"Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an international NGO of exceptional authority"
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Polanyi’s line lands like a calm provocation: if knowledge is global, why is its public power still mostly national, fragmented, and easy to ignore? Coming from a working scientist (and a Nobel-winning chemist), the proposal isn’t a utopian daydream so much as a governance hack. He’s arguing that scientists and scholars should stop acting like lone experts on advisory panels and start behaving like a durable institution with collective legitimacy - something closer to the IAEA or the IPCC in stature, but broader in mandate and more openly moral in voice.
The specific intent is to counter a familiar modern failure mode: policy that treats evidence as optional, then shops for “expertise” that flatters preexisting interests. An “international NGO of exceptional authority” would be designed to outlast election cycles, market swings, and the social-media churn that turns every complex issue into a vibes contest. “NGO” signals independence from state capture; “exceptional authority” signals more than peer review and press releases. He’s asking for a body that can set red lines, certify claims, and publicly name negligence - a kind of epistemic counterweight to corporations, militaries, and populist politics.
The subtext is also self-critical. Academia’s prestige doesn’t automatically translate into trust; universities can be insular, politicized, and complicit. Polanyi’s solution is reputational: build a transnational, transparent, standards-driven coalition whose authority is earned through rigor and accountability, not just credentials. The context is late-20th and early-21st century anxiety about existential risk - nuclear weapons, climate change, biotechnology - where the costs of being “merely advisory” are no longer abstract.
The specific intent is to counter a familiar modern failure mode: policy that treats evidence as optional, then shops for “expertise” that flatters preexisting interests. An “international NGO of exceptional authority” would be designed to outlast election cycles, market swings, and the social-media churn that turns every complex issue into a vibes contest. “NGO” signals independence from state capture; “exceptional authority” signals more than peer review and press releases. He’s asking for a body that can set red lines, certify claims, and publicly name negligence - a kind of epistemic counterweight to corporations, militaries, and populist politics.
The subtext is also self-critical. Academia’s prestige doesn’t automatically translate into trust; universities can be insular, politicized, and complicit. Polanyi’s solution is reputational: build a transnational, transparent, standards-driven coalition whose authority is earned through rigor and accountability, not just credentials. The context is late-20th and early-21st century anxiety about existential risk - nuclear weapons, climate change, biotechnology - where the costs of being “merely advisory” are no longer abstract.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
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