Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing,
by Mark T. Mitchell (ISI, 215 pp., $15) THE boulevard leading into Dachau from Munich is now called the Max Born Strasse. It is named after one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the 20th century, Max Born (1882-1970), a German Jew who taught in Frankfurt and Göttingen (1919-32) and then in exile in Britain (1933-53), before returning to Germany. Born, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1954, had worked alongside and trained several other Nobel physicists in Germany in the interwar years. Looking back across his career and the tragic history of modern Europe, he wrote in 1965: “I am haunted by the idea that this break in human civilization, caused by the discovery of the scientific method, may be irreparable.” He went on to say that “the political and military horrors and the complete breakdown of ethics which I have witnessed during my lifetime may be . . . a necessary consequence of the rise of science.” He concluded: “If this is so, there will be an end to man as a free, responsible being.” A tragic outcome to modern sci<
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