The mutual epistemology of Polanyi and Buber: The dissolution of the subjectivity-objectivity dichotomy in contemporary inquiry methodology

RUNNING HEADER: THE IMPLICIT EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE HEURISTIC METHOD: Rough Draft 1

The mutual epistemology of Polanyi and Buber: The dissolution of the subjectivity-objectivity

dichotomy in contemporary inquiry methodology.

(Paper presented at Interdisciplinary Graduate Research Conference in Columbus, GA on

October 25, 2012

Introduction

The heuristic method (Douglass & Moustakas 1985, Moustakas 1990) was one of many

late twentieth-century responses to expressed dissatisfaction to psychology conceived as a

natural science. The responses came on the heels of several decades of critiques to psychological

science (e.g. Köhler 1957, Husserl 1964) and increasingly metaphysicalist philosophies of

science (e.g. Popper 1964). In the former, mechanical and reducibly complex ontologies have

proved insufficient in dealing with the human being; and the latter accusation of

metaphysicalism has been issued to experimentalists who continue laboratory work under the

presumption of a realist ontology as if decided once and for all, whereas in fact “metaphysics

leaks at every joint” (James 1890). The Heuristic Method was contemporaneous with the

establishment of the Human Science Research Conference. The emphasis of the latter has been

on “comprehending the meaningfulness of psychological life as it presents itself in real world

contexts” (Barrell, Aanstoos, Richards, & Aarons, 1987, p 426).

As a senior faculty and co-founder of the Humanistic School of Professional Psychology

(Dearborn, MI.), Moustakas has been able to train clinical psychology doctoral students how to

use, and chair dissertations that employ, the heuristic method of inquiry. This, however, has

been without the formal articulation of the metaphysical foundations of the method. An

overview of the method (Moustakas 1990) has been provided which includes a brief reference to


epistemological influences, a brief discussion of its dissimilarity to other human science research

methods, and a thorough discussion of the process with a host of examples. However, absent

from the overview is any discussion of ontological assumptions and their epistemological

consequences.

A precise explication of the metaphysical foundations will be important in understanding

how the heuristic method differs from the other Human Science Methods, rather than simply

being an arbitrary alternative to reductive, mechanically-modeled methods.

In the present paper I will inquire into the epistemological foundations that went unstated

in the literature of the heuristic method. This includes a thorough consideration of the two

primary inspirations referenced in the heuristic method’s aforementioned seminal texts. The

inspirations have been the philosophical anthropology of Martin Buber, and the philosophy of

science of Michael Polanyi. In the consideration of these two thinkers, the process of heuristic

inquiry will be the primary consultant, and an epistemology that unites these three sources shall

be left in relief.

The implications of an epistemology that is preceded by ontology, which seems to be the

case with the heuristic method, are made evident by Merleau-Ponty’s thesis of the primacy of

perception. The purposes of his consultation are three-fold. First, Polanyi has recognized the

applicability and inspiration of Merleau-Ponty’s doctoral thesis on his own philosophy of science

and its application (1946, p 12); second, Buber’s self-other dichotomy and integral essence of

antinomy are strikingly similar to Merleau-Ponty’s theory of intersubjectivity and philosophy of

ambiguity, respectively; and finally, Moustakas himself betrays the influence of Merleau-Ponty

on the field of clinical psychology vis-à-vis Gendlin’s mind-body psychotherapy, citing the latter

as an exemplar case (1990). Furthermore, Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the impressionist painter,


Paul Cézanne, has been shown to be an exemplar of the heuristic process of inquiry (Whitehead,

2012).

Polanyi and Buber: A curious Combination for Epistemological Inspiration

The impact that Polanyi and Buber have had on Moustakas is implicit in the latter’s

examples, attributions, language, and method; not to mention its explicit mention throughout his

writing (e.g., 1990). What is less evident, however, is how these two independent thinkers are

considered when their philosophies diverge. After all, Polanyi is an ontological realist and Buber

is an ontological mystic; however might their epistemologies intersect? Moustakas seems to

suggest that this intersection begins at Polanyi’s emphasis on tacit knowing. Tacit knowing

requires a shift of ontological positing from the anonymous observer (i.e., third personal) into the

conscientious scientific observer (that is, first personal), wherein Polanyi appears to leave

realism behind. This shift in ontological responsibility may be taken up through Buber’s being-

as-relating criterion for knowing and being (i.e., where Buber’s ontology and epistemology are

found mutually unfolding).

Before getting into the specifications of this curious combination of epistemologies, a

discussion of their differences will help better elucidate the larger metaphysical structures from

which their implications have come.

The apparent disagreement between Polanyi and Buber. The most conspicuous

dissimilarity between the philosophies of Polanyi and Buber is also the most consequential; it

begins with Polanyi’s ontological dualism. A propos of his theory of scientific indoctrination,

Polanyi likely found his “naturalistic view” to have had its “origin in general education” (1946 p

42). In the very formation of his interest in the pursuit of science as a physical chemist he has


been subject to the assumptions of naturalistic science. According to his reasoning, however,

this should come as no consequence, for “in natural science the final whole lies not within the

powers of our shaping, but must give a true picture of the hidden pattern of the outer world” (p

32, emphasis added). In one fell swoop, Polanyi betrays his ontological dualism and realism in

three ways. First is his assumption of the ontological primacy of natural thing—referred to here

as the “final whole.” This final whole has its place outside of the consciousness of the

subsequently “shaped” intellect. Next, by negating the consequences of perceptual bias in order

to escape the problematic implications of methodological indoctrination, Polanyi denies any

intentionality of consciousness: second is the assumption of the potential anonymity of the

observer. Third is the epistemological consequence of one and two; namely, that understanding

comes by way of the correct recognition of, and direct contact with, the “final whole” of the

“outer world”. Furthermore, the coalescence of the naturalistic understanding is said to come

only by way of spontaneous figural formation (qua Gestalt Perception Theory; p 33). This final

detail will prove to be an important caveat to Polanyi’s realism, and with a particular

interpretation it may unhinge his realism entirely. But first, a discussion of how radically distinct

the ontology of Buber is from that suggested by Polanyi’s above description of the process of

natural science.

In his preface to Buber’s (1965) epistemology, Friedman writes:

[T]he qualifications which Buber sets for the philosophical anthropologist: that he

must be an individual to whom man’s existence as man has become questionable,

that he must have experienced the tension of solitude, and that he must discover

the wholeness of man not as a scientific observer, removed in so far as possible

from the object that he observes, but as a participant who only afterward gains the


distance from his subject matter which will enable him to formulate the insights

he has attained. (20)

The qualifications required by Buber’s philosophical anthropologist are listed as if in direct

response to Polanyi’s above statement with its trio of ontological implications. (In the theatrical

rendition of this analysis, the stage directions indicate here that the academic posses of Buber

and Polanyi begin snapping their fingers.) Only out of the uncertainty of the “positing I” (i.e.,

the Cartesian subject) may anything be truly posited. For Buber, even the actuality of the subject

must be drawn into question, for her being is not ontologically certain! As for the actuality of

the thing in question, it is only after having come by way of mutual becoming (i.e., the becoming

of the subject and object in relationship) that the object may find form. Only then may it be

extricated from relationship, conceived as existing in-itself, and placed aside. This latter

conceptualization of the positing of an object, however, is not of the ontological ken; it becomes

an It, the thing may only be understood in the pre-ontological format (Cf. Heidegger, 1962),

which nevertheless finds its roots of meaning in its original becoming. Thus the positing of an

object as object may never precede mutual becoming of subject and object. To Buber, neither

subject nor object is ontologically prior; their emergence is mutual.

In Buber one finds a twofold ontology “in accordance with man’s twofold attitude” (1958

p 3); both layers require the mutual becoming of subject and object. In the first, or “Primary

Relationship”, the positing subject is herself brought into question prior to a mutual

reconciliation and co-constitution of self-and-other. The second, ambiguously referred to as the

“other Primary Relationship”, is contingent upon the first. The positing subject may call forth a

former Primary Relationship as if it has unfolded anew; here she is not drawn into ontological

uncertainty, nor is her object.


Indeed, at first glance Polanyi and Buber appear to be rather poor companions for the

construction of an epistemology, but the work is only partially complete. Noting their

divergence is important for two reasons. First, it saves the reader from being fed a displeasingly

biased account of each philosopher; and second, it provides a background of the larger

metaphysical structure of each philosopher for purposes of understanding the greater context of

implications gleaned. It is from here that a fair case may be made for the confluence of their

epistemological thought.

The confluence of thought: The mutual epistemology of Polanyi and Buber. The

ontological implications of Polanyi and Buber have proven radically divergent in the first

analysis. However, their convergence is not as impossible as this might suggest.

Two points of convergence are evident between the epistemology of Polanyi and that of

Buber. First, a looser interpretation of Polanyi’s reference to Köhler’s perception theory not only

saves the former from commitment to a realist ontology, but strengthens the implications of his

epistemological theory of Tacit Knowing—a theory that is akin to Buber’s ontological primacy

of relationship. This leads to the second point of convergence: the twofold character of Buber’s

ontology may be understood in terms of Polanyi’s two levels of tacit knowing. Moreover, the

unity of Polanyi’s Tacit Knowing and Buber’s ontological primacy of relationship will serve as

the pillar of the epistemology of the Heuristic Method. Finally, it will also serve as an example

of how the Heuristic Method, which avoids thematic conceptualization (as in things which exist

in-themselves in particular ways), is distinct from naturalistic methods in psychology.

Reconsidering Polanyi’s realism in defense of “personal knowing”. Following the

inferences drawn by Köhler’s (1957) psycho-physical isomorphism—that meaningful

interpretation of sensorial stimuli follows certain rules that are isomorphic to the natural world,


Polanyi suggests that “[t]he testing hand, the straining eye, the ransacked brain, may be thought

to be all laboring under the common spell of a potential discovery striving to emerge into

actuality” (33). This statement—insofar as it beckons the gestalt theory of pragnänz—may be

interpreted one of two ways. The first interpretation is in a manner consistent with the

ontological presuppositions of Köhler and the Berlin school; namely, that discovery depends on

the confidence that empirical observation is a form of direct contact with what is (vis-à-vis

psycho-physical isomorphism; Dillon, 1988). This interpretation places emphasis on the

assumption that discovery inheres in the thing-waiting-to-be-discovered while the senses act as

untapped information regarding said thing. The second interpretation places emphasis on the

potentiality of discovery. Instead of conceiving discovery as the discovery (i.e., the only possible

discovery available in the natural world), but as a potential discovery (i.e., as one out of an

infinite set of possible discoveries), then the suggestion that said discovery inheres in the thing-

being-sensed does not restrict one to a realist ontology.

Polanyi writes:

All of these processes of creative guesswork [the scientist employs] have in

common that they are guided by the urge to make contact with a reality, which is

felt to be there already to start with, waiting to be apprehended. That is why the

egg of Columbus is the proverbial symbol of great discovery. It suggests that

great discovery is the realization of something obvious; a presence staring us in

the face, waiting until we open our eyes. (35)

Since Polanyi uses the egg of Columbus as an exemplar case, it will be used to distinguish these

two interpretations. We will consider the egg-puzzle in its fabled, bar-gimmick format:

After being taunted that his new-world discovery was not very impressive, that “anybody


could have sailed west and happened upon it,” Columbus challenges his critics to complete a

similarly “simple” task: to make an egg stand on its tip. Not before a series of unsuccessful

attempts, Columbus, with the panache of an elite explorer, intervenes and places the egg on its

tip with enough force to crack the tip into a dimple upon which it stands upright. Having seen

him do it, his formerly critical companions see as foolishly simple a task that had them stymied

only moments before.

Taken in the first interpretation discussed earlier, where reality exists “out there” in its

natural form and available directly to empirical observation vis-à-vis psycho-physical

isomorphism, the “egg of Columbus” and its implications are rather straightforward. Emphasis

would be placed on “reality, which is…there already to start with, waiting to be apprehended”.

There is certainly no missing the realist assumptions that this edited sentence is pregnant with!

Continuing onto the example, the egg as a three-dimensional geometrical shape is, of course,

incapable of being stood on its tip in this natural, physical world (without hours of laborious

attempts). Columbus altered the egg’s three-dimensional shape in order that it may more easily

abide by the physical laws of gravity and balance—a concave dimple creating a circumference of

points for balance whereas the egg-as-solid-shape has only one. The solution to the puzzle was

inside of the egg, built right into its physical structure; the protective film that lines the inside of

the hard shell is there to prevent the cracked egg from completely falling apart during its upside-

down stand. Even as the lesser explorers passed the egg around, it contained the potential for

balance—a potential that stared them in the face of which they nevertheless proved ignorant.

Columbus is the senior researcher and the now sobered gentlemen are his graduate research

assistants; the latter are learning about reality, particularly the influence of physical change on

the circumvention of physical law. The graduate research assistants learned a new detail about


eggs. They may return to the laboratory to broaden its generalization to kiwis, sextants, and

bottles of vintage port. Thus conceived, the “egg of Columbus” only portrays the importance of

knowing all of one’s variables, having all of one’s values, or using the correct equation. Indeed,

if taken from the first interpretation, the mention of the egg-puzzle seems superfluous, and

certainly nothing like a proverbially great discovery, unless this comment has been intended in

ironic jest (indeed, nary an historian is unfamiliar with the sarcastic jabs Columbus reserved for

Bartholomew).

Taken in the second interpretation, where the positing of reality is a positing of reality so

as to suggest one reality out of a possible many, the “egg of Columbus” and its implications

suggest an opacity to the egg wherein reality unfolds as particular observations begin to take, or

resist taking, definite shape. Emphasis would be placed on the terms left out of the first-

interpretation’s realist conception: these are “a” and “felt.” “A” is the article that precedes

“reality” and, as earlier argued, suspends the realist assumption of one single reality. “Felt” is

here used to describe the interaction between scientist and her reality (read: “a” reality), and it

has two possible connotations. The first connotation is a visceral sense of the transcendent in the

imminent: the apparent self-evidence of the thing feels like the actual nature of the thing. This

conception may be taken in terms of Buber’s “Primary Relationship”. Here the scientist feels her

reality; she is learning something about what reality means to her—something specific yet

familiar. The second connotation is the feeling qua intuition about reality, and may be taken in

terms of Buber’s other Primary Relationship. Here the scientist enters the laboratory with an

intuition that experimentation will yield contact with reality. She may believe that reality is this

thing that may be measured and observed based on her former experience of that method of

exploration and thing in question. This second connotation may be seen as collapsing into the


first (realistic-ontological) interpretation described above, but here the scientist must at least

display her candor by admitting presuppositions about reality.

With the latter interpretation one begins to see how exemplary the “egg of Columbus”

may be. The critics face an impossible task. Let us assume that they have tried to solve the

puzzle. They have no reason to believe that there is a solution. There is no trial-and-error

protocol or list of suggestions that would prove useful in its solution. The puzzle defies their

problem solving ability. The egg stands opposed to the nonplussed men as an uncertainty—its

capacity for balance has not yet been dismissed, but its potentiality remains obscured from

present view. It may be compared to having three remote controls and trying to decide which

buttons to press on which remotes, and in what sequence to press them in order to turn the

television on—only far more difficult! In returning the single egg to their challenger, many

different relationships to that egg may be seen in the balance: from “the egg that will never

balance on its tip” to “certainly that egg must be able to balance on its tip, but how?” Columbus

performs his trickery and the enigmatic character of the egg dissipates into the dried beer and

stale smoke. Such a simple, self-evident solution.

Anybody can balance an egg, Chris!

“Ah, but you all failed to.”

As a result of his performance, his challengers live a new relationship to the egg-as-potentially-

balancing-upside-down.

Reality is not the singular identity of nature, but a world of relationships the subject is

engaged in which take form through perception. Polanyi writes:

Real is that which is expected to reveal itself indeterminately in the future. Hence

an explicit statement can bear on reality only by virtue of the tacit coefficient


associated with it….

If explicit rules can operate only by virtue of a tacit coefficient, the ideal

of exactitude has to be abandoned. What power of knowing can take its place?

The power which we exercise in the act of perception. (10)

There is an “expectation” that the perceptually imminent will be wedded to the transcendent, but

there is a concomitant recognition that the exactitude of the transcendent will always be beyond

the grasp of imminent self-evidence. It is here that Buber’s remarks are complementary. “Even

a ‘world of the senses’ is a world through being composed not of sense data alone, but through

what is perceived being completed by what can be perceived, and it is the unity of these two

which constitutes the proper ‘world’ of the senses” (1965 pp 60-61).

Perception is not hereby conceived as direct sensorial contact with the real, i.e., the one

static reality that is. It instead emphasizes that there is always a meaningful reality encountered

by a perceiving consciousness—an I who perceives. It is the world of the scientist, and from this

world the latter may not be removed. Professor Long (2011), who has devoted five decades to

the study of Polanyi’s philosophy of science, has not failed to miss this point. He writes:

When we forget to count ourselves while counting objects in the world, including

third-person external accounts of behavior or physical descriptions and models of

the brain, we neglect the most vital dimension of the conscious human being. We

also generate puzzles, paradoxes, and problems we find difficult to articulate,

much less resolve, e.g., the mind-body mystery, the intangible, inarticulable, but

still palpable presence of felt experiencing and self-consciousness, the sources of

scientific and artistic creativity, or even the presence of the spiritual. (part

302/5308, emphasis his)


Indeed, even in the double-blind experiment, celebrated for its minimization of the effects of the

experimenter’s subjective biases, the influence of the scientist must be acknowledged. The

design is, after all, a particular design of the experimenter; throughout its construction,

participant selection, and subsequent analysis, the experimenter has maintained particularized

claims about the phenomenon at hand. In fact, at every stage a scientist finds herself situated

between the rules of her scientific community and her own intuitive speculation about

phenomena. “Unfettered intuitive speculation would lead to extravagant wishful conclusions;

while rigorous fulfillment of any set of critical rules would completely paralyze discovery”

(Polanyi 1946 p 41). The mediation between these two competing influences is the scientist’s

conscience, which can be understood as the scientist’s ethical obligation to her phenomenon in

question (41).

When considered more closely, Polanyi’s realism does not require a rigid scientific

commitment to the complete disclosure of a single reality that is. Instead, it recognizes the

antinomy of intuition and scientific rigor that is at work in sorting through empirical observation

in the construction of personalized understanding.

A twofold ontology for a twofold epistemology. Empirical observation must always

come by way of perception which may take one of two forms of relationship between observer

and observed: first order, or “proximal” awareness; and second order, or “distal” awareness

(Polanyi 1966). “Thus the proximal term represents the particulars of this entity, and we can

say, accordingly, that we comprehend the entity by relying on our awareness of its particulars for

attending to their joint meaning” (p 13). Proximal tacit awareness implies a direct relationship

between object and subject where the latter attends to particulars of the former; this relationship

is akin to Buber’s (1958) other Primary Relationship. Distal tacit awareness requires that the


subject dwell within the particulars of the proximally given in order to engage with the distally

known object; this relationship between subject and object is akin to Buber’s Primary

Relationship.

To discern these two forms of tacit knowing, Polanyi has provided the example of a

pianist. The pianist reads the notes on the sheet of music, for example Claude Debussy’s First

Arabesque, and plays the corresponding piano keys. When learning a new piece (indeed, a

Debussy), the pianist must attend to fingering, dynamics, rhythm, and sustain pedal. Each of

these require exclusive attention. For example, when finger-placement and chord construction

requires the pianist’s attention, then the particulars of dynamics, rhythm, and the sustain-pedal

are ignored. Here attention is proximally at her fingers and their location atop the keys. It is the

same for the other three components listed. Once each of these four components has received

proximal attention in turn, they may then be brought together to play the First Arabesque. The

music here is no longer a series of component parts, but a unified song. There is no confusion

that she is playing First Arabesque; she orchestrates it through the conglomeration of proximal

foci; but never attends to any one in itself. She dwells in the song through these individual sense

foci in her body. “In this sense we can say that when we make a thing function as a proximal

term of tacit knowing, we incorporate it in our body—or extend our body to include it—so that

we may come to dwell in it” (16). Despite its intangibility, the distal is lived as if it had

proximal nature. As soon as the pianist attends to the proximal—her right fourth finger on the b-

flat—a focal point from which the song had formerly been attended, she loses distal contact and,

for example, forgets what comes next. The reality where she is playing First Arabesque is

forfeited for one in which she is playing piano keys. But even in the latter, the key’s sound may

be imbued as a distal focus from the point of contact between finger and key. She may never lose


out on tacit distal awareness because perception is always composition of sensations which finds

its meaning through bodily indwelling. “It brings home to us that it is not by looking at things,

but by dwelling in them, that we understand their joint meaning” (18).

Mapping these two forms of tacit awareness onto Buber’s (1958) twofold ontology,

proximal tacit awareness may be understood as an I-It subject-object relationship, which “can

never be spoken by the whole being”, and distal tacit awareness an I-Thou subject-object

relationship, which “can only be spoken with the whole being” (3). Both of these conceptions of

object require that they find meaning only through their involvement in a subject-object primary

relationship, which Buber (1958, 1965) has shown is unique to the nature of man.

In characterizing the type of positing brought about by Polanyi’s proximal-type

awareness, Buber (1965) explains:

Only man, as man, gives distance to things which he comes upon in his realm; he

sets them in their independence as things which from now on continue to exist

ready for a function and which he can make wait for him so that on each occasion

he may master them again, and bring them into action. (65)

The piano may be set aside as an instrument by which one may make music: keys, strings,

pedals, acoustics, and music stand. Even still, one is unsuccessful as positing the piano as

existing completely in itself—its meaning still finds its place in its potential for carrying out a

specific task at the hands of the pianist. Similarly, the proximal observation is never exempt

from the role of the scientist’s intuition.

Conceived in the proximal regard, however, one misses out on the First Arabesque that

had formerly lived there and in which one had participated; here one has touched and has

orchestrated the music of Claude Debussy. It is here that one understands vis-à-vis bodily-


indwelling.

The type of knowing that comes by way of distal-awareness has its place in its

ontological unfolding; it cannot exist in-itself, it may only come by way of a particular unfolding.

This is especially important in the context of the type of inquiry a heuristic researcher is tasked

with, and may be seen in Buber (1965):

Relation is fulfilled in a full making present when I think of the other not merely

as this very one, but experience, in the particular approximation of the given

moment, the experience belonging to him as this very one. Here and now for the

first time does the other become a self for me, and the making independent of his

being which was carried out in the first movement of distancing is shown in a new

highly pregnant sense as a presupposition—a presupposition of this ‘becoming a

self for me’, which is, however, to be understood not in a psychological but in a

strictly ontological sense, and should therefore rather be called ‘becoming a self

with me’. (71)

In the above description of the Primary Relationship (I-Thou), a new, albeit related, ontology is

formed. In the first ontology, the one characterized by proximal awareness and the I-It “other

Primary Relationship”, First Arabesque may only be understood by dissecting apart the various

sense-modalities employed in its construction. In the second ontology, First Arabesque may be

understood viscerally through an embodied engagement; it takes its form contemporaneously

with the form the musician takes: they are mutually becoming.

The confluence of Polanyi’s twofold epistemology and Buber’s twofold ontology has

been explicated, but now its implications for the methodological cogency of the heuristic method

must be drawn out. However, “[i]t is difficult to describe the heartbeat of heuristic inquiry in


words alone—so much of the process lurks in the tacit dimension, in mystery, in the wild

promptings of imagination, and in the edgings of subtlety” (Douglass & Moustakas 1985, p 53).

In order to bring the confluence of thought between Polanyi and Buber together to undergird the

Heuristic Method as its epistemological foundations, the aid of Merleau-Ponty will be employed.

The Dissolution of the Objectivity and Subjectivity Dichotomy: The Epistemology of the

Heuristic Method

The task of summing up the life of a heuristic inquiry—replete with mystery,

imagination, intuitive speculation, and subtlety—in words alone is indeed a difficult one.

Fortunately the work is nearly finished.

First, the subjectivity of the scientist cannot be ignored in any scientific inquiry. This has

been demonstrated in direct empirical observation protocols where tacit proximal awareness is

employed, as well as the more personalized experiential protocols where tacit distal awareness is

employed. Thus, the subjectivity of the scientist is a necessary component in observations of

ostensibly objective reality, i.e. the transcendent: reality-in-itself, as well as the ostensibly

subjective reality, i.e. the immanent: reality-in-itself-for-me. Second, the nature of any

investigation into a subject requires the mutual becoming of both positing self and other.

Meaning only comes by way of a subject-object (self-other) relationship (Cf. The Intentionality

of Brentano, 2002). It is in this relationship, exemplified by Buber’s (1958) I-Thou primary

relationship, that the subjecting consciousness may imbue or personally dwell within the

phenomenon in question. This exemplifies the task of the heuristic researcher, carried out

through the mode of Polanyi’s (1966) tacit distal awareness—wherein a particular meaning may

be understood.


The subjectivity of the heuristic researcher cannot be ignored. Polanyi’s thesis of

Personal Knowledge (1958) did not escape Moustakas without making a lasting impression. The

latter’s work is full of the former’s language, vernacular, and themes. Of paramount importance,

it seems, is the inescapability of the scientist’s subjectivity. In contradistinction, the century of

work developing the methodology of psychology has indicated the prestige of objectivity: the

hallmark of modern science. With inspiration from Polanyi, Moustakas (Douglass & Moustakas

1985) reframes the focus of this century-old methodological insistence. He explains that “the

initial grounding in the self is an affirmation of subjectivity, and the most objective assessment is

one that takes the personal viewpoint fully into account” (43).

Without the advantage of the above discussion of the mutual epistemology of Polanyi and

Buber, the veneration of subjectivity that Moustakas provides may seem outlandish or otherwise

in an appeal to humanistic ethical standards. It certainly provides no discussion of practical

cogency, much less why it should be pragmatically preferable to other objective methods in

psychology. Indeed, the introspectionists have been lambasted for more than a century for

lauding the subjective perspective. Polanyi has not replaced objective levels of verification with

subjective levels through a sleight of tautological hand; he has done so through a thorough

explication of the influential social, historical, educational, and scientific contexts that always

play a particular part in any scientific claim. Furthermore, he has emphasized perception—a

personal particularized intentionality—as the gateway of all scientific claims.

Merleau-Ponty has recognized this last point to the extent of organizing ontology around

it (i.e., the primacy of perception). In a particularly compelling example of this he uses the

impressionist painting of Paul Cézanne. By discussing reality vis-à-vis the perception of the


artist, Merleau-Ponty (1964) juxtaposes a caricature of objectivity with a definition of

subjectivity.

animals cannot look at things, cannot penetrate them in expectation of nothing but

the truth. Emile Bernard’s statement that a realistic painter is only an ape is

therefore precisely the opposite of the truth, and one sees how Cézanne was able

to revive the classical definition of art: man added to nature. (p 16)

It is recognized that analogy of objectivity and subjectivity by realistic and impressionistic

painting, respectively, is a naïve and dubious one. Its deconstruction will complement the earlier

discussed similarity between two forms of knowing. The ape that the realist painters are

ostensibly accused of being may only understand objects as they currently appear and in terms of

their immediate material value; this is a straw-man conception of objectivism. Furthermore, this

conception posits that these objects are independent of the ape and do not change at all when

represented. Objective knowledge is that which can exist without a knower. The impressionist

painter, she who is said to recognize her integral role in any claim about reality, may be likened

to the researcher who considers the subjective realm. Here there is no belief that a scientific

claim is a close approximation to an actual reality, but a particular and personalized reality-of-

the-researcher.

However, the dichotomy of objectivity and subjectivity is a false one. What one instead

has is two forms of tacit knowing that resemble each pole of what may be better understood as a

continuum: proximal --- distal. The former more closely resembles an objectivist perspective;

the latter a subjectivist perspective. Yet each one relies on tacit awareness. In each, one is

confronted with the potentiality of the other. A self-evident perception (immanent) seems to

yield a transcendent reality; an opaque or incomplete perception implied by a transcendent reality


(because the transcendent would require an infinite perception) limits the perceiver to a

singularly incomplete perception—i.e., the immanent. No stranger to these antinomies, Buber

(1965) explains:

It is only man who replaces this unsteady conglomeration, whose constitution is

suited to the lifetime of the individual organism, by a unity which can be

imagined or thought by him as existing for itself. With soaring power he reaches

out beyond what is given him, flies beyond the horizon and the familiar stars, and

grasps a totality. With him, with his human life, a world exists. (61)

The self-evidence of perception leads man as man to make two distinct ontological attributions.

From the single seemingly self-evident perception, man as man creates two mutually exclusive

ontological categories. In the first, the unquestionable self-evidence of the thing is posited to

inhere in the thing and an objective category is founded. In the second, the unquestionable self-

evidence of the thing is posited to inhere in my perception of it as a particular thing and a

subjective category is founded. These categories are necessary consequences of putting

perceptions into words—so as to presuppose a subjecting consciousness perceiving an

ontologically independent object. However, Buber notes that this fails to take into consideration

the human as being—the place where “world” as subject-object relationship is continually

unfolding. Buber (1965) provides an ideal of such a science, a science that focuses on the

perplexing antinomy of the subject-object relationship:

The [philosophical] anthropologist, in contrast to the psychologist, ‘can have

nothing to do with a division of consciousness, since he has to do with the

unbroken wholeness of events, and especially with the unbroken natural


connection between feelings and actions’. The anthropologist, therefore, must let

his anger rage to its conclusions without trying to gain a perspective; he allows

the recollection of what he felt and did not take the place of the psychological

self-experience. His memory, like that of the great artists, has the concentrating

power which preserves what is essential. (18)

At no point in the description of Buber’s inquiry does an object or its subject get reified as being-

in-itself. The ability for inquiry to stay at the level of process—namely the relating between

subject and object—may be seen in the act of creative perception of Cézanne.

Consider again the false dichotomy between realist and impressionist painting (and its

analogy to objective and subjective ontology) discussed above. Cézanne has recognized that his

skill does not lie exclusively in fidelity to perception (as a purely subjective account of reality

may require). Indeed, “[h]e believed that one must learn how to paint and that the geometric

study of planes and forms is a necessary part of this learning process” (Merleau-Ponty, 1964,

17). Similarly, in defense of Polanyi’s (1966) pianist, the rote-memorization and training

involved in practicing scales is crucial to the development of a successful pianist. However,

exclusive focus on key-location and fingering while playing First Arabesque is sure to be

detrimental to the performance, and will likely bring the song to a halt. One may still recognize

the value in learning about form by learning its abstracted and presupposed format (scales for the

pianist; geometry for the artist) without mistaking the latter for the former. “Painting a face ‘as

an object’ does not strip it of its ‘thought.’ ‘I realize that the painter interprets it,’ said Cézanne.

‘The painter is not an imbecile.’ But this interpretation should not be a reflection distinct from

the act of seeing” (15). That last sentence-summation of Cézanne, provided by Merleau-Ponty,

is an example of the dissolution of the subjectivity-objectivity dichotomy. The interpretation of


the painter, e.g. of a face on canvas, must not be taken as an approximation of the face upon

which she is looking. This would be an objective conception of the face as the one “out there”

that may be reproduced to a greater or lesser degree of accuracy. Also, the interpretation of the

painter must not be taken as the face-once-perceived by the artist, now subject to the artist’s

creative license. The painter must be faithful only to the face-as-perceived; in the shading and

mixing of colors, the experience of the face must be consulted. Here the painter tries to capture

the intentional interaction between self-and-other, i.e. the unfolding of the primary relationship.

The space in-between the false objectivity-subjectivity dichotomy is the ontology

presupposed by the heuristic method. It is in this space where a particular mutualized form of

being unfolds, defended passionately by Buber and cogently by Polanyi, that the heuristic

researcher directs her inquiry.

A heuristic investigation into a subject requires the mutual becoming of both self

and other. Instruction in the heuristic method “does not aim to produce experts who learn the

rules and mechanics of science; rather, it guides human beings in the process of asking questions

about phenomena that disturb and challenge their own existence” (Douglass & Moustakas, 1985,

p 53).

The component of subjective becoming in the process of inquiry has been outlined above

in two different formats, and its reconsideration will be brief. The first is the epistemological

format of Polanyi, and the second is the ontological format of Buber.

Polanyi (1966) has described the process of tacit distal awareness as one where meaning

is understood through embodied perception or indwelling. Here the investigator penetrates an

entity of proximal availability and takes it on as an extension of flesh in order to engage an

adjacent, distal, entity. Thus, the investigator participates in the becoming of the entity in


question.

Buber (1965) maintains that any understanding must be predicated upon self-questioning;

it is upon this self-questioning that a new self-understanding, informed by the object in question,

may come about. He writes:

[H]e who turns to the world and looking upon it steps into relation with it,

becomes aware of wholeness and unity in such a way that from then on his is able

to grasp being as a wholeness and a unity; the single being has received the

character of wholeness and the unity which are perceived in it from the wholeness

and unity perceived in the world. But a man does not obtain this view simply

from the ‘setting at a distance’ and ‘making independent’. These would offer him

the world only as an object…not a genuine wholeness and unity. Only the view

of which is over against me in the world in its full presence, with which I have set

myself, present in my whole person, in relation—only this view gives me the

world truly as a whole and one. (63)

The phenomenal world—that which is over against me in its full presence—is what the heuristic

researcher is after in her investigation.

Conclusion

What initially seemed to be an unlikely combination of philosophies has proven to be

complementary pair in the final analysis. The dual tacit epistemology of Polanyi has given

cogency to the humanistic ontology of relationship of Buber; and the extended and compelling

examples of the latter have given life to the former. Together, they supply an epistemological

foundation for the heuristic method of Clark Moustakas.


Moustakas has given a method to the philosophies discussed above. It questions the

dichotomy of objectivity and subjectivity, allowing the mutual becoming of self-other/

investigator-investigated to unfold without presupposition, abstraction, or reification. The

singularity of the person in the experience in question is preserved, and, concordantly, the

experience under investigation is recognized only in its context as having been lived by a

singular person.

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Documents

The mutual epistemology of Polanyi and Buber: The dissolution of the subjectivity-objectivity dichotomy in contemporary inquiry methodology