'A Lermontov Reader.'

Lermontov

A Lermontov Reader, Edited and translated by Guy Daniels, Macmillan, New York (1965).

I picked up an old favorite of mine last night, a discovery from back in the old days of reading Russian literature, mainly up in Minneapolis, in my young twenties, while floundering as a Chem Physics student or an activist.

Among the big names—Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin—I would find references and seek them out in used book stores, and gathered quite a collection—maybe thirty books on a dozen different authors— some of which I read. Notable for me were Krylov and Lermontov. Lermontov is considered a 'romantic' poet; but what could that mean to someone?

I looked it up online right quick:

Of or pertaining to romance; involving or resembling romance; hence, fanciful; marvelous; extravagant; unreal; as, a romantic tale; a romantic notion; a romantic undertaking. [1913 Webster]—Dictionary.com, apparently quoting an old Webster's

What? I tried again:

4 a : marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized–Mirriam-Webster's Online Dictionary

Yuck. I could not survive as a literary critic. The little I've read of Lermontov I like because it gives voice to a tender homunculus I fancy is bound up in men, perhaps by artifice, perhaps by nature.

Below is an extraction of the Biographical Note at the front of the book.

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov was born in Mosco on October 2 (O.S.) 1814. He entered Moscow University at age sixteen. Two year later, he suddenly left Moscow for St. Petersburg, where he enrolled in the Cavalry Cadets' School. He was commissioned 'ensign' in the Life Guard Hussars in 1834, and began, so it would appear to lead a rather dissipated life. In 1837, Pushkin was killed in a duel and the younger poet wrote his famous accusatory poem, 'Death of a Poet,' for which he was court-martialed and 'exiled' to the combat zone in the Caucasus. The rest of his brief life was a whirlwind of activity: constant quarrels with the authorities, banishments, feats of bravery in battles, fleeting love affairs, and (miraculously) intensive literary work. In the summer of 1841, less than four years after Pushkin's death, his rightful successor met the same fate: he was killed in a duel.

God. A biography -- I am written about, therefore I am.

I've gotten stuck on this book, stuck trying to write about Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the shift from this crazy primordial genesis to a personal god who gives a fuck about people and has some shred of personality. Why, in the midst of all this is it supposed to have chosen 'Israel' I can't fathom, but the shift from Genesis to Exodus is astounding. Out of nowhere, this story about all the world turns into a story about a very, very, very small slice of the now known world. And we buy it. We all buy it. Eats me up.

I wrestle with trying to extricate myself from this 'book.' Biblical scholarship points out that these writings are not to be taken literally, that it is only loosely tethered in history. I want to scream. And laugh.

The point: why would anyone ever ever entertain the idea that this was actual history? I did. I still do! I can't get myself out of the feeling that all this stuff is somehow real. I mean, I never thought there was a real talking snake, at least not past the point of actually thinking, but when he mentions the Nation of Israel, the Tribe of Levi, the House of Joseph, it takes over my mind and I cannot keep it from becoming history.

Now we have scholars, grown, learned men and women, saying that the Exodus was not what the book portrays. Listen to this line:

It is reasonable to infer from the central place assigned to the Exodus in Jewish tradition that Israel did win liberation and a victory of some kind over Egypt and that its confidence in God surged in consequence. (p108)

What does he mean, 'Israel?' An inference back to an actual social group that called itself that then, or some imagined historical founding? Why the capital 'E' in Exodus? Is it a thing outside of these writings? History assigns a place to Egypt. Pharaoh was there. We know about 'Israel' from where?  What does he mean, 'God?' Why isn't Pharaoh still a god; why don't we talk about him?

Listen to this:

The Israelites [in Egypt] are not a small, oppressed minority seeking release from bondage. One of the reasons Pharaoh refuses to let them go is that they are already more numerous than the original inhabitants of the land (5:5). The census of Numbers 2 finds 603,550 adult males, not counting adult males of the Tribe of Levi. Counting wives, children, and servents, the number could perhaps be seven times that large. In short, the Israelites are a majority whom Pharaoh, a god in his own right, of course, according to Egyptian beliefs, was attempting to dominate. But their departure from Egypt is not, despite its later use in liberation movements, a victory for justice. It is simply a victory, a demonstratioin of the power of the Lord to pursue fertility for his chosen people and wreck it for their enemy, a proof that "the Lord makes a distinction" when and as he chooses. (p103)

I am not a Biblical scholar, but I dare say I know more about the discourse on semitic history then most Americans, more then most Europeans? more then most the people in the world? Yet when I read these passages, I get confused about whether the author is talking about a story or about reality, and so am left with the necessity of believing in this stuff firmly pressed further into my being. And then:

No responsible historian believes that at the time of the Exodus the Israelites actually outnumbered the Egyptians or that a company of 4 or 5 million people made its way through the desert and into Canaan. Despite the lack of any historical record outside the Bible, most historians do not believe that the story of the Exodus is a total fabrication. … Cecil B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments, with its mighty throng crossing the sea, may be truer to the intended literary effect of the Book of Exodus than scholarship's reconstruction of a band of minor tribes slipping through the marsh. (p105).

'Band of minor tribes?' Yet, I fight to keep the notion of a small band of semitic refugees escaping the empire in my mind; what lasts, even through this treatment, is The Exodus, Israel and the Israelites, and God.

This may sound like whining; maybe it is. But damn, I can't help but think that if a group cold deflate this stuff, they could rid themselves of a lot of nutty and pernicious ideas. I know we're all supposed to be grateful for 'ethical monotheism' and all, but I'm not sure the baggage is worth it.

God. A biography - Why Israel?

This language bit is getting me down. Do I say the god of the Hebrew's because all this is written in Hebrew? Do I say the god of Abraham because he is the one that fecundity was first promised to? Do I say the god of Israel because he is the first one that chose his god? Do I say the god of Judah because those are the people that were ascendent when the books were compiled? Do I say the god of the Jews, because that is the name most commonly used today?

Do I say they are all the same thing? This I can not do. I am trying to understand something, not pretend that I do. And I am trying to free myself just a bit from the fetters that other's language keep me in.

God. A biography -- Friend of the family, Judge of All Earth

It's all very confusing to me: Jews, Hebrews, Judah, Israel, Semites, people, tribe... writers, editors, redactors... somehow, someone wrote all this stuff down--over how much time? Who can it be said of, that they created this god, and by extension a whole race? I think, it can be said of no one, that's my guess. It's like Reagan's America: a nostalgia for a past that never was, and the memory of that nostalgia is fueling new stories and new adepts and new faithful.

But regardless, at some point, there it was, a body of stories, a wrestling match between this god and these people. What would it feel like to believe it were true?! Here's how Miles describes it:

In the remainder of the Book of Genesis, the Lord God will be spoken of (an on occasion will identify himself) as 'of ' one patriarch or another. The Lord, the god of Abraham, will become the god of Isaac, the god of Jacob, or 'the god of your father.' As this happens, he will come to seem, often enough, more like a busy friend of the family than like the Judge of all the earth, as Abraham called him at Sodom. His help will be sought for conception and other human needs, but, significantly, the initiative will be on the human side. He will not attempt again to assert the same sort of control over reproduction that we have seen him attempting to assert over Abraham's reproduction. He will claim only what Abraham has already conceded. Yet the modest storms and calms of the house of Abraham will not be quite his concern. At times, the masterful, abrupt, inscrutable being we first me will return, for the radically unpredictable creator and destroyer personalities of yahweh and 'elohim remain in him alongside the loyal advocate now called 'god of your father.' All are in him, in a combination whose explosive potential will only gradually be revealed. (p66).

For my own purpose, I see in this part of Genesis (1:1 -25:11), the acknowledgement that the universe is not on humans' side, that it is unpredictable and unaccountable, ready to take back whatever it gives, or smear it around and leave it horribly disfigured; but it's base power thinks like us, and that by wrestling with it, you can make a deal of some kind, at heavy cost; and that that deal includes instrumental control over every fucking thing that is. There's a contradiction latent there. I think it's still here.

God. A biography - O Lord, God of my master Abraham

O Lord, God of my master, Abraham, grant me good fortune this day, and deal graciously with my master Abraham. (p 62).

So says Abraham's anonymous servant, gone to the well in a city in a foreign country, looking for a bride for Abraham's grown son, Isaac. Sarah has died. Abraham has purchased his first piece of promised land, a burial cave for his wife. This is, of course, after the big catharsis, after the games. Life has settled down. But, in the story, a revolution has happened.

To this point in God's story, God's actions have been all but motiveless and therefore numinously, ominously unpredictable. Suddenly, and this is a measure of the victory that Abraham has won over God by raising his knife against Isaac, God is beginning to become a known quantity, defined and constrained by his past commitments. (p61)

But even more, Abraham is counting on his god as an instrument. "Ancient Mesopotamian religion did know a category of a god with whom dealings at this level and in this manner were standard. This was the personal god, typically referred to by the name of his client; that is , as 'the god of X,' 'the god of Y,' and so on." (p63). Contrast this to the Canaanite god, El, "him whose authority over nature and society was broadest but whose involvement in any individual human being's life was smallest." (p61) A close, local fit to the Lord, yahweh.

It's like, in this part of Genesis, a single person, Abraham, is getting connected with personal agency, the big deal in Christianity, saved through your personal savior, protected by the hand of your god, grace. The ties that bind. "Abraham's servant knows that his master worships a god named yahweh, 'the Lord,' but he sees fit to address him doubly: 'O Lord [yahweh], God of my master Abraham.'"

It is just by such shifts, as one person talks about another's god, that religion changes. Some of the changes are deliberate, others accidental. (p64)

So in the story, this crazy, unpredictable personality, becomes intimately available to a figurehead as a personal agency, through a compounding of local ideas on divinity, through an identification of names. A plausible etiology of the compound character evolving through this story. But, regardless, the change is evident in the story, without explanation. Later, this agency is passed on through the generations: "the God of Isaac," "the God of Jacob." After that, it is passed on to a tribe or whatever--a people, a nation, Israel.

God. A biography - George and Martha

In Edward Alby's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, an undercurrent of sexual tension bursts out as George's wife, Martha, takes a young, insurgent professor upstairs where this 'historical inevitability' 'ploughs this most pertinent wife', the daughter of the President of the college, Martha herself, the derisive wife of the failed artist, the sodden professor, George, who sits below and listens, and laughs till he cries. This game? 'Hump the hostess.' So says George.

But before this game it was 'get the guests.' The new professor of biology, 'blondie,' had earlier admitted to George that he was trapped into his marriage by the hysterical pregnancy of his 'slim-hipped' wife, 'a mousey thing.' George has maneuvered the four of them, this time to a moribund, local bar, to tell an allegory--'Blondie and his frau from out of the plain states came'--and reveals to them all his humiliating knowledge that mousey's 'puff went poof' and that it had been too late, for blondie was trapped. Overlaid on this is that mousey had told George that she was afraid of birthing. An abortion? Without Blondie's knowledge?

And before this? George was spurred to his game by an earlier one: Martha's 'humiliate the host.' Martha revels in twisting an old knife in front of the newcomers, that George, 'old swampy,' 'a regular bog in the history department,' had been shot down at the beginning of his career, a boy among men, by her dad, the president, his boss, in his one attempt as a novelist making art of some painful event from his past.

So, George dries his eyes and Martha confirms that blondie finished his business and is turned from houseboy to stud, but George does not relinquish the field. Even as Martha whines, 'No games, Georgie, it's games I don't like,' George shakes her up: 'I want you awake for this, baby.' Not over yet.

As they all sober up, in the wee hours, coarse, vulgar Martha ('Martha, you have ugly talents'), in a moment of breathtaking beauty, tells the story of their son, 'Sonny Jim', with George poking at her in the background, working her up to an ecstasy, only to tell her that Sonny Jim has been killed. Martha in a rage to George: 'You can't do that! You have no right!' The guests, dumbfounded, impotently try to calm her. Slowly it becomes clear that George and Martha could not conceive and had developed this elaborate fantasy, the most human, delicate, and emotional thing that passes between them, to compensate. Martha had broken the rules in a unusual moment of girl-talk with mousey: she let on about her and George's son, their private creation. Now he had to die.

Or perhaps it was all true afterall: 'truth and reality, can you tell the difference' they both say together to the outsiders. Nonetheless, the catharsis washes everyone clean. No more games. At least not for now.

But that's just a story. Why bring it up here?

If you follow the story of George and Martha, you might be able to follow what Miles brings you through in his rendering of the story of Abram/Abraham. An understory of sexual tension, about power of the sexual act and who owns it, full of mockery, rough ugly usage, point/counterpoint, and a final catharsis, the near slaughter of a son at his dad's hand.

Everyone, everything settles down, at least for now. Some point, somehow, has been made. All the characters can get on with life, a little mauled over, a little grown up, a little quieter. At least for now.

God. A biography - Some weird stuff

Miles is moving into the Abraham story. I often feel empathy with Abraham, at least the one who turns his back on 'Babylon' and heads with his family to the desert. When I watch TV, I feel this; when I see how marketers are given wealth and prestige to lure children--and all off us--away from what I think is precious; when I watch a professional football game and think how much these men earn, how much money is thrown into this pipeline by so many people. Often.

But Miles points out, though ostensibly this is a justification for the origin of 'the nation of Israel,' whatever that means, its more about the Hebrew god learning about what sex means to him, and then getting his thing to fall into line.

And it has some weird stories about sex and procreation: A god promises and promises and promises and promises that this man's sexual act will produce a child. A god finds it important that men mutilate their penises; Abraham offers his wife to Pharaoh as a concubine; Lot offers his virginal daughters to a crowd of men to keep them off of his god; Lot's daughters lure him into incest; Abraham's wife offers his servant up to her husband for sex and his god makes it fruitful; Abraham and Sarah do it for a hundred years and finally she gets pregnant. Abraham, without a bit of evident psychology, raises his knife to slit the throat of his child.

All this to get to Israel.