Michael Polanyi (1891-1976), a scientist and philosopher, showed that the Enlightenment's standards for knowledge held distortions that could have destructive effects. He admired the Enlightenment's political ideals, but its critical rationalism led to a "scientism" in which meaning and human values were illusions, and only facts based on physics and chemistry could be affirmed as true. Polanyi's post-critical philosophy revises Enlightenment standards to more accurately reflect the limits of knowledge and how science actually proceeds. This involves critiquing (1) the viability of complete objectivity, (2) the adequacy of Cartesian explicit analysis to simple self-evident truths, (3) the concomitant reductive analysis of reality to smallest physical components, and (4) reductive dichotomies between mind and matter, and between fact and value. He accomplishes this with his conceptions of (1) personal knowledge, (2) tacit knowing, (3) emergent being, and (4) discovery and indwelling. Polanyi shows that science moves toward truth and better contact with reality by using the same tools of practical knowing that produce understanding in those cultural and religious traditions that are open to dialogue and discovery. Values, and not just physical facts, can be real discoveries about the world. Polanyi's post-critical epistemology thus provides a non-skeptical fallibilism that opens possibilities for understanding that go beyond simple dualisms and reductionism, forestalls a regression into nihilism, and renews hope in human progress.