A Comparative Study On Polanyi And Kuhn's View Of Science

Polanyi and Kuhn are well known as modern philosophers of science. They are the type of figure that can be seen as "monumental" in the history of the philosophy of science. Their thoughts and theories, have an unprecedented ground-breaking in their field. In the west Polanyi has been renowned as "Pilgrim Mountain Big Three" with Hayek and Popper. His theory of knowledge is the "personal knowledge", which gives a new vision to the world, is seen as a "Copernican revolution in contemporary epistemology. " Polanyi's career can be divided into stages obviously. Learning not only science but also Arts.he is well-known as a social activist in the West and his idea of the "Scientific autonomy" in Western academic debates have produced a huge impact.Kuhn is the super-heavyweights philosophy of science in the history. His theory serve as a link between past and future. Kuhn's "scientific revolution" theory "and "paradigm" is an unprecedented view of science. Kuhn completely changed the appearance of the philosophy of science, and large number of new academic point of view on social construction, social epistemology are from Kuhn. He is the source of post-modern view of science and his view is more important than the post-modern view of science.By comparison, we can see that Polanyi and Kuhn have a lot of same things. Their experiences have striking similarities. They both are experts in many fields. Polanyi has studied chemistry, medicine and then turn into the philosophy, and Kuhn is a physicist before the transformation into an Philosopher. And the lives of the two men have a lot of common ground. Polanyi had given lots of help to Kuhn. However similar, Polanyi and Kuhn's views are essentially different. Compare the two masters of the scientific concept of philosophy is of great importance.This article will compare their doctrines form multiple perspectives. (A) First, we will be begin from comparing the difference between the startpoint, the scientific mode of development stage of their theory. We can see, the two models of scientific development is completely different from the rational scientific development concept in the past. Polanyi's scientific development model is more emphasis on "personal" factors, in particular, "Stay warm" and so on, relatively speaking, Kuhn emphasize the importance of "scientific crisis" on the impact of scientific development. In Kuhn's system, the "scientific crisis" has focused on the vital role. (B) in the next few chapters, we will compare the similar concepts in their theory so the similarities and differences in the theory of Polanyi and Kuhn will be give in the details. The similar concepts are "conceptual framework" and "paradigm", "logical gap" and "incommensurability, " Polanyi's "scientific community" and Kuhn's "scientific community." (C) On the basis of the previous two steps, we have got a comprehensive understanding of their theories, then, we will compare them from the perspective of their academic concern and their status in the development of philosophy history.Looking back at history, Polanyi and Kuhn play crucial role in the modern Western scientific history. To compare the theories of Kuhn on Polanyi, on one hand we can know a lot on the development of Western science, on the other hand we will get a wealth of Polanyi's information because compared to Kuhn, Polanyi's research in China is still in the initial stage.