The Tacit Dimension

This is weird one: I offered on LinkedIn to read this in a group of people, so I read it in preparation for that.

I will need to reread this yet again. It’s hard.

The first chapter is the easiest, and borders on the obvious. Polanyi’s oft-quoted line is, “we know more than we can tell.” The example he often gives is that a parent can pick their child out of a crowd of 100,000 people. But that parent could never explain to someone else how to do it.

Now, this is obvious, clearly. The idea of “hunches” and “inner knowledge” is not new.

But in chapters two and three, Polanyi goes into full philosopher mode when he useds the ideas of tacit knowledge to explain how it moves science forward. A lot of science, he claims, is based on hunches and got feelings.

And then he goes further, into what I think is a quasi-religious space, where he relates to tacit knowledge on a spiritual level.

More of this went way over my head, but I agreed to discuss it with people, so I’m kind of on the hook for it. Expect another reread here shortly.