The British Journal of Sociology
Volume 52 Issue 1 2001
Pages 19-36
Abstract
Science, as an institution, is widely taken by sociologists to exemplify the modern tendency towards vesting trust and authority in impersonal offices and procedures, rather than in embodied human individuals. Such views of science face an important challenge in the social philosophy of Michael Polanyi. His work provides important insights into the continuing role of embodied personal authority and tradition in science and, hence, in late modernity. I explicate Polanyi's relevance for social theory, through a comparison with Weber's essay 'Science as a Vocation'. An understanding of the personal dimensions of trust and authority in science suggests practical limits to the position of Giddens on the disembedding of social relations and on the scepticism and reflexivity of modernity.
Keywords: Science, authority, modernity, Michael Polanyi, Max Weber, Anthony Giddens.
Charles Thorpe
Department of Sociology
University of California, San Dieg