A free society is regarded as one that does not engage, on principle, in attempting to control what people find meaningful, and a totalitarian society is regarded as one that does, on principle, attempt such control.
Michael PolanyiWe could not, for example, arrive at a principle like that of entropy without introducing some additional principle, such as randomness, to this topography.
Michael PolanyiWhile tacit knowledge can be possessed by itself, explicit knowledge must rely on being tacitly understood and applied. Hence all knowledge is either tacit or rooted in tacit knowledge. A wholly explicit knowledge is unthinkable.
Michael PolanyiThe information in DNA could no more be reduced to the chemical than could the ideas in a book be reduced to the ink and paper: something beyond physics and chemistry encoded DNA.
Michael Polanyi