Polanyi's Logic of Liberty is textually continuous with his later tacit-knowledge epistemology, not a separate chapter of his life

michael-polanyitacit-knowledgespontaneous-orderlogic-of-libertyfiduciaryphilosophy-of-scienceepistemology

Michael Polanyi's preface to The Logic of Liberty (1951) grounds the whole book's theory of liberty in the same "fiduciary" commitment-structure that later became his tacit-knowledge epistemology:

"I take more seriously here than was done in the past the fiduciary presuppositions of science; that is the fact that our discovery and acceptance of scientific knowledge is a commitment to certain beliefs which we hold, but which others may refuse to share." — Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty (1951), Preface, p. vi

Part I of the book ("The Example of Science") treats science itself as a spontaneous order governed by professional opinion, consultation, and personal judgment that resists exact formalization — the same machinery Polanyi later systematized as tacit knowledge ("we know more than we can tell"). Struan Jacobs's paper independently corroborates the continuity from Polanyi's own side: Polanyi's retrospective in The Tacit Dimension (1967) states his ideas "were first given a systematic form in Science, Faith and Society in 1946," where he "considered science...as a variant of sensory perception" (Jacobs 1997, p. 17, quoting Tacit Dimension p. ix) — placing the tacit-knowledge line of thought in exactly the 1940s–50s work on science-as-spontaneous-order that also produced the Mont Pelerin–era political writing.

This is the direct answer to the hook in observation-michael-polanyi-person-bridges-three-vault-clusters-invisible-to-vault-bridge: the political-economy work is not a "third, unconnected chapter." The epistemology cluster the vault already holds — entity-michael-polanyi, claim-polanyis-paradox-tacit-tasks-resist-automation, claim-michael-polanyis-epistemology-influenced-dreyfus-critique-of-first-generation-ai — and this 1951 political book are one continuous argument about knowing what cannot be fully stated, applied first to scientific judgment and then to social order. The disagreement with Hayek over ends (claim-polanyi-hayek-spontaneous-orders-differ-on-directedness-toward-ideal-ends) follows from exactly this fiduciary grounding.