Esther Lightcap Meek on Loving to Know: the difference between Information and Knowledge

#polanyi #tacitknowledge #estherlightcapmeek #andreahiott #subsidiaryfocalintegration
Esther Lightcap Meek is Professor of Philosophy emerita at Geneva College, in Western Pennsylvania. She is the author of numerous books, such as Longing to Know and Loving to Know. Loving to Know is the primary text for this episode.

Esther Lightcap Meek shows us knowing is an act of love and she has dedicated her career to making philosophy accessible and transformative for people in all walks of life.

Trained at Temple University in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition, Meek discovered the work of scientist-turned-philosopher Michael Polanyi and her work is helping a whole lot more of us discover it now. Her work centers on epistemology—the study of how we know what we know—and she has developed what she calls "covenant epistemology," which places love at the heart of knowing.

Meek has described her approach as "exuberant realism"—a grounded, thoughtful desire to approach the big questions of life with vibrant love and an openness to delight. This conversation is about Loving to Know but her other books include Longing to Know, A Little Manual for Knowing, and A Mother's Smile. This is the first conversation with her, but more are to come.

This episode (#79) explores the intricate relationships between knowledge, information, reality, and love with philosopher Esther Lightcap Meek. Building on the ideas of Michael Polanyi, Esther and Andrea delve into the concept of ‘subsidiary focal integration’ and its implications for how we understand reality. The conversation addresses the limitations of viewing knowledge merely as information, the importance of bodily cognition, and how love and communion with the real are fundamental to genuine knowing. It shows how philosophy can be understood as therapeutic, a dynamic process that connects us deeply with ourselves, each other, and the world.

00:00 Introduction to the Concept of Reality and Information

01:46 The Role of Subsidiary Focal Integration

03:36 Exploring Covenant Epistemology

04:54 Understanding Bodily Cognition

06:44 Introducing Esther Lightcap Meek

08:50 The Journey of a Philosopher

10:46 The Importance of Subsidiary Focal Integration

13:02 Practical Applications and Everyday Philosophy

16:40 The Role of Philosophy in Real Life

26:31 A Conversation with Esther Lightcap Meek

49:34 Integrative Knowledge and Liberation

50:25 Epistemological Therapy and Embodied Cognition

52:37 The Role of Subsidiary Focal Integration

54:58 Daisy of Dichotomies and Modernity

57:54 The Interpersonal Nature of Knowledge

01:11:20 Covenant Epistemology in Education

01:18:35 AI, Tools, and the Real

01:29:14 The Role of Love in Knowing

Esther Lightcap Meek is Professor of Philosophy emerita at Geneva College, in Western Pennsylvania. Esther is also an author and speaker and offers her own distinctive, down-to-earth, approach to the philosophical matters that ground and permeate our lives: humanness, meaning, reality, knowing. The book Andrea and Esther discuss here is Loving to Know.

Link here to Esther’s work and books: https://www.estherlightcapmeek.com

This podcast is research towards the waymaking approach to philosophy.
The way-making resonance relative to this episode and past conversations and the approach to representation in neuroscience as discussed in that approach: Knowledge is inherently unformalizable. Information is formalizable, a communicative way into knowing. Information tries to formalize knowledge (and rightly so); information is a way we represent so as to communicate and (at best) expand what can be known, though taking information (and its representations) as formalized knowledge (taking the focal as all) leads towards atrophy and away from intimacy with what the real. The real is dynamic focal interrelation with the tacit or subsidiary, what we hold and what holds us, without beginning or end. Intimacy with the real is knowing in which direction the sun will rise, feeling the grass under bare feet, listening to others, feeling the from-to and beyond of all that manifests.