The Contempt of Freedom

Michael Polanyi’s The Contempt of Freedom quite plausibly helped to steel Friedrich Hayek to write The Road to Serfdom. In a 1941 review of Polanyi’s book, Hayek wrote:The four essays [of the present book] were...written during the five years between 1935 and I940 when the ideas of liberty 'were left almost uncultivated' and 'the progressive minds were so fascinated by the prospects of the revolution in Russia that they had little interest left for the fate of the traditional liberties.' [Polanyi’s] analysis...in the essay on the 'Rights and Duties of Science ' is perhaps the most illuminating discussion yet attempted of the psychological propensities which so frequently turn the man of science into an ardent advocate of central planning, and of the inconsistencies which this attitude involves. While Professor Polanyi has no doubt that 'the major force behind this attitude is the passionate desire to put science into the consciously organised service of human welfare', he is convinced that a consistent policy of 'organising' all scientific research...'would actually stop the development of science altogether'. Discover here an early work of the man who coined the term 'spontaneous order' and wrote Science, Faith and Society (1946), The Logic of Liberty (1951), Personal Knowledge (1958), The Study of Man (1959), and The Tacit Dimension (1959).