Michael Polanyi was a polymath who primarily studied medicine and chemistry. Precisely because of Polanyi's work in the physical sciences, his writings have a unique dimension not found in other advocates of the market and too infrequently found even in philosophers of science. Society, Economics, and Philosophy represents the full range of his interests outside of his scientific work: economics, politics, society, philosophy of science, religion and positivist obstacles to it, and art.

Polanyi was a powerful critic of totalitarianism and of the deficiencies of the usual defences of...