The subtitle of the book, by William B. Collier, is “A Tour of Science and Religion based on the Philosophy of Michael Polanyi and the Intelligent Design Movement”:
Who am I? Where did I come from? Where did life come from? How you answer these questions will profoundly impact how you live your life. Professor Collier has compiled into one engaging volume the scientific case for God and theism encased in the philosophy of one of the most brilliant and unusual scientist/philosophers of our age: Michael Polanyi. Few people have the time to survey the full spectrum of the modern intelligent design movement and how it grew out of and interacts with the writings of Michael Polanyi. With this book you can step back and survey the whole scene, and know exactly who you need to read next if necessary. Collier has condensed the critical details of Polanyi and the Intelligent Design movement into a single volume that informs without being overly simplistic, but is also engaging and fun.
At Amazon we learn about the author: “William B. Collier is a Fulbright Scholar, former research scientist at the National Institute for Petroleum and Energy Research, AWU-DOE fellow, TUBITAK fellow, and is currently professor of chemistry at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He teaches chemistry and the interaction of science and faith, in addition to his spectroscopic research and studies on the origin of life.”
More on Michael Polanyi:
Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) was born to a Viennese family living in Hungary. After obtaining a medical degree, he served in the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I, then chose Austrian citizenship in the aftermath of the war. While on sick leave, he wrote an article on the adsorption of gases that became the foundation for his doctoral research in physical chemistry at Karlsruhe in Germany. In his later work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin and the University of Manchester in England, Polanyi also worked on crystallography and reaction kinetics. After fleeing to England from Nazi Germany, Polanyi gradually turned away from physical chemistry to studies in economics, social and political analysis, philosophy, theology, and aesthetics. The biography traces the development of Polanyi’s theory of tacit, personal knowledge and shows how his scientific career shaped his philosophy of science and his view of religion in general and Christianity and Judaism in particular. (From an online book at Oxford Scholarship)
Ddesign theorist William Dembski was very much influenced by Polanyi’s thinking.