She had a close friendship with Michael Polanyi from 1960 until his death in 1976, and shows how Polanyi's passion was to save the personhood of our humanity from the ravages of a reductionist and positivist philosophy of science which was and is threatening the advance of knowledge and also our freedom and humanity. 

The title of her book is taken from the name of the 15th Century morality play `Everyman'. 

Michael Polanyi made highly significant and original contributions to both science and the philosophy of knowledge.

His desire was to revive the humanity and common sense of `Everyman'. In seeking to save the concept of the `personal mind' from the desolating ways of thinking that put their trust in closed logical systems, his views, in this reviewers opinion, are certainly relevant to the ways we seek to know God and do theology.

He showed that a philosophy of science, which believed that everything could be reduced to the jostling of impersonal atoms controlled by impersonal laws of physics, robbed concepts such as `life', `mind', `person', and `purpose' of their intrinsic meanings. He taught us that not only does this go against common sense but in the long run will destroy all knowledge. This is because it is only living personal minds that can know anything. All knowledge, he believed, was personal, and ways of knowing, even in science, cannot in principle, be reduced to codified systems of analysis, computation and logic, but necessarily involve very personal characteristics such as commitment, intuition, risk, and intellectual love (to borrow Einstein's phrase).

Discussion about the philosophy of science affects our view of what reality is, and therefore Polanyi believed it was not only relevant to the rarefied atmosphere of discussions in academia, but beyond that the whole of society. He shows that the materialist presuppositions of an intellectual establishment eventually trickle down to everyday life, ultimately destroying freedom and paving the way for tyranny. 

Drusilla Scott has given us an illuminating, readable, mind stretching and sometimes amusing exposition of Polanyi's main thoughts. Subjects include `The Power of Ideas', `Discovery', `Tacit Knowing', Moral Inversion and an Unfree Society ',` Mind and Body, and `A Meaningful World'.

The reader will find illuminating and penetrating criticisms of such big names as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper.

Good footnotes, an extensive bibliography, and a good index compliment the excellent nature of this very valuable book.