June 13-15, 2008 the Polanyi Society is sponsoring a conference at Loyola University, Chicago on the theme “Personal Knowledge At Fifty.” Personal Knowledge was published in May, 1958 and this conference will celebrate this event as well as provide an opportunity to reappraise Michael Polanyi’s magnum opus and its philosophical agenda in terms of developments in philosophy, science and the globalization of culture.The conference will be organized like the 1991 and 2001 Polanyi Society conferences at Kent State University and Loyola University, Chicago. There will be several plenary speakers as well as parallel sessions in which conference participants present and discuss papers with others interested in the session’s particular topic. This will be a conference that builds in many opportunities for discussion as well as a trip for those interested to the archival Polanyi Papers at the Regenstein Library of the Univeristy of Chicago.

Friday June 13
8:00 Registration Opens
8:30—2:30 Trip to University of Chicago Library for a visit to the Polanyi Archives.
3:00—4:30 Concurrent sessions with conference participants’ papers
4:45—6:15 Concurrent sessions with conference participants’ papers
6:30—7:15 Dinner
8:00—9:00 Plenary Address: “The Political Implications of Commitment,” Richard T. Allen, editor of Society, Economics and Philosophy: Selected Papers of Michael Polanyi, co-editor of Emotion, Reason and Tradition, Essays on the Social, Political and Economic Thought of Michael Polanyi, and author of Thinkers of our Time: Polanyi, is also editor of Appraisal: A Journal of Constructive and Post-Critical Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies.
Post Plenary: Social Time

Saturday June 14
7:00—8:00 Breakfast
8:30—10:00 Concurrent sessions with conference participants’ papers
10:00 Coffee break
10:30—12:00 Concurrent sessions with conference participants’ papers
12:15—1:15 Lunch
1:30— 2:30 Plenary Address: “Polanyi’s Myopia,” Stanley L. Jaki, O.S.B., Distinguished Professor at Seton Hall University, who holds doctorates in theology and physics, is the author of fifty books and four hundred articles on topics in the history and philosophy of science. He is a Hungarian-born scholar who once met Polanyi and was a Gifford Lecturer and the recipient of the Lecomte du Nouy Prize (1970) and the Templeton Prize (1987).
2:45 — 3:45 Plenary Address: “Backstage: Magic, Mentorship and Tradition,”David A. Peck, a philosopher some of whose work treated Polanyi, a public speaker and licensed electrician who has been performing as a sleight of hand magician for over twenty-five years.
3:45 — 4:15 Coffee break
4:15 — 6:15 Panel on William Poteat and Michael Polanyi
6:30 Social Time
7 p.m. Banquet
Plenary Address: “Fifty Years of Discovering Polany, Personal Knowledge and the Polanyi Society,” Richard Gelwick, Professor Emeritus, University of New England, author of The Way of Discovery, the first introduction to Polanyi’s philosophy, compiler of the first bibliography of Polanyi’s non- scientific writing, and, former General Coordinator of the Polanyi Society and editor of Tradition and Discovery
Post Plenary: Social Time

Sunday, June 15
7:00—8:00 Breakfast
8:30—10:00 Concurrent sessions with conference participants’ papers
10:00 Coffee break
10:15—11:45 Concurrent sessions with conference participants’ papers
12:00 Lunch