Written in an outstandingly clear and lively style, this 1969 book provokes its readers to rethink issues they may have regarded as long since settled.

In this work the distinguished physical chemist and philosopher, Michael Polanyi, demonstrates that the scientist's personal participation in his knowledge, in both its discovery and its validation, is an indispensable part of science itself. Even in the exact sciences, "knowing" is an art, of which the skill of the knower, guided by his personal commitment and his passionate sense of increasing contact with reality, is a logically necessary part. In the biological and social sciences this becomes even more evident. The (...) tendency to make knowledge impersonal in our culture has split fact from value, science from humanity. Polanyi wishes to substitute for the objective, impersonal ideal of scientific detachment an alternative ideal which gives attention to the personal involvement of the knower in all acts of understanding. His book should help to restore science to its rightful place in an integrated culture, as part of the whole person's continuing endeavor to make sense of the totality of his experience. In honor of this work and his The Study of Man Polanyi was presented with the Lecomte de Noüy Award for 1959. (shrink)

Use of presence and instant messaging applications has grown very rapidly recently, not only at home, but also at work. Early studies on the use of PIM applications in the workplace, however, indicate that PIM applications need to be adapted towards the workplace context. In our research, we explore such adaptations, towards place-based presence systems, i.e., presence systems that are not only able to answer people-oriented presence queries such as “Who is online?” next to place-oriented presence queries, such as “Who (...) is near?”. In this article, we describe a design space for place-based presence systems, in which we identify the most important aspects and options that designers of place-based presence systems need to consider. We also report on our exploratory research in this design space, comprising two cycles of designing, implementing and evaluating place-based presence prototypes. We conclude with lessons learned for future research in place-based presence systems. (shrink)

This monograph addresses the worlds of social science theory and artificial intelligence AI. The book examines the interaction of individual cognitive factors and social influence on human action and discusses the implications for developments in artificial intelligence.; This book is intended for graduate and research level artificial intelligence and social science theory including sociology, economics, psychology.

Our focus is the dialectic relationship between personal, social, collective, and institutional powers; that is the Proteus-like nature of power; “how power produces power”, how one form of power founds another form of it. Even the magic, “count as”, performative power of institutional acts is given from the institution to the lay-agent, but hidden is given to the institution by the acceptance and conformity of the mass of people. We provide an ‘ontology’ of personal powers, deriving from them (plus the (...) interdependencies relations) the most important forms of power at the interpersonal level (‘comparative power’, ‘power-over’, rewarding power’, ‘power of influencing’, ‘negotiation power’, ‘collective power’, ‘deontic power’). In the second part, we discuss a more institutional notion of power, the process of ‘empowerment’ and its relation with ‘permission’. (shrink)

A denounciation of present-day schooling with radical suggestions for reform.