The One Percent Rule
Few figures are as simultaneously towering and elusive as Michael Polanyi. Polanyi, polymathic in his pursuits, straddled disciplines with the deftness of a protean thinker, challenging scientific conventions in physical chemistry, economics, philosophy, and the sociology of science. Born in Budapest to a well-educated Jewish family, Polanyi’s formative years were steeped in a culture of intellectual rigor and artistic ferment. After earning a medical degree and later a Ph.D. in physical chemistry, he made groundbreaking contributions to fields ranging from chemical kinetics to crystallography, often collaborating with eminent scientists such as Fritz London and Eugene Wigner. However, his life was marked by upheavals, his forced emigration from Red Vienna and the Nazi’s to England in 1933, coupled with his scientific discussions in Moscow, shaped not only his academic trajectory but also his philosophical outlook.
“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.”
