About the Author

Murray Rae is Professor of Theology and Ethics at the University of Otago, New Zealand.

Reviews

""Though not often heard in contemporary theology, Michael Polanyi's voice had a significant influence over the likes of T. F. Torrance and Colin Gunton. . . . Polanyi's groundbreaking work offers constructive avenues for thinking through, not simply the relationship between faith and science, but many central themes in the Christian tradition. Such potential is aptly demonstrated in this warmly recommended collection of essays. Murray Rae and his colleagues have done us a good service in compiling this study."" --John G. Flett Habilitand at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal/Bethel, and author of The Witness of God: The Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl Barth and The Nature of Christian Community (2010) ""Michael Polanyi has attracted growing attention . . . in many disciplines in recent years. This scintillating collection . . . critically engages with Polanyi's post-positivist ideas on the important role in all human knowing played by faith, relationality, authority, tradition, and communities of inquiry. As well as exploring his social, political, anthropological, and theological views, contributors bring Polanyi into conversation with Karl Barth, Lesslie Newbiggin, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Ren� Girard. This is theology-and-science at its most responsible, insightful, and interesting. Read it!"" --John Stenhouse Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Otago, and editor with Ronald L. Numbers of Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion and Gender (1999) ""Critical Conversations displays two remarkably distinctive things about . . . Michael Polanyi's epistemology. The rich, open-ended truthfulness of his proposals inspires innovative and penetrating cross-disciplinary conversations of all kinds; and conversants thus engaged experience freeing creativity and conviviality. Theological engagement is especially fruitful since Polanyi himself challenges a deadening Enlightenment legacy with an approach that is knowledge- and humanity- and hope-restoring because it is theologically attuned. These essayists offer a rich conversation that others may join profitably--convivially."" --Esther L. Meek Associate Professor of Philosophy, Geneva College, and author of Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology (2011) ""This volume is a welcome addition to the literature bridging science and theology as it explores the work of a major thinker who allows us to go beyond . . . shallow post-Enlightenment objectivism. . . . Polanyi showed us that the knower could not be expunged from what was known and so confirmed observations both by Kierkegaard and Heidegger about the extent to which we frame our discoveries by the spirit with which we approach them. To see Polanyi's work examined in this way is a vindication for those who have attempted to be rigorously post-critical in the rapprochement between contemporary theological epistemology and the philosophy of science. Rae and his authors have done us all a service by providing a volume with that ethos and a clear-cut . . . theological commitment."" --Grant Gillett Neurosurgeon and Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of Otago, and author of Subjectivity and Being Somebody: Human Identity and Neuroethics (2008)